New Release Marketing Conclusions

New Release Marketing Conclusions:

Last month, I had a new release: A FIGHTING CHANCE. I did a lot for this release. And I mean A LOT. Rather than hash out my marketing plan here, you can visit my guest post at Victoria Marie Lee's blog.

What I want to share here are the results of my marketing. This post is long. If you want, you can skip to the conclusion.

BLOG TOUR: Now, many would think I'm crazy and that it's counter-productive to pay for a blog tour service while also orchestrating your own blog tour. They may be right, but I had reasons why I combined the efforts of a blog tour service with my own efforts. More visibility, for one. Two, I'm trying to figure out what formula works best for me...how to run future releases.

MY EFFORTS: I approached 10 specific bloggers for guest posts, and then I opened a Google form for my other fellow bloggers to sign up to participate in my blog tour. For those sign-ups, I had pre-made questions they could choose from or they could ask their own question.

I loved the question format. It made it so much easier to write guest posts by answering questions. Even the 10 guest posts I did have ideas for, I struggled to actually write them, so I treated those as questions, too. And voila!

GRATITUDE: I would like to take the moment to thank EVERYONE who signed up to my blog tour for A Fighting Chance. You all are amazingly supportive. I couldn't ask for a better blogging community or blogging friends. By the way, the winner of my blog tour participation giveaway (for a  $5.00 eGift card) was Mason. Congrats!

XPRESSO BOOK TOURS:

For Frozen Crimes last year, I signed up for a one-week BOOK BLITZ with Xpresso Book Tours and did my own blog tour on top of it. I talk about my experience in this IWSG post: Paid Book Blitz Results. Overall, it was a success. The giveaway (which I created and hosted myself) did phenomenal. I also saw a lot of activity on Twitter and Instagram and had 63 bloggers post on their blogs.

EXPENSE SIDE NOTE: Someone had commented on my post that it sounded expensive for little return. I didn't mention the price in my post, although I linked to the Xpresso Book Tours service page. I will say now that I paid $90 USD for a one-week blitz. That price is FAR MORE affordable than other blog tour services for the same length of time. It was my first time paying for such a service, but looking back now...it was worth it.

SILVER DAGGER BOOK TOURS:

For A Fighting Chance, I tried out Silver Dagger Book Tours. With this service you can pay the owner anything at the end of the tour, whatever you feel is reasonable for the services rendered. I signed up for a three-week tour.

You have to have a giveaway for this service, and I let the owner create and host it. I wish I had done it instead, because this giveaway did not produce the sort of results I'd been hoping for, unlike the giveaway I did during Frozen Crimes' release. It even performed under giveaways I'd done that did not have a blog tour service improving their reach. This giveaway required entrants to post a comment to unlock the rest of the entry points, which I think stopped a lot of people from entering or doing more after that (like subscribing/following). And then there were entries that I normally don't include that I think were used more than the ones I cared about (for example: the giveaway was tweeted about A LOT.)

THE STATS: Instead of repeating the stats for my blitz with Xpresso, you can check out my previously mentioned post here and compare the numbers.

Silver Dagger Stats:

Sign-Ups: 41

Bloggers Who Posted: 37

NOTE: With my own efforts, I had 31 tour stops.

Giveaway Results:

Bookbub Followers: 10

Newsletter Subscribers: 10

YouTube Subscribers: 0

Facebook Group Requests: 6

Goodreads Follows: 10

NOTE: I didn't include the numbers for Twitter or Instagram because I don't worry about those socials.

BLOG TOUR CONCLUSIONS:

1. Create and host my giveaways myself.

2. Guest posts formatted as questions are super easy to write.

3. Continue to approach 10 specific bloggers (different bloggers for different books/genres) to host me for a guest post. (Or for my mom if it's a release for her.)

4. If I have the means, I will use Xpresso Book Tour's one-week blitz option. And instead of opening up sign-ups for my tour on my blog, I'll point my beloved fellow bloggers to Xpresso Book Tours sign-up form.

5. HOWEVER, for my mom's releases I will try Silver Dagger Book Tours because they accept all age ranges (including middle grade and children's picture books), unlike Xpresso Book Tours. I will be testing this out soon and will share the results afterward.

Since this post is already long, I'll share my experience with having a free eBook during my blog tour in my March post.

QUESTION: What have you been up to?