5 Tips to Leverage Online Influencers for More eBook Sales

Authors, entrepreneurs and other creative professionals are increasingly making part of their living online on the sale of their writing—packaged in the form of eBooks. They are publishing eBooks directly to their own eBook download stores or blogs and generating a nice additional revenue source.

Word of mouth has long been considered the best form of advertising, even for eBook authors. With the advent of digital megaphones such as blogging and social media, word of mouth has become more powerful than ever.

One of the most effective methods of employing these digital tools to increase your eBook downloads and sales is to partner with an online influencer.

Influencers can motivate large groups of people to buy from you because they have already established trust and credibility with potential buyers. As a result, leveraging influencers for marketing is a great option that has the potential to bring more people to buy from you much faster.

Leverage Influencer Marketing for More eBook Sales

Here are key tips to put influencer marketing to work for you in driving more eBook sales and traffic to your online store:

1. Define Your Primary Objectives

As with any marketing campaign, your first move should be to identify a set of objectives. Are you trying to sell more books, raise the awareness of your site, build a more effective email list or do you have some other goal in mind? Once you’ve settled upon it, brainstorm some keywords around it. When you’ve decided upon your primary keywords, monitor social media hashtags to see who’s blogging about them with a healthy following. However, rather than huge numbers alone, you’re looking for a passionately engaged audience. The latter category is more likely to respond to a call to action.

2. Choose the Ideal Influencers

Once you have identified some potential influencers, analyze their blogs to ensure they’ll be a good fit for the message you want to convey. Remember, your aim is to figure out how to sell ebooks on your own website, so you want to make sure the bloggers you choose can put you in a position to do so in an organic manner. You want the campaign to come across in an organic fashion. If the message is forced, their followers will ignore it. In addition to rendering your effort unsuccessful, this could also have a negative impact on the influencer, as their credibility will be damaged in the process.

3. Negotiate Remuneration

Believe it or not, money is a secondary consideration for many digital influencers. If they genuinely like what you’re doing, they might partner with you because your ebook store is of interest to their audience—period. This is the ideal situation. However, if it does turn out to be about money, try to negotiate the best possible price. Remember, every dollar you spend is one less dollar of profit you’ll earn. Make sure the price you pay is one from which you can derive a reasonable return on your investment.

4. Give the Influencer Some Creative Freedom

Once you’ve decided with whom you’re going to work, give them the freedom to craft the message the best way they see fit. Remember, they built their audience with a certain style of engagement. A deviation could leave their followers questioning the veracity of the message. It’s best to just establish a set of guidelines, get of the way and let them do what they do.

5. Measure Results

Like every other marketing campaign, you’ll need to decide upon a set of metrics by which you’ll be evaluating success. This will go back to the goals you set for the campaign at the onset. Are you trying to improve your following and reach, your views and impressions, or your engagement? Once you’ve chosen it, get a solid baseline so you can tell how far the needle moved. In all likelihood, your primary goal is to sell more eBooks, so we’re talking engagement. How many click-throughs did you get? Of those, how many purchased an eBook from your store?

Leveraging influencer marketing for your eBook store is one of the smartest marketing plays you can make today. You’ll gain exposure, it’s a lot less obnoxious than traditional marketing and your site will achieve a cachet capable of carrying you for quite some time.