The Secret to Viral Book Marketing
Most online book campaigns revolve around a few key ingredients:
- Basic landing page with a large purchase button
- Promo video
- Incentives to share
However, the one thing most campaigns overlook is the secret of taking a campaign viral.
When Max Lucado and company invited us in on their recent launch of the book “You’ll Get Through This,“ they had what most any other client brings to the table: a need for traffic, a timeline, and a strict budget.
24 hours after launch, Max Lucado’s book landing page had over 5,000 unique impressions and 1,000 engaged users.
The secret to it going viral? People don’t just want to learn about a book, they want to interact with it.
However, it’s not just about facilitating interaction. You could write a book about sea turtles and create the most interactive website about how sea turtles are awesome, and sit back to watch no one engage.
So, what made Max Lucado’s book landing page a different story?
The key to taking a book campaign viral is in asking these two questions:
- What’s the problem or pain point that the book addresses that speaks to the most people?
- How can we invite an audience to interact with us and a community about THAT pain point?
Max’s book speaks to the power of prayer in hard seasons. As we evaluated, we realized that everyone, regardless of if they were in a hard season or not, always has something to pray about.
And thus, the prayer wall was birthed.
We created an online “prayer wall” for Max’s fans, where people from all over the world could post their needs, get prayer, and of course learn about Max’s new book. Now, as of 6 months after launch, the prayer wall has had 17,000 prayer requests posted, over 50,000 commitments for prayer, and attracted more than 100,000 visitors.
See the prayer wall here: http://youllgetthroughthis.com/prayer-wall/
In the end, you can spend all your time and money writing the most intelligent book and designing the prettiest website, but without a compelling opportunity to interact, your campaign won’t go viral. Remember what we learned with Max Lucado. Give your audience something meaningful to interact with, and they will come.
