It’s hard to believe that the holidays are upon us once again and with that comes the ever-busy shopping season, and numerous (yet simple) ways to bolster your holiday marketing campaign!
Though prices have gone up everywhere (have you seen the price of eggs lately?) there’s one thing that hasn’t increased: the price of books.
So if you haven’t started thinking about your holiday marketing campaign now is a great time to kick that into high gear.
Books make great and thoughtful gifts, they’re also fun impulse buys while you’re doing other shopping.
Though it feels late in the season, there’s still time to grab some additional holiday sales without turning your world upside down.
Take Advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday
With Amazon starting their deals well ahead of Cyber Monday and all retailers putting out “early Black Friday specials” the shopping season is well under way.
Given that, now is a good time to secure some key spots for your holiday marketing campaign.
Sample Schedule:
Launch promotion on Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Two sets of promotions in early December
One discount before Christmas
Drop price of book during week leading up to Christmas for last minute shoppers
Pro tips: multiple dates work best if you have a series of titles, but if you don’t that’s fine – just promote one or two of your books on these key dates.
If you do have multiple books, put them all on rotation from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
A Few Sites You Can Use:
Book Gorilla
Book Lemur
GoodKindles
Read Free.ly
StoryFinds
Bookbub
Clean Up Your Act
It can take less than an hour to clean up any loose ends on your website and button up your Author Central page and retail pages.
If your bio is out of date, update it.
If you have a blog linked to your Author Central that you haven’t updated in a while, remove it.
Also, add Video Shorts to your Amazon page and maybe update your author photo, too if you have a newer one.
Honestly, Amazon updates aren’t exclusive to your holiday marketing campaign, they really should be happening year round – so if that hasn’t been your typical approach, 2023 is a new year!
Grab a Goodreads Promotion
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Goodreads rankings are starting to show up on Amazon – Amazon is experimenting with this now and you can expect more of these Goodreads reviews and rankings to start showing up everywhere on Amazon.
The reason this is worth mentioning is because now is a great time to button up your Goodreads profile and do a giveaway to pull fresh eyes to your book this time of year.
Add Local Events to Your Holiday Marketing Campaign
Shop local is only getting more and more popular, and most communities have at least one, if not multiple, local shopping events.
Many of these don’t book up completely, and the closer you book to their event date, the more you may be likely to wheel and deal with them for a discounted booth.
I recommend going in with other authors so visitors have more options, and depending on the book genres you could even do a fun promo – like a discount for getting both books, or all four depending on how many folks are in the booth with you.
Pitch Your Book to Holiday Gift Guides
Add these to your holiday marketing campaign by searching for “gift guides” online, and you can also find them via the HARO newsletter, but here are a few below to get you started:
Holiday Gift Guides:
Nicole’s Nickels: http://www.nicolesnickels.com
Deal Seeking Mom: http://www.dealseekingmom.com
Southern Savers: http://www.southernsavers.com
Koupon Karen: http://www.kouponkaren.com
Dress Up Your Book Cover
This is a super fun way to add some holiday pizzaz to your book page – and I assure you it will help you stand out with shoppers this time of year – because shoppers want a sure thing.
The image below was done on Canva and then uploaded to Amazon via their KDP portal, and it was super quick and easy!
I hope I’ve inspired you, because beefing up your holiday marketing campaign to grab a bigger share of holiday book sales doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming.
Resources and Free Downloads
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These are all super good ideas. I’m not a numbers person so to put together a sale seems difficult. But this makes it seem doable. Thanks!
We love to hear that Kayleen, and don’t hesitate to reach out and find out about coaching if you haven’t already, our email coaching in particular is a really fabulous way to flesh out the logistics of special promotions that are entirely unique to your brand!
fantastic to discover articles including holiday marketing strategy tips. I’m at a loss for what to do with myself as Christmas approaches. When it comes to marketing, I’m quite green. That was a very useful post.
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