FAQ

Ask a Question Customer’s Questions

← FAQ

Marketing Strategy: Digital Goods and Services

I haven’t seen your landing page, but I’m betting it’s got some kind of problem. Have you tested it on mobile devices and multiple desktop browsers? How’s the load time?

Beyond the obvious technical stuff, you’re going to have to look at your web visitor stats to see if there are more clues. A high bounce rate, for instance, can suggest a number of things (slow load time, poor design, content that’s not interesting enough).

If you’re sure that your server and content are in top shape, then look next to your sales process. It’s got to be a one-click, low-impact buy. Simplify and shorten this process any way you can. If it’s longer than one click, then make your landing page into an opt-in page with as few fields as possible. Lots of opt-in fields will chase people away. We suggest a name and email address only, and possibly a password if you’re creating a personalized on-site account for each visitor.

Please log in to rate this.
0 people found this helpful.


This is a tough one because fiction is, and has always been, very expensive and/or time-consuming to promote, and the results are never guaranteed. If there were a perfect formula for this, every major book publisher would be using it to make everything a bestseller. Instead, only a tiny percentage of fiction books go beyond their advance.

We’ve actually dedicated an entire chapter to this subject later in the book. Here’s some quick advice before you skip ahead to it, though. First, don’t openly promote your novel; people don’t seem to respond well to that. Instead, talk about the themes indirectly. For instance, let’s say the movie The Matrix never existed, and you just wrote it as a science fiction novel. Put up a web page that shows the synopsis, the first chapter, any art that is associated with it, and links to all of the major sites that sell it (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo). Create a Facebook page for the book and a Twitter account for you as an author, and link out to your book page prominently there. Get some good Facebook ads going on a budget of $10–$20 per day to gain more page likes. Every day on your Facebook page, you would offer a paragraph or so on the nature of reality, Turing test theories, artificial intelligence, Buddhist philosophy as it relates to the plot, computer hacking, the semantics of hacker handles, news stories that deal with any of these subjects, and so on. On Twitter, you would post questions to your followers about these same subjects. You’d follow actors from science fiction shows and engage with them. You’d try to find people who talk a lot about science fiction and have a lot of followers, and try to get them to notice you (refer to Chapter 13 for more information on influencer outreach).

Please log in to rate this.
0 people found this helpful.


← FAQ

Ask a Question Customer’s Questions