The Madness of E.W. and Lydie Marland

Posting on social media alone is not likely to give you the results you need, so a multi-faceted approach is essential. The most effective marketing strategy for your upcoming book The Madness of E.W. and Lydie Marland should utilize multiple strategies, both online and local marketing tactics.

With tight budget constraints and the ambitious goals, you’ll need a strategic approach that optimizes your efforts and minimizes costs. This proposal outlines a strategy, timeline, and the costs with the goal of producing measurable engagement and demonstrated interest for prospective publishers.

There are certain strategies that should dramatically improve the effectiveness of your efforts and enable you to have the greatest reach. Here are my recommendations:

• Landing Page – a special landing page that is designed to promote the book and encourage email signups. A landing page of this sort will not look like the other pages of your website (ie. the menu bar at the top will not be shown). The purpose of the page will simply be to get people to sign up for updates about the book.
• Lead Magnets – a PDF sample of part of your book that can be offered as an incentive to people to put in their email on the landing page.
• Influencer Outreach – contacting local news outlets, book clubs, local influencers, libraries, historical sites and museums related to the Marlands to help drive traffic to the landing page, website, and social media channels.
• Social Media Posting – the social media channels that should yield the best results are: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. A social media post calendar with content targeting each platform will be essential, along with weekly or bi-weekly evaluations to assess effectiveness and adjust the strategy as needed.
• Blog Posting – posting to your blog on a regular basis can help your website become recognized by the search engines for having content related to keywords and phrases people are looking for in relation to the Marlands. This means it should improve your website rank and help expose people to your website where they can sign up to the email list and discover your other social media platforms.
• Paid Advertising (optional) – if you can afford an advertising budget of $5 a day, it may be possible to run ads on Facebook targeting those interested in Oklahoma’s history, or it may be possible to pay to have your upcoming book advertised on a book site or in an email newsletter with a large following.

Strategies & Timelines

Landing Page Setup:

Estimated Turnaround Time: 2 Days

To help steer people to sign up to receive updates about your book, I will create a special landing page on your website. The page will use a “lead magnet” and be designed to encourage people to sign up for your book.

Landing pages of this sort are designed to limit distractions by only presenting the user with information about the offer. There are no obvious links to the other parts of the site or a navigation bar at the top.

Why do you need a landing page? Landing pages are good for paid advertising campaigns and targeted advertising. The purpose of the landing page is to act as a funnel to convert interested leads into actual sign ups. In order to be effective, it needs a “lead magnet” which is typically some kind of offer that the user will want. You can offer them a chapter or sample from your new book.

The landing page will feature:

• Marketing content that is written to encourage people to sign up to the email list
• Existing graphics and imagery used on the website
• An email sign up form that adds people to your email list

What you will need to do: You will need to provide a sample chapter or other content that can serve as the lead magnet. You can send it as a Word document or other file, then I will take it and prepare it into a format people can easily download and set it up in the email marketing system.

Social Media Optimization & Posting:

Duration: Ongoing until October 31st

Your social media should be targeted to platforms that has the greatest potential to reach your target audience. To be effective, the social media posts should follow these social media strategies and you need a social media calendar.

I will put together a social media calendar for you and take your content to turn it into engaging posts for each platform. I can use a platform called Social Champ to schedule posts to 3 of your social media platforms for free – Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. To keep costs down, I can use TweetDeck to schedule posts for Twitter and upload videos to YouTube manually.

With a social media calendar as a guide and the platforms setup to schedule the posts, I can create the social media graphics and videos for you using Canva and schedule them according to the calendar.

Posting Frequency:

If you want to do daily posts, the content needs to be high quality, varied, and engaging. Daily posts are not typically necessary, but the best frequency for posting will vary by platform.

Here is the recommended posting frequency for authors:

• Facebook: 3-5 posts per week
• Twitter: 3-7 posts per week
• Instagram: 3-5 posts per week + daily stories
• LinkedIn: 2-4 posts per week
• YouTube: 1-2 videos per month to start

What you will need to do: Provide content ideas based on what you have, quotes from your new book or the letters, images that you are able to share. Once the information is provided, it can be made into posts. You will need to approve the calendar and scheduled posts and make any changes you think are necessary.

You will need to connect all your existing social media accounts to Social Champ and TweetDeck – I will provide you with instructions.

If you do not have social media channels setup for all the platforms (ie. YouTube), I will start them for you and try to connect them.

Influencer Outreach:

Duration: 1 month

Since it is important for you to hit key numbers to get your book accepted by publishers, a key strategy to hit them is to offer samples of your book to potential influencers who reach audiences that may be interested in your book. This should help increase awareness of your book by providing influencers with something of value they can offer their audience.

Potential influencers may include:

• Book clubs
• Local news outlets and newspapers
• Local influencers
• Historical societies or museums
• Libraries
• School teachers
• Small book stores

I will try to identify key influencers in Oklahoma and nationwide that may be open to receiving information about your book or reading a sample of it. Then I will attempt to initiate contact with them. Some may be interested in talking to you or doing interviews.

What you will need to do: Review the list of prospective influencers and modify it as needed, provide a sample or something else that would be of interest to offer the influencers, and review the prepared correspondence to be sent to them on your behalf – or you can send it yourself if you prefer.

Press Release Distribution:

Duration: 2 weeks

I will put together a press release and send it to local news outlets, libraries, and history magazines.

What you will need to do: Review the press release and make any changes necessary. If people contact you with questions or requesting to interview you, be ready to respond.

Blog Content & Posting:

Duration: Ongoing until October 31st (1 post per week)

Optimize and publish content to the blog on the website. I will insert keywords and phrases wherever appropriate, add a featured image to each post, and add the SEO (search engine optimization) information into each post so that it has a good title and description that matches the content.

What you will need to do: Provide the raw content or information to create posts from and approve the edited versions.

Paid Advertising (Optional):

Duration: 1 month (can be spread out)

I will set up and monitor targeted ads on Facebook or another platform that meets the advertising budget.

What you will need to do: Set the advertising budget and approve the ad content.

Expected Outcomes

By October 31st, with the recommended strategies, we should expected to see the following:

• Website: Increase in website visits month-on-month.
• Email List: Grow an email subscriber list, aiming for 500 by the end of October.
• Social Media: Steady increase in followers and engagement rates.
• Press Release: At least 5 pick-ups by media outlets to create awareness.
• Boost Local Awareness: Get endorsements, testimonials, and/or advertising locally.

Reporting & Assessment:

Weekly Reporting: Every week, a report will be provided detailing:

• Website Traffic: Number of visitors, source of traffic, list of pages and number of visits, and the average time spent on the website site.
• Social Media Metrics: Engagement rates, top-performing posts, and follower growth.
• Email List Growth: Number of new subscribers.

Strategy for Assessment: We will begin with the current metrics (starting from zero for website traffic) and track the growth week-on-week. This will provide a clear picture of what strategies are effective and which ones may need tweaking.

Terms & Commitment:

For the effective execution of this plan, we both need to adhere to the timelines and tasks assigned to them. Any delays or changes should be communicated in advance to ensure smooth operation.