13 Simple Marketing Hacks I Learned Moving 1.7 Million Books

If your business is struggling, you likely need to improve one key thing…

Your marketing.

And I’m speaking from experience. After quitting my cushy 6-figure job, my online business earned a lousy $2,200 total in its first 9 months. But, once I began studying marketing, everything seemed to change overnight. I launched a book that went viral in my niche, moving over 32,000 copies in a week. From there, my income ($106,127 in sales in just 30 days), exposure, and opportunities exploded like never before.

Since then, in the last two and a half years, my team and I have worked with hundreds of authors like Brian Tracy and Peter Voogd, helping them move over 1,700,000 books on Amazon.

Along the way, I’ve discovered what does and doesn’t work when it comes to book marketing and marketing online in general.

To help you get your book, product or brand seen and heard online, I’m sharing my Top 13 Marketing Hacks to help you start growing your business today.

#1. Let The Algorithms Work Their Magic

Google, Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube have bigger audiences than you and I will ever have. The key to getting your book and brand seen is to get these large platforms to promote your stuff for you.

For example…

If your ranking is high enough on Amazon, the Amazon algorithm will show your book in many places such as search results, related purchases categories, bestseller charts, and so on. This organic reach will get you more downloads, which then continues to feed the algorithm, and will get you even more exposure.

The challenge is figuring out how to spike the algorithm on your platform of choice. The rest of these tips help you do just that.

#2. Position Yourself

The first exercise I do with all authors (even top established authors) is positioning.

Why?

Because when you’re clear on your positioning, marketing becomes much easier. In short, your marketing dollars will get you better conversions because you’ll attract more and higher quality leads and customers.

My first online business was a mess, earning only $2,200 in 9 months. The reason for this is because I didn’t position myself any differently than my competitors. But, as soon as I fixed my positioning in the marketplace, everything changed (earning $106,127 in 30 days only a few months after almost quitting).

The elements of positioning to think about are your messaging, credibility, social proof, platform, and your story. How would you rate yourself on those items?

#3. Make A BIG Promise

Most of the New York Times best-sellers make HUGE promises. Consider these titles:

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• The One-Minute Manager
• The 4-Hour Workweek

Each of these titles makes a huge promise related to their market’s desired end-result. Even more, each of these books backs up their promises with great quality content.

With your marketing efforts, make sure you’re making big and bold promises… Then back them up. If not, you’ll fade into the back of your prospect’s mind because you sound like everyone else.

#4. Get ONE Major Media Feature

All it takes is one to start some momentum. As soon as you have one major media feature, getting more will become a piece of cake.

Consider this story…

When I launched my book – Make Money, Live Wealthy – I was featured on Yahoo! Finance. Within 2 days, I was contacted by BusinessInsider, AOL.com, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Post.

Before my Yahoo! Finance feature, exactly zero of my cold emails were getting responses. Zero.

Once you get just ONE major feature, leverage it to get even more so you can explode your credibility and social proof.

#5. Launch Stuff!

One tactical method for spiking your platform’s algorithm is to go into Launch Mode. Think of Launch Mode as a set period of time when you’re promoting something – anything – hard.

Everyone loves the excitement of events, and with the right approach, they work extremely well to grow your brand.

My book marketing company is called “Epic Launch” for a reason. Our launches spike Amazon’s algorithm so the book ranks high for our target readers, which helps create a long tail of sales as discussed in Tip #1.

Schedule a few promotional events over the next 6 months and watch your brand take off one level at a time.

#6. Set Deadlines To Drive Action

Urgency is one of the strongest drivers for getting people to take action.

Because of this, try not to do anything in your marketing without a deadline. This is why launches, special promotions, and time-dependent “open-cart” periods are so popular among marketers.

There’s the famous “U Curve” for promotions. In my businesses, when I launch something, I’ll see sales in the beginning, followed by a dip in the middle, followed by a spike in sales towards the end.

The reality is that we human beings are lazy, and we need reasons to do stuff. Give them reasons by removing some special pricing or bonuses if they don’t take action. Your sales will take off, no doubt.

#7. Annoy People

Yes, you read that right.

Sometimes, I’m hesitant to market too much because I don’t want to be “spammy” or upset my audience. But, the biggest, best, and most successful names in our industries hold nothing back.

Look at Grant Cardone for example.

His marketing is ruthless. Instagram Stories, Facebook Lives, blog posts, guest blog posts, YouTube shows, Snapchats… all multiple times every day! The result: he’s one of the top online business influencers, and only growing.

Try to overcome your fears of marketing “too much” and get in front of your audience every day, multiple times per day. Your business depends on it. Before I made this mental switch, my business was failing hard.

#8. Know Your Numbers

We all have opinions on what the best ideas are, what our customers want or what product will take off. The fact is the only way of knowing the answers to these questions comes down to the numbers. Track your key numbers, then follow them to make objective, data-driven decisions with your marketing.

Marketing is both an art AND a science.

If you’re not tracking your numbers now, the first step is figuring out what your key metrics are. For many, starting off by simply tracking ad spend and revenue consistently is a great start. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Just start with a few core metrics and you’ll be ahead of most.

#9. Focus on ONE Thing

A very important (and often overlooked) marketing principle is the power of ONE.

One message…

One call-to-action…

One target audience…

When you get trapped in having a split-focus, your results will suffer. Review your emails and social media right now. If you’re anything like I was, you are trying to cram in too many messages and angles to have it be for too many people.

Simple and straightforward sells.

One clear message, one call-to-action, one target audience. Have that engrained in your mind as a marketer and your results will skyrocket.

#10. A/B Test Everything

One of the reasons my book marketing company has guaranteed results is because we ruthlessly test everything…

• Titles…
• Subtitles…
• Book covers…
• Landing pages…
• Headlines and copy…

Everything!

Small incremental improvements for each piece of marketing leads to different results. Think about this: it’s not uncommon to improve a single element of your marketing by 15 or 20%. Repeat this a few times and you double your results. Instead of $20k, you can make $40k, for example.

The difference between good and great isn’t that much, and testing is a simple way to help you take the leap up. Remember, your opinion doesn’t matter. The market will tell you what’s good and what isn’t.

 #11. Build Anticipation

This is one of the most underrated and misused marketing strategies. It’s also one of my top methods for getting massive results with my book launch clients.

You see, most people get busy and their work falls behind schedule. So they prematurely release their work into the world… and what happens?

Crickets.

Think about what Hollywood does. All big blockbuster hits have major anticipation and build-up (often over a year), and the results are million-dollar weeks or days!

Your marketing and projects should be no different.

Give your audience hints of what’s coming with your business. Build excitement, anticipation, and make them want what you’re selling before it’s available. Trust me: you’ll see a big difference in conversion when the time comes to take action on your new offer.

#12. Create a Strong Back-End

Every online business guru shares the same secret to success:

Be willing and able to pay more than your competition for new customers and you will win!

How can you do this? The key is to figure out how to earn more from a customer than what you pay to get that customer.

If you know you’ll earn $200 per customer in the next 90 days, and it costs you $50 to get this customer, you’d scale that up all day long, right?

Well, that’s what you need to get to with your online business. Be able to monetize on the “back-end” with different offers, know your numbers, and then you can afford to pay more for your leads.

It’s easy to get traction with your marketing when you can spend a lot of money.

#13. Nothing Sells Like Success

The secret to success online… is to have success.

I stumbled into this lesson after launching my first book, Make Money, Live Wealthy. I started sharing my crazy results (over 32,000 books moved online in 36 hours), and it helped me go “viral” even more within my niche. The results and engagement got so many new people’s attention, helping me get exposure to millions of people even though my own personal ecosystem was small.  

Whether it’s your own success story, or the success of a client or customer, leverage any results you get for more and more results. Create case studies and testimonials and share that with the world. It’ll add credibility and social proof to your efforts, which are key elements of effective positioning and marketing.

 

Let me leave you with a challenge:

Now that you’ve read about each tip, skim through the list once more and choose just ONE strategy to add to your marketing right away. Whether you’re launching a book, an online course, or a new project, these 13 Marketing Tips will help you get your message heard.

Take it one step at a time, and I’m sure you’ll see results right away. 

To your marketing success,

Austin Netzley