Time for an Update

It’s been a couple of days since I did a general update on the book project. Since we last talked, we are in the final stages of editing.

Our editor is expected to be completed with the first round of edits in about two weeks. We are finalizing the cover. Thanks to everyone who provided input. We are working with an outside illustrator to work up one more cover option.

That option includes an illustration of a guy (hopefully it will look like a business owner) with his tie askew and an invoice in his hand, the invoice will be thrust skyward, as if he just landed a big deal. Stay tuned, I will post the graphic so you can see it.

We did finalize the size of the book; we agreed it would be a smaller hard bound book, 5’ by 8’ in size. This decision helps us work out costs associated with pricing. We are deciding on the number of books to print 2500, 5000, 0r 10,000.

Right now costs to print the book are going to be between $1.92 and $2.52 depending on how many we print. Once the cover is approved, we start the process of pitching it to major outlets and we are able to take pre-orders. So I would think in the next couple of weeks, you will read that the book is available for pre-order. Wow! That is really exciting.

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How Do We Sell The Book?

Believe it or not, the key to getting a book published isn’t the idea or the words printed on the page. The most important requirement is a strong marketing plan on how you plan to get books sold after it’s published. This is one place our partner Steve from Linx Corp has really come into play.

While we know how to market, we don’t know how to market a business book, so he has brought a number of good ideas to the table. One of the most important is a good network of retail outlets to distribute the book.

Here is a partial list of the places we are working with to carry our book. FedEx/Kinkos, Dell, Quickbooks, Office Depot, GotVmail, Gotomypc.com, MasterCard, UPS, Visa, CaptialOne, Vistaprint, Network Solutions, Start Up Nation, and OPEN from American Express. Of course this doesn’t include the standard outlets like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc.

Our e-newsletter is now going out to over 15,000 readers each week, our Workshop program and speaking engagement schedule provide additional opportunities to introduce our “fans” to the concept of Reality Marketing™ and sell more books.

Believe it or not, it’s the post publishing marketing that gets book people excited. Good luck with your own efforts.

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Poor Advertising at it's Best

Let’s take a brief pause from the book project. Since its President’s Day and to most that means a slew of President’s Day advertisements. I thought I would capture one of my favorites, share it with you, and talk about advertising today.

I found this in my local newspaper and just had to cut it out and scan it. Now, I know car dealers are some of the worst advertisers on the planet, but this takes the cake. Who in their right mind decided that putting the owners (I assume these are the owners) on Mount Rushmore would make ME want to buy a car.

Come on, do I trust them because they are there? Do I think it’s funny and then I will remember the ad? What was the plan here? The bottom line…there wasn’t a plan. All car dealer ads are the same…get it cheaper here! No one cares. So let’s laugh at this silly ad and talk about fixing it.

Want to know how to do it better? Use the Reality Marketing™ approach. First, people have challenges with purchasing a car. Recognize the challenges. People hate negotiating, they hate thinking they were taken advantage of, they hate the long process and they hate the “typical” car sales person. If you can change any or all of these issues, people will flock to your dealership.

In fact, you wont even need to advertise at all, they will tell everyone they know about your dealership. If you did want to continue to advertise, then highlighting how easy it is, how your prices are the bottom line best prices, how there isn’t any negotiation needed, how you can have them in and out in just 29 minutes, and that everyone at your place is more of an advisor than a car sales person would be great first steps.

So give up on the silly advertising gimmicks and really work on making your business special, it’s going to be a lot more cost effective in the long run. Back to the book tomorrow.

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Our 1st Book Cover Design

The designs for the book cover are starting to come in. Here are two initial ideas.

The first one (green and blue) option is from our book partner Steve. Some of our initial thoughts. We have really become attached to the title Reality Marketing Revolution, so this cover design is missing that and the visual representation of Revolution. Since our approach is very brash and anti establishment, we are looking for a design that matches the tone of the book.

The other design is from one of our internal team members, Katie. She really captured the "in your face" style we use with our our approach to marketing and with our clients. The cover is bold, strong, and grabs your attention. I really like it.

So, more work to be done. Stay tuned. Let us know what you think. Do you like these? Do you have a preference? Do either of these work for you, or do we need to keep working on it? Square 2 Marketing—We Help Entrepreneurs

Who Saw Our Release

This is a great way to show readers the power of public relations. After just one day, we have the following data on the reach of our release. If you actively manage your public relations programs, you can really see the power of this medium.

Below are the links to where our release was posted. You can see that these are some very impressive websites. Investors.com, Yahoo Finance, Philly Inc., PR Inside.com, StreetInsider.com, Digital Producer Magazine, Forbes.com, Daily Herald, Smart Money.

In addition, the way we managed our release we were able to get the additional insight.

• Our release was picked up by 22 major news outlets including those above and MarketWatch, Dallas Morning News, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, WPVI–Channel 6, Ohio Biz, Greater Philadelphia Business, the Greater Richmond Technology Council and more.
  
• 175 media professionals have viewed our press release over the past 24 hours
• As of 2:30PM, the release has been read 504 times
• As of 2:30PM, the headline has received over 39,000 impressions
• 6 people printed it and 6 people downloaded it as a PDF…that’s scary data

The next step is to check to see if hits to the website also increased. We get that report on Friday so stay tuned.

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We Let The World Know

Our press release hit the wire service at 10:30AM today. It’s now 11:30AM and while I didn’t expect to get a flood of interested people, I did want to update the blog so any new visitors get a flavor for our “behind the scenes” project.

I did get a call from a competitor of Business Wire (they are the wire service we use) who wanted us to switch to their service. But if you recall, our goal was really to drive readers to the blog. So let me give you an update on our project.

Book cover design is getting near the end. I will post a few of the most recent cover designs to get direct feedback. We are adding a survey tool to the blog, so all our readers will be able to voice their opinions right here on the blog.

Editing is coming along, the editor is now up to chapter 7 and moving along nicely. Our estimate of publishing the book in late spring is still looking good.

One of the lessons we learned early on from bigger publishers is that how we (Square 2 Marketing) plan to market and promote our own book is just as important as what is in the book. Since we have a little experience with marketing, I will share with you some of our own tactics to sell books after it’s published. That should be a nice juicy blog topic for all our new readers tomorrow.

Square 2 Marketing—We Help Entrepreneurs

Preview our Press Release for Tomorrow

Here is an advanced view of our release. We are putting this out tomorrow morning.

Square 2 Marketing Blog Brings Readers “Behind the Scenes” On Business Book Project -- Firm’s blog provides behind the scenes access to their book development project --

DOYLESTOWN, PA – February 12, 2008 — Square 2 Marketing Inc. announced that its blog, available at www.realitymarketingrevolution.com, will provide a “behind the scenes” look into the development of their new book. Blog readers will hear about the challenges associated with picking titles, designing covers, editing, pricing, book sales and more. The book, under development for over a year, is scheduled to be published in late spring 2008 and will share Square 2 Marketing’s Reality Marketing™ methodology with the world of business owners and entrepreneurs.

Square 2 Marketing started its blog two years ago to focus on providing marketing tips and techniques for business owners. The blog’s author is Mike Lieberman, president of Square 2 Marketing. “Our original intent was to share marketing insights that would help the business owner,” Lieberman remarked. “We always felt that the blog had the potential to bring readers behind the scenes and allow us to give them special access to client work. It wasn’t until we started the book that we realized readers might be interested in the details behind what it takes to get a book, written, edited, marketed, published and sold in stores.”

Steve Eunpu, president of Linx, is helping Square 2 Marketing develop their book and has been a proponent of sharing insights with the world via their blog. He commented, “It’s new and fresh -- it’s the integration of traditional publishing with new media. Their interest in sharing the ups and downs of a book project is remarkable.”

About Square 2 Marketing Square 2 Marketing has helped hundreds of business owners increase sales through a Reality Marketing™ methodology that builds Marketing Machines™ for clients. In addition, the firm provides free marketing coaching, web casts, podcasts and live workshops. The firm delivers metrics-driven marketing programs tailored to the requirements of each distinct client. Current clients include Verilogue, eXude Benefits Group, Artistic Toy Manufacturing, Hilltop Enterprises, Rittenhouse Builders, IIS, The Hub, and Sales Evolution, to name just a few. To learn more about Square 2 Marketing, visit www.square2marketing.com.

Let the Public Relations Begin

It took us a couple of days to work out our public relations strategy. It’s important to point out how important great partners are in helping you attain your goals. We have an excellent public relations partner who works for The Business Wire.

For those that aren’t familiar with this organization, The Business Wire helps companies electronically distribute press worthy information. Our contact, Aaron Nye consulted with us on our book project blog release and provided us with the following suggestions.

I took a look at http://www.square2marketing.com/resources/blog.html. It sounds like your audience is going to be more online and industry publications. Congrats on publishing a book, you've got your first sale here! I love the weekly email.

I'd go with a small geographic circuit like Philadelphia Metro and go with industry distributions like Communications: Blogging, Communications: Publishing, Communications: Public Relations/Investor Relations, Communications: Marketing, Communications: Social Media and Professional Services: Finance which have a lot of Small Business publications.

Also, this is a great type of release for our EON: Enhanced Online News platform. It's a great way to reach the social media via Search Engine Optimization. A 400 word release on this distribution would cost $435.00 and the Enhanced Online News tracking report is really in-depth. Please let me know if you have any questions.

So, with this advice, we are going to put the release on the wire on Tuesday. I will share the press release with all of you, in advance on Monday. Stay tuned.

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Using Public Relations to Promote The Book

The cover designers are moving along. We wanted to work on them a bit more before sharing, but I do expect to have those up here…along with a survey to really get your input…in the next few days.

More important, we are using PR (public relations) to start promoting the blog and in turn the book. So we purchased the www.realitymarketingrevolution.com and we are pointing it to the blog.

Tomorrow, we will be posting a press release announcing our efforts to share our insights and behind the scenes efforts with the world via out blog. We will put the press release on the national wire so that a variety of different media outlets will be aware of our blog project and the book project.

Currently we are hosting between 45 and 50 readers to the blog on a daily basis, so if we stick to measurable marketing programs, just like Reality Marketing supports, let’s see if we can improve that to over 100 regular readers of the blog. It’s a stretch goal, but I think it’s attainable.

If you look at our effort, you can see how to integrate electronic media, like a blog or website, with public relations, and a broader offering, like a book. A big part of Reality Marketing is the orchestrated integration of a variety of different marketing techniques.

While that sounds kind of fancy…its kind of like one plus one is more than two…its actually three in situations like this. Thanks for reading and hold on for what’s going to be a great ride.

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