Top 7 Marketing Tricks During a Recession

5. Offer your book free to potential clients as an e-book. What’s better than being able to acquire profitable new clients through a $20 “loss leader” like a book? Give your book away for free — all you ask in return is their e-mail address. They get something of value in exchange for adding to your e-mail database. Now, with their permission, you can provide them with additional information and assistance via e-mail, once a month or at whatever duration you think is best. If they find your correspondence valuable, you are that much closer to adding a new customer to your business. How much did you lose? The royalty from the paperback book sale? What is $2-$10 in comparison to the $50-$200 cost-per-acquisition you typically pay for new customers the traditional way?

6. Engage in pay-per-click advertising. Once you have a blog, a paperback and a free e-book available on your Web site, you are prepared to successfully engage in high ROI (return on investment) pay-per-click Internet advertising through Google and Yahoo. Services such as Google Analytics will help you identify your cost-per-lead, and your own business model should help you identify an acceptable cost-per-lead. If your actual cost-per-lead is lower than your acceptable cost-per-lead, you have a successful marketing campaign. Otherwise, it requires a little refining.

7. Create “microsites” and landing pages. The next step is to categorize your pay-per-click campaign into separate and specific categories. Then, make sure people who click on specific keyword ads are arriving at specific microsites or landing pages designed around those keywords. Further enhance your offerings by publishing multiple books (think around 100 pages) and offering multiple e-books, each one specific to each individual and each specific landing page. For instance, even though your business may cater to both mothers and fathers, women and men search for information on the Internet differently. When you advertise to them differently and then treat them uniquely once they reach your site, they will each feel a personal connection with your business because you are treating them like an individual, rather than a wallet. Given the investment in the blog, in the book and in the pay-per-click campaign, creating a “pink” version and a “blue” version of two different landing pages is a no-brainer. That is an oversimplification, but the point is the same.

By treating each potential client or customer as a unique individual and by liberally sharing a wealth of information with each of them, you begin to establish your own expertise while gaining their trust and loyalty. People buy from experts who they have reason to trust.

Now that you know how to increase your marketing techniques, even during a recession, imagine what you will be able to do once the economy turns around! These simple and cost-effective marketing steps will help you improve your client acquisition rates and sell more products and services, while your competitors cut back and lose out on new clients.

Brent Sampson, best-selling self-published author of “Sell Your Book on Amazon” and "Self-Publishing Simplified," has helped thousands of authors realize their dreams of publishing and distributing their books worldwide fast with Outskirts Press.