Marketing Experiment 5: Amazon Discussion

I thought starting a healthy discussion about aliens on Amazon might be a good experiment. See here:

dj webber says:

I don’t believe in UFOs but I do believe in aliens, so if I’m right why have we never seen them?

1) Aliens cannot physically travel to Earth. They must have invented a technology that allows them to explore here undetected, something a bit like Google Earth perhaps?
2) Aliens have a code which states they cannot reveal themselves to us. If you see aliens as just humans-in-the-future, you can understand why. If we had a time machine, it would be irresponsible to go back and interfere with our past wouldn’t it?

David, author of Oom

On every product page on Amazon that has been tagged, some relevant community discussions appear at the bottom of the page. That means that if I could get a good discussion going I would get an indirect link to my book page from all alien related products.

I found some of the replies amusing even if it led to zero book sales 🙂

Marketing Experiment 4: Free Chapters

I’m gonna give away 4 chapters for free. Note this is an audio file of yours truly reading the book. Here is Chapter One:

oom-chapter1

It’s an m4a file so it will play in Itunes, Winamp etc.

Marketing Experiment 3: Deed Poll

Ok, so I am starting to discover how hard this marketing game is. What I have done so far is what one million other CreateSpace authors have already done. It’s time to bring out the big guns. If I am really committed to my book I have to prove it.

I have been looking at the UK deed poll service website and it seems it is possible, for the modest sum of £200, to legally change my name to “Oom”. Not David John Oom. Just Oom. That way whenever I introduce myself to a new person I get to plug the book at the same time. Next time I meet one of the folks from our Vienese office it might go like this:

“Hi there. I’m Franz, ” he would say, “Franz Bauer. Pleased to meet you”.

“Hi Franz.  I’m Oom.”

Then there would be a short pause while he’s waiting for me to say my surname followed by a longer pause while he collects himself after this strange happening. He won’t forget the name, and later on, when he’s browsing on Amazon and sees the book he will be drawn to it not really knowing why.

Hopefully my name-change will be in full legal effect by the time the book is available to buy.

Marketing Experiment 2: Guardian Unlimited

This is similar to the Spogg idea in that I register with the Oom logo as my avatar. Every time I leave a comment on a news story I get the book cover thumbnail in people’s browsers.

Here was my first attempt at an acerbic comment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/mad-men-advertising

If I pick the articles that have just been published I can get my comment near the top.

The main difference from the Spogg concept is that my persona at GU is a real person who is very concerned about the issues of the day. I want to try and make comments that my book’s target audience may find appealing. I.e. I need to try and sum up what everyone is thinking without sounding too unoriginal. What fun!

Marketing Experiment 1: Operation Spogg

I work for an online gaming company called bwin. Here in Stockholm we develop the site’s poker software. I have been there for 6 years. Just after I started a couple of guys quit to start their own social networking and gaming site called spogg.com. It is a brilliant site. They have succeeded in creating a really nice and friendly community. It is similar to facebook in terms of features but you can actually get to know new people there through game playing and chat. I hope I don’t ruin it.

One of their features that they have had from day one is that you can upload an image to represent you around the site. On the homepage they publish the images of the last eight users who logged in. Additionally, as a user you have a homepage that you have significant control over. The brilliant part is that a list of links to users that have looked at your profile is visible on the right – so it is really easy to browse other users, and you leave a trail of links behind you linking back to your own profile.

Here I am having just logged in (top-right):

The obvious benefit is that I get hundreds of page impressions for what is now my company logo – the cover of the book. However,  no one knows it is a logo yet.

The really interesting aspect though is that (if I invest enough time) I can go in and actually interact with potential customers on that site. In case you’re wondering “Spogg” is a (hopefully) fictional planet populated by Spogglings. It is a perfect fit for what I am selling. The user I have created on Spogg is of course called “Oom”. When I interact with others I will be in-character – playing Oom.

I’ve no idea if it will work or not!