From Marketer to Stalker

Sit right back / and hear a tale / about a marketing cat / trying to turn fans into sales / he dwells on the web / like 24/7 / persistence and tenacity are his only weapons / imagine his disappointment / when the plan doesn’t work out as sketched / but he keeps on pushing / ’cause tomorrow might be the best day yet!

Back when the only stories TPC was slangin’ were our own fledgling birth tales, I had a brilliant idea of how we could simultaneously build our online fan base and virtually guarantee gigantic sales of SELLOUT and the novels to follow. We would put our entire operation on display like the store windows on 5th Ave during Christmas. We would take a page out of the Julie/Julia playbook and expose our triumphs and tragedies for the entertainment and education of the world.

My next big idea was around how we could use facebook as a platform to success. Fans would jump from FB to this site and love every minute of the interaction. Once again we saw a rapid initial uptake (mostly existing friends and family) but then the numbers flattened and stopped growing altogether. As it usually does in these moments, my never say die attitude kicked in and I had yet another genius idea. Because James’ was in the contemporary fiction realm, all we had to do was friend fans of authors who wrote books in the same genre.

Setting a target of 25 new fans a day we began hitting up total strangers on FB. My partners were initially reluctant with this approach (Steph actually never agreed with it), but not me. I dove in head first. Next thing we knew, the fan numbers were climbing again! Going door-to-door was surprisingly successful. Only a handful of people protested my friend request, so I figured it was all good.

I then decided to experiment with facebook ads. Setting a daily ad budget of $10 I figured I’d let FB stalk likely candidates for a while. And sure enough, fans began to join our movement in droves! We launched the SELLOUT fanpage with another ad and our success continued. I was so bullish on the facebook strategy by this point that I adjusted our pre-launch sales forecast way up. There was no way we wouldn’t easily blow past 1,000 books sold in the first six weeks, right?

Wrong. People may like you on facebook and they may even comment on what you’re doing every now and again, but asking them to buy something…on facebook? That’s like walking into a busy happy hour and tapping people on the shoulder asking them to buy a book. And that’s when my stalking went into overdrive.

I became obsessed with transforming our FB fan base into loyal readers, trying everything I could think of to grab people’s attention in that crowded bar we call facebook.

Much love goes out to the early adopters who actually took me up on my many offers. But even more love goes out to those of you who haven’t yet opted in. Because all of this stalking is actually making me a better marketer. So I’ll be seeing you on a homepage, update, event, or inbox near you.

By the way, did you know you can get a personally autographed copy of the hottest book of the summer for just $10 (plus shipping) by clicking this link?