Marketing Experiment: Initial Results

With a lot of great festivals and fairs happening in my region this summer, I wanted to take advantage of in-person marketing opportunities, but as I was doing research I quickly realized that with booth fees, needing to invest in a vendor tent, various selling permits, and ordering author copies and other swag, it was going to be far beyond my marketing budget.

So, I designed and ordered bookmarks to hand out instead. I didn't want them to feel too promotional and wanted them to be something people will actually use, so the front main design is genre-relevant instead of specific to my books. On the back, I included my pen name, social media handles, and a QR code to my books on Amazon. I spent $35 (with a coupon code) for 500.

Yesterday I went to my first festival and I'm not going to lie, it was pretty terrifying. I am an introvert and don't love crowds or bothering people, but I channeled my inner Vegas club promoter and started passing my bookmarks out. I gave out 100 in 90 minutes and had some fun conversations with people about my books.

Results:

- 15 Amazon orders in the past 24 hours ~2.5x my daily average with no other concerted marketing efforts like ads running= the bookmarks have already more than paid for themselves and I still have 400 left

- Two local bookstores had tables at the festival and both invited me to stop by their brick-and-mortars during regular business hours to set up book signings

- One of the bookstores indicated they would be ordering copies on IngramSpark for their local authors section

Additional Takeaways:

- This festival was one where was I was absolutely certain there would be a high concentration of my genre's readers

- Bookmarks work well because people who don't read are less likely to take them when offered

- I should have made a special link for attribution tracking but I was lazy. When I reorder I'll probably change the QR code so I can have more solid data.

- I should have prepared and rehearsed an elevator pitch beforehand to alleviate some of my awkwardness