The Clean and Green Club

Shel Horowitz’s Book Marketing Tip of the Month, Vol. 1 #4, October 2007

Guest Columnist:  Don McCauley

One of the techniques I teach in my book. . .

Why not give away a free gift? Or better yet, have someone ELSE give
them away. Here is how . . .

Since you have published a book, it might take just an hour or two to
create an e-book using already written excerpts FROM your book. Then
just print up some gift coupons for a FREE E-BOOK. The example I use in
my book is a book of recipes. Approach a local bakery and have the
owner give out YOUR gift coupons as THE BAKERY’s gift to THE BAKERY’s
patrons.

This accomplishes a number of things:

*Your free ebook serves as a ‘taste’ of the book, much the same as a
trailer provides a ‘taste’ of the full movie to come.

*The bakery gives a ‘gift’ to the bakery’s patrons at NO COST to the
bakery.

* The gift coupon has the effect of providing ‘third party’ influence
from the bakery, much the same as a referral FROM the bakery

* As the customer must visit your website to redeem the coupon, you now
have them in YOUR store. This gives you the opportunity to add this
person to YOUR mailing or newsletter list. They will most likely do
this, as they are certainly an INTERESTED prospect.

* The bakery is actually advertising for YOUR BOOK …. for FREE.

The end effect is that you win (getting an interested party to your
site for practically no cash layout) the bakery wins (gives a valuable
gift to the patrons) and the customer wins (gets a free gift). As
compared to using a flyer sent to potentially uninterested parties (1/2
of 1% return is the norm) there is simply no comparison.

The gift certificates will cost pennies to print compared to
potentially hundreds of dollars to print flyers.

Try this simple technique and track the results. Wow! Of course it goes
without saying that you will have to partner with a business in your
genre . . .

Don McCauley ICM, MTC, CH
Author-Top Ten Secrets To Getting Free Publicity
For Your Business Or Organization
Free Publicity Focus Group
www.freepublicitygroup.com