Episode 183
Do you want to move away from depending on ads and social media for books sales? Marketing, business, and visibility strategist Kerrie Fitzgerald joins us to share six ways to grow your author business organically.
💜 🎙 Become a supporter of the podcast! We can’t wait to give you a shoutout in a future episode. WishIdKnownForWriters.com/Support
Intro Links:
❤️ Jami speaking September 9th at League of Romance Writers in Houston: https://www.leagueromwriters.com/monthly-speaker/
Interview Links:
👉 Kerrie’s website: www.kerriefitzgerald.com
📌 The 6 Figure Product Business Podcast: https://pod.link/1539990265
📚 Kerrie’s book: Customer Obsession https://books2read.com/u/brBwWe
🎧 Kerrie’s podcast episode: 8 Ways to expand your product brand to next level beyond social media that inspired our episode: https://pod.link/1539990265/episode/a0f3bea3586d2a340014f9190e7c640a
💜 🎙 Become a supporter of the podcast! We can’t wait to give you a shoutout in a future episode. https://wishidknownforwriters.com/support
Chapter Markers:
00:40 Introduction & Updates
6:39 Interview Begins
10:36 Kerrie’s Books
14:49 Common Entrepreneur Mistakes
20:33 Podcast Appearances
28:07 YouTube & Google Searches
34:47 Pinterest
39:06 Gift Guides
47:44 Influencers
52:39 Customer Created Content
Transcript:
Sara Rosett [00:00:25]:
Welcome to the Wish I’d Known Then podcast. I’m Sara Rosett.
Jami Albright [00:00:28]:
And I’m Jami Albright. And this week on the show we have Kerrie Fitzgerald. Y’all, it’s really good and it’s kind of different than we’ve done before and yeah, it’s a good show.
Sara Rosett [00:00:40]:
I heard a podcast with her and I put the link in the show notes. She talked about how not she is an author but she got her start in subscription boxes and she talked about how she used pretty much everything else except ads and social media. Well like she doesn’t depend on social media to do a lot of her stuff. So I was like I think we should ask her on the podcast she came on and kind of talked through, I can’t remember like five or six options. It’s been a couple of days since we recorded.
Jami Albright [00:01:12]:
They were so interesting.
Sara Rosett [00:01:14]:
Yeah. There were things that in the author community we know about but we don’t think of. It’s not like top of mind. And the way she prioritizes things is she focuses on things that will last that have search engine, I don’t know what you call it, like juice that will last. Anyway, it was really interesting and I really glad she came on and she does have a book coming out soon too and we talked about that. Very good.
Jami Albright [00:01:39]:
It was great. So anything going on with you? Anything interesting?
Sara Rosett [00:01:45]:
Yeah, the Kickstarter finished and my stretch goal for the last one was twenty k and we reached it. So that was just amazing.
Jami Albright [00:01:57]:
Awesome.
Sara Rosett [00:01:57]:
Way more than I hoped or expected. I mean you just hope it’ll go well. And it did and so I’m really happy and right now I’m scrambling to do all the things that you do afterwards because of course I’m very linearly focused and I have to focus on the Kickstarter and then now that it’s done I can focus on the delivering. So that is what I’ve been doing and it went really well and I’m really happy and I’m just so happy for anybody who came along and joined me and for the people who supported and shared. I really appreciate it.
Jami Albright [00:02:32]:
I love that. I’m just so thrilled for you. It makes me very happy.
Sara Rosett [00:02:40]:
I Think you’re thinking about doing one, right?
Jami Albright [00:02:42]:
I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about doing a lot of stuff I haven’t I done. story of my life. I’m not really doing whole lot. I’m still working on my story. I’m trying not to about my story because I don’t really know how to write this story. It’s different than a lot of the stuff I’ve written before. I mean, it’s different, but it’s the same, you know what I mean?
Sara Rosett [00:03:12]:
But it’ll still be a Jami Albright story.
Jami Albright [00:03:16]:
It’s just different. If I let myself, I freak out and then I have to go, no, just write it and you’ll figure it out. So that’s what I’m doing. And then next Saturday on the 9th, I’m speaking at the Romance Writers, the League of Romance Writers here in Houston on newsletter building. And it’s not a huge group, but if any of our listeners are actually going to I think the meeting will be kind of northwest Houston. Then if you want to come DM me and I’ll give you the info and the time and the place, because I’d love to see some people there. They have their own people, but you can attend two of their meetings for free before you have to join, so you’d be welcomed. We’re going to talk about newsletters and building newsletters, revitalizing newsletters, all that stuff.
Sara Rosett [00:04:24]:
All good stuff. Yeah.
Jami Albright [00:04:28]:
Got going on. I’ve had a little bit of some health issues, and I’m just kind of chronic that I’m kind of dealing with. Nothing major, but I was at the doctor twice, all that yucky stuff. So this week’s been a little bit crazy or last week, but, yeah, all is well here in my world.
Sara Rosett [00:04:52]:
All right, well, if you have a link for the event, send it to me.
Jami Albright [00:04:57]:
I’ll send it to you to put It in the show notes.
Sara Rosett [00:04:58]:
We’ll put it in. Okay. And that’ll be in there. And yeah, I haven’t done anything else except finished the Kickstarter. And then we took a couple of days. It’s Labor Day weekend in the US. And so we went to the mountains, and it was beautiful. It’s actually warm here. Everyone’s like, It’s so hot here. And we just laugh. We go so funny. It’s warm for them, but it’s beautiful.
Jami Albright [00:05:23]:
And we went to the beach here in Galveston, and my son and some of his friends were my son and his fiance, and their friends were here, and so we just came down with my mom and dad, and it’s just been really fun. But I’m kind of sund out. We’re going to go to the pool this afternoon, and then I’m done with a while. Yeah, so it’s been good. And then also, just let me mention my consulting with September. I had quite a few appointments in August, and then September, I have a few open spots if anybody’s interested. It’s been really great, and I can really help. I really can. So let me just message me, and we will set something up.
Sara Rosett [00:06:17]:
Yeah. And we also should say we have a couple of new supporters, but since we’re both traveling and a little disoriented right now, we don’t have the list right now. So we will mention new supporters next time. And thanks to everybody who supported the podcast. We appreciate it so much. Yeah. So I think we should probably get on with the interview.
Jami Albright [00:06:38]:
Let’s do it.
Sara Rosett [00:06:39]:
All right, so here’s Kerrie. Well, today we are really excited to talk to Kerrie Fitzgerald. Hi, Kerrie. How are you?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:06:46]:
Good, how are you? So happy to be here.
Jami Albright [00:06:48]:
Well, we’re excited you’re here. I think this is going to be a great show.
Sara Rosett [00:06:51]:
Yeah. We’re going to have a good time and hopefully learn a whole lot about a subject that everyone is interested in. But let me read your bio first. Kerrie Fitzgerald is the founder of Kerrie Fitzgerald, LLC, an ecommerce and product business consulting and educational agency, and a host of the top 100 marketing podcast, the six figure product business podcast.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:07:14]:
Yes.
Jami Albright [00:07:15]:
And we have you on because you’re going to talk to us about selling your product without using social media or relying on social media so much, which has become a bit of a nightmare for a lot of people because social media is so fickled and it changes so much. But you’ve also done subscription boxes, so tell us about your background with subscription boxes.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:07:43]:
Yeah, so I started my first business. It’ll be seven plus years now. It was called the Dapper Box. And I had basically just left a background in marketing and sales and international education. I had just had a baby and I thought, okay, totally makes sense to start an ecommerce store when I know nothing about it. But I did it. I launched that in 2016 and just learned a lot. Learned again, I had never done ecommerce before, and it’s a different ballgame. Even if you’re great at marketing and sales, selling a physical product, having an online store, it’s a different thing. So it was an amazing learning experience, and I made a lot of mistakes, but I did a lot of things right. And one of the things that I really did right was really understanding how to leverage my customers to become brand ambassadors or advocates for me and really getting my customers to feel connected to the brand so they would go out and promote me on social media, promote the brand to their friends, followers, that kind of thing. And then also just leveraging organic traffic and marketing. So in my three years I had the business, I didn’t do ads. I definitely dabbled. I think I spent maybe $100 on Google Ads one time, but for the most part, didn’t do ads. And so many businesses nowadays, they rely on advertising 100% to get sales. They don’t really know how to get sales otherwise. And so I really leverage all the organic ways to get traffic and get sales and that kind of thing. So those are a couple of things that I did really well with that business. I grew it. I grew it to multi six figures of revenue per year. And then in 2019, I sold the business, which is still definitely my proudest, I would say achievement in the business space or whatever. I don’t know. Everyone has different things that they’re proud of, but sure, it’s definitely one of mine. And then I started my current company about a year later after just doing freelance work and just trying to figure out what my next step was after selling my business. And that’s kind of what I’m doing today.
Sara Rosett [00:10:04]:
Yeah, well, that is terrific. And I think it’s very interesting because we were talking a little bit before we got on the podcast and there are a lot of authors doing subscription boxes, so I think people will be interested because of that. And then also just the everyone wants to know how to sell products without using only social media. It’s been being so dependent on that. So we’re going to get into all that. But whenever we have somebody on that’s, like an industry expert type person, we always ask, do you have any aspirations to write?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:10:36]:
I do.
Jami Albright [00:10:40]:
Just a big fat softball to whack out of the park Kerrie.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:10:46]:
So I’m definitely very multi passionate. So even though I now help people either start or grow ecommerce businesses, online stores, physical products, that kind of thing, I definitely love doing other things. So two years ago I wrote a children’s picture book.
Jami Albright [00:11:03]:
Oh, cool.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:11:04]:
Yeah. The boy who chose adventure. It’s very cute and it’s basically about my son and my golden doodle exploring different parts of Pacific Northwest. So that was like my first I call it like a project. I don’t know, it was one of those things where I wanted to do it. I came up with the idea, I was like, it would be really fun to do this with my son. And we self published on Amazon and it’s on Ingram Spark as well. But that was really fun project. It’s a beautiful book. I hired this incredible designer to do the illustration, so it came out pretty phenomenal. Definitely expensive. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the return on investment for that book, but it’s okay. It was a really fun learning experience. And then I’m actually coming out with my first business book sometime, I’ll just say sometime in 2023 because I don’t have the exact launch date, but it’s called Customer Obsession and it’s basically a book that talks about how to create loyalty with your customers, so you get your customers to buy more from you again and again. So those are, I would say, my writing aspirations for now. But the business book has been a process. It has been a process. Just one of those things where I started it a year and a half ago. And I’m happy that the book is done. There’s no more edits, it’s done. But I look back at when I was first starting and I really wish I had taken the advice I give everyone else. When you want to do something and you don’t know how to do it, find someone who has already done the things that you want and figure out how to work with them or learn from them. And I really wish I had gotten a coach or a mentor or something for this book because I made so many mistakes, especially in the beginning, and it just wasted so much of my time. And even with the self publishing process and adding the book on this place and the COVER won’t upload and so many things, it’s so frustrating. And this book has given me a head of gray hair. I will say it’s definitely the hardest thing that I’ve done, I would say in my business, but super proud. And I’m excited for it.
Jami Albright [00:13:37]:
Yeah, I mean, that’s so great for self published authors, independent authors, all authors, but because we do everything, I think that customer loyalty, the brand obsession, because in so many ways, we are the brand. I mean, it’s not just our books. Our products are not just the brand, it’s authors that are the brand. And so I think that that book is going to be like, as soon as it comes out, I’m getting it. And I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how to get those evangelical readers, the readers that will be our evangelists, that will tell everybody about our stuff, and then it will come back again and again and again and bring their friends. Yeah, that sounds great. I can’t wait to read that. Tell me, this is a big loaded question, I’m sure, but what are the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs making. In Your work that you do with them?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:14:49]:
Yeah, let’s see. I think one is because I think a lot of product based businesses are afraid to show their face. They’re afraid to weave in their story, their personality. So I think one big mistake I see is not putting a human behind the brand. So you sell I’m just going to say you sell water bottles. So you have this online store. There’s no person on the website, there’s no story, there’s no founder story. And it’s sort of like this whole concept of the faceless brand that I really teach people to not do, because that’s what Amazon’s for. Amazon. You go to Amazon, you search for a product that you’re looking for and you don’t care know anything. You’re just trying to get whatever’s going to show up at your door in two days for the best price. And you’ve probably read the reviews. But when it comes to an online store, and because we want people to be able to buy stuff and not buy from Amazon necessarily, there has to be a human behind it. And I think once there’s a human attached to a brand, people are more likely to, one, there’s just a connection and trust. But two, when you know that you’re buying from this mom in Texas who is handmaking these Christmas stockings for you, you’re less likely to leave a bad review. You’re less likely to send a rude customer service email, and you’re more likely to share that with friends and family. So I think that’s a huge mistake that I see. I think the second mistake is and this probably goes to exactly what you want to talk about is relying exclusively on social media to get customers. So that is a huge and dangerous mistake for an e commerce business, because with social, like one, you don’t own it. You don’t own Instagram, you don’t own TikTok, and they can shut your account off for any good reason. It’s happened to many of my clients. It’s happened to a ton of people that I know. And if you don’t have a way to get customers if your Instagram account gets turned off, what business do you have?
Jami Albright [00:17:01]:
Correct.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:17:02]:
So I think that’s a huge mistake, and I think the third mistake is not being consistent. So you try something for a month, and you’re like, oh, I did Pinterest for a month, and it’s not working. I quit. Or you write one blog post, and you’re like, I’m not ranking for this keyword. I give up. Maybe quitting too fast is maybe actually what I meant instead of being consistent. But yeah, quitting too fast. So whether it’s social media posting or really anything, like, you launch a brand and you give it three months and you’re not making enough sales, and you’re like, oh, I’m quitting the business. Where in fact, you could have just looked at what you were doing and just think, okay, how am I getting customers? Maybe I should reach out to the customers who’ve bought for me and just ask, how did you hear about me? Why did you buy? And then, just being strategic, if you know one strategy is working, you double down on it. I think those are three mistakes.
Jami Albright [00:18:10]:
I do other consulting, and one of the ways I kind of determine who I’ll work with is or if I get an email that says, okay, I’ve done this, this, and this, it doesn’t work. I want you to tell, well, how long did you do those things? Did you do them this year or five years ago? It’s that kind of mentality of, well, it doesn’t work for me. It works for everybody else, but it doesn’t work for me. So I can really appreciate that. You just have to hone in. I love the idea of pulling your current customers, in our case, readers. And how did you find out about us? Where was that place? Was it somebody that told you, or was it on Amazon? Or was it through an ad youknow? So I think that’s a great idea.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:19:04]:
Yeah, especially if you’re not getting traction with your business. I think we forget to just go back to the basics. And if we’ve gotten five customers, that’s okay. Reach out to know, why did you choose my book versus all the other ones? Was it the cover Was it like the keyword? And then just asking, how did you find me? Was it from this channel or this channel? And then when you know those things, you can do more of that. So do more of what’s working.
Sara Rosett [00:19:32]:
Yeah, that’s really smart. And sort of like even if you only have a few, you can almost do like a little focus group and figure out, this is how I can get started. So I think that’s a really good tip. So I actually heard your podcast, your six figure product business podcast in I think it was December 2022, and you talked about ways to grow your brand without using social media. And so I was like, we got to get her on the podcast because this is some really good information. So we kind of wanted to just talk through your ideas and give people tips on ways they because I think most people, one of their first thoughts is either I’m going to pay for ads or I’m going to get on TikTok or get on Instagram. And so these are things you can do besides that. So I made a list. Can we just talk through them? Sort of. The first one you mentioned was podcast appearances. Absolutely. Talk about that.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:20:33]:
Yeah. I think this has become such a no brainer for me because now I have a podcast and I can at least for my business, that is where I would say 90% of anyone who signs up for anything, I have it’s because they found my podcast and they listened to a few episodes, they connected with me. Or they’re like, oh, whatever, she’s weird and she’s authentic and she knows what she’s talking about kind of thing. And then they sign up for something. So I really have firsthand seen the power and benefit of podcasting. But for people that sell books or other physical products, getting on other people’s podcasts, like figuring out what niche your thing is, finding podcasts that offer that and then get on there and talk about it. It could be you sharing your story, it could be you sharing it doesn’t matter the specifics here. But getting on people’s podcast gets you such good visibility for multiple reasons. But one, you’re getting in front of that podcasting audience. So their listeners, most podcasts, whether they’re small or big, they have a built in audience. So when you have a new episode, they’re probably going to listen to know. But two, most podcasts are then taken and put on either a blog, sometimes a blog, or YouTube video. And then those are things that feed into a search engine, aka Google. And those are really great, because then when people are searching for things on Google, that YouTube video or that blog post will pop up and then people will discover you over time versus something on Instagram which dies after a day. Or I really, really always yell at people, focus on things that help you show up on the search engine, because that grows over time. That blog post that you post today, next year, in the year after that will keep getting pushed out to Google, right? Yeah.
Sara Rosett [00:22:40]:
I think the other thing about podcast is it seems like it’s a slow burn kind of thing. It may take a while if you do a whole bunch to get the word out, but people listen to podcasts and they’re very attached to host and there’s a loyalty there and a trust that if somebody has you on, then it’s like you’re saying, hey, check this out. I think we forget to take that into account. But I did want to ask too, if someone is writing fiction, I write historical fiction, historical mysteries. So there may be some mystery podcast, but I could also look for history podcasts, right? Is that what you’d recommend? As long as it’s somehow related, right?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:23:27]:
Yeah, it just has to be related to the niche in some sense. So if you’re writing about historical you said historical mysteries.
Sara Rosett [00:23:35]:
Yeah. Set in the 1920s. Yeah.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:23:37]:
Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, I think you could do history podcasts. You could also do book podcasts. I’m trying to think of I feel like the mom angle can kind of be fit in in a lot of things. Like mompreneurs, I don’t know if you but I’m just saying I think the mompreneur ones could be a good fit and then entrepreneur podcasts product podcasts.
Sara Rosett [00:24:07]:
Right.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:24:10]:
You got to think outside the box. You can’t just think, well, I write 1920s historical mysteries and there’s no 1920s podcasts out there, so I won’t be a good fit for anyone. You have to really get creative. But as we talked about earlier, before we started recording, not reaching out to podcast hosts and saying, oh, I’d like to be in your podcast, and it has nothing to do with your podcast. I use the example of real estate because someone actually emailed me and they said, oh, we have the perfect host for the perfect guest for your podcast. She’s a real estate mogul. And I love the episode where you talked about real estate and I wrote back to her and sometimes I can be a little sassy because I get annoyed. And I wrote, oh, I’d love to know what episode that you’re referring to where I talked about real estate and then they never responded. Yeah.
Sara Rosett [00:25:03]:
Well, too much attention, probably. There too much attention to detail there.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:25:06]:
Yeah. So obviously it has to be somewhat related, but you can really get creative when you’re reaching out to podcasts to be a guest because people are looking for guests to be on podcasts all the time. And just like you said, I love that you said the listeners trust the hosts so by being on a podcast it’s like they are vetting you and saying, oh, this person’s great kind of thing. So yeah, I cannot say enough things about podcast appearances. They’re absolutely incredible. I think that’s something that people don’t consider, like they don’t think
Sara Rosett [00:25:49]:
people used. To do blog tours all the time and a few people have done podcast tours like when a book launches. And I’ve heard of a couple of people using podcasts to support like a Kickstarter, but it’s not like top of mind. So it is a good thing to look into.
Jami Albright [00:26:06]:
Well, and for me, I’m thinking outside the box. I didn’t start writing until I was 50, so there may be this whole genre of podcasts that I need to go investigate about women that sort of have second careers or after you’ve raised your kids, you now have this career and not just started writing at 50, I had success after 50. And so stuff like that would maybe be something that would be a podcast sort of subject that somebody might be interested in. I’m going to write that now.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:26:44]:
That’s a really good idea. I love it. Yeah, I think you’ve got to get creative a little bit. And going through podcasts and pitching myself is not my favorite thing to do. And in fact, I’m actually in the process of training my virtual assistant to start helping me out with that because I don’t like doing that. But it’s important. And I think the first objection because I have a coaching program and one of the pieces of the coaching program is pitching yourself to be in podcasts. And I get a lot of objections from people in that program always. And they’re always like, I don’t know what to say. No one would care about me. What do I talk about? I don’t want to share my story. And I think you have to remind yourself that if you sell a physical product again, whether it’s a book or it’s a water bottle or, I don’t know, it’s like art prints. Your story is what will connect people. That’s the sort of bit that people will remember. They might not remember your actual product, but they’ll remember you. And they’re like, oh yeah, that girl who wrote that book, I’m going to go check it out because you have a cool story, so don’t be afraid to share your story. Everyone’s story is unique and interesting and no one has your exact.
Jami Albright [00:28:07]:
Yeah, and then YouTube, you have a YouTube channel, correct?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:28:14]:
I do, yeah. I definitely have a lot of things. And YouTube, I’m finally committing to doubling down on my YouTube work. I just got monetized recently.
Jami Albright [00:28:26]:
That’s great.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:28:27]:
Yeah. Or I reached monetization status. I haven’t actually made anything yet, but it’s coming. I worked hard to get those 4000 watch hours from one year. Yeah, YouTube. And YouTube is definitely not for everyone, but for my business because I do a lot of educational stuff. It’s easy for me to do YouTube videos. I think YouTube is awesome because, again, it’s the second biggest search engine. When you put stuff on YouTube, it continues to circulate. So again, unlike Instagram or any of that, people aren’t going to discover you over time. But YouTube, you make one. Like, I have one video and I forget the exact title, but it’s like, start a subscription box in 15 steps. And I made that video two years.
Jami Albright [00:29:18]:
Great title.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:29:19]:
Yeah, two years ago. And that video is my YouTube is not great. Okay, I’m going to just say it my YouTube. I’m working on it. But that one video, I don’t know if I have 38,000 views or 28,000. I don’t know, something like that. When I check my analytics every month, that video is still the one that just keeps getting pushed out and pushed out and pushed out. And I made it two years ago. So I made one video two years ago and it continues to get views and it continues to sell. I have a course Subscription Box Launch Academy, and I don’t talk about subscription boxes anywhere. I usually use the word ecommerce because I focus more on helping people sell. Like a one time thing, like using water bottles, because I literally have my water bottle on my desk.
Jami Albright [00:30:14]:
As do I. Yeah, me too.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:30:17]:
But the subscription box stuff, like, I don’t talk about it. I don’t have content about subscription boxes do I don’t talk about it at all. But YouTube sees that people are liking that video, watching that video, searching for subscription box stuff on YouTube, and so they keep pushing that video out to people. And that’s kind of the power of YouTube, is like when you have stuff that continues to get pushed out to people, which doesn’t happen unless it’s on a search engine. So blogging will go to Google, YouTube will also go to like, not everyone is going to start a YouTube channel. But depending on what you’re selling, what your niche is, I would really think hard on could I have a YouTube channel, how could I make it work to grow my brand? And it’s kind of incredible what it can do.
Sara Rosett [00:31:13]:
Yeah. And it’s something that as authors, we don’t think of that first or even at the top of our possibilities. But I do know some authors who are using YouTube to share know, it’s like they have people that will listen because they’re a YouTube first person. Some people are podcasts. And so that’s something that I’ve thought about that that might be a good way to kind of share things about my books, is through something like that. It’s very interesting and it’s not something that a lot of authors are doing. And like you’re saying, with the search engine component, that’s huge. And that’s something that we don’t really think about a lot. And that gives you longevity, right, with your content.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:32:07]:
I was going to say recently because I’m trying to figure out my launch for my book. There’s so many options that you can do. Do you do preorder? Do you do this? And it just becomes really confusing. So I was searching on I didn’t even go to YouTube first, I just went to Google and I searched I forget what I searched for and I found a YouTube video of some girl and then I watched her video. I’m like, okay, cool, like she has good stuff. And then I searched for a different question on Google and then the same girl popped up again and I was like, okay, so I’ve watched that video and then I scroll down to the bottom and I saw that she offered strategy sessions and I had literally that day I posted on my Instagram. Does anyone know of anyone who can help me with a business book launch? I have questions. I wasn’t trying to get free advice. I was like, I want to book a session with someone, I need to talk to someone who knows. And then I found that girl’s stuff the same day. So I was like, okay, I feel like the universe is telling me to sign up with her.
Jami Albright [00:33:08]:
Yes.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:33:09]:
So I signed up for her strategy session and all because I Googled something and I found her and then I found her again. And she does more YouTube like education. So five ways you can launch your book or two ways that you can do this. So it’s very educational focus, but I believe she writes current books as well. So that could also be kind of something for your audience if they haven’t considered going down the education right. Content creation angle or like coaching angle. And that’s where YouTube is a total no brainer. If I could start do, YouTube would be number one. Okay, YouTube number one equal to a podcast. But really focusing mean my podcast is like my favorite thing ever. But you can’t beat the YouTube algorithm. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s YouTube likes your video and they see that it’s working. They just. push it out to everyone.
Jami Albright [00:34:16]:
Crazy. Well, I was just what I was going to say earlier is that we need to go back and look at our keywords and everything on our YouTube videos just to make sure that we have things that would be searchable because I don’t know that we paid that much attention to it.
Sara Rosett [00:34:37]:
We’re definitely podcast first.
Jami Albright [00:34:39]:
Yeah, we’re podcast first so that we’ll.
Sara Rosett [00:34:42]:
Have to make a note to check that.
Jami Albright [00:34:43]:
Yeah, or get somebody else to. Yeah.
Sara Rosett [00:34:47]:
So another thing you talked about was Pinterest. So that’s something that it is a search engine, right? Pinterest is more similar to a search engine, right?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:35:00]:
Yeah.
Sara Rosett [00:35:01]:
So what would you recommend for authors for that?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:35:03]:
It’s like more like a search engine. Less like social because people think Pinterest is social media and it is funneled in the social media category, but it’s really not social media. Like, followers do not matter on Pinterest. People always say, oh, how do we get more followers on Pinterest? And I’m always like, Why do you care? You don’t talk to people on Pinterest. There’s no conversations, there’s no comments. I mean, there is technically, but none of that is relevant.
Sara Rosett [00:35:34]:
That’s not driving it though, right?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:35:36]:
No, not at all. So Pinterest is all about discoverability. So people go to Pinterest, they search for something, they’re not scrolling. They’re going to look for a specific thing. So they might be looking for like a lot of people use Pinterest for home decor or decorations or recipes and things like that, but it can really be used for anything. And again, when you post something on Pinterest, it also shows up on Google. If you search for how to start a subscription box business, if you actually search for that, you’ll actually probably find a bunch of my pins on there that I created like three years ago that literally still live on in Pinterest land. It’s crazy. But yeah. So the point of Pinterest is that it’s a cold audience, it’s cold traffic. So if you create a Pin, it should then lead someone to like a blog post or YouTube video or a podcast episode where they can then learn more about what it is you’re talking, you know, Pinterest, you’re not going to get sales on day one. It’s something that it helps people discover you, but then you lead them to a different place, your blog, your website, your podcast, even like a proper social media channel, like an Instagram or something, where then they can see more of what you offer, see more of what you’re selling and that kind of thing. But Pinterest is also pretty amazing. I don’t focus too much on it right now for my own business. Unfortunately, I had to pick and choose a couple of things and not just do everything. But when I first started my current business, because I was starting from scratch, I actually really heavily dialed into Pinterest. Like I said, everything was subscription box business things. And people still find those today. I literally created them three years ago. People still find them. They still drive tons of traffic to my website and I created them three years ago. So, again, when we’re thinking of things for our business, whether you sell a book or anything else, you want to think, how can I drive traffic to my online store or my website or my book page? It’s driving traffic while I’m sleeping, basically. And you want to be putting those things into place that build that traction and longevity. So what you do today will be working for you years down the line. And that’s what Pinterest will do. Even if you just do a little bit of Pinterest stuff, it really works. But you have to understand that it’s a cold audience. You just create a pin with your book on it. You’re not going to expect everyone to be buying it. You have to create something else and then push them to your website and then they can learn about your book or whatever else. Right?
Sara Rosett [00:38:37]:
Yeah. It would be smarter to do something like maybe like a roundup, like, here’s five books. If you like Downton Abbey, you’ll like these five mysteries. And I could see people clicking on that because they’d be, I know, I know what Downton Abbey is. And it would pull in the right people for. So like, you’ve got to kind of have something that if they don’t know you, that they’d be willing to click on it. Right?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:39:03]:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Jami Albright [00:39:06]:
Well, so driving traffic to your online store or someplace else, there are a lot of authors right now trying to sell direct or selling direct from their websites, their own books. And so you talk about gift guides too. So tell us how you use gift guides or how you would suggest people use gift guides. And then maybe we can brainstorm just a tiny bit about books, using your books in a gift guide kind of thing.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:39:39]:
Yeah, absolutely. So especially for Q4 of the year, that’s the holiday season. So this is the one time of year people are literally searching for things to buy. Like they are actively searching for products that they can buy for friends, family, their kids, themselves, whatever. So getting on gift guides is really a great opportunity because a lot of people will go, they’ll be searching for things like gift ideas for five year old child or gift ideas for mother in law. And then they’re going to go to Google and search for stuff. And then gift guides will 100% filtrate in and they’ll go and search for that because in the end, you want it to be easy to buy stuff for people. You want to make it easy for yourself. So getting on gift guides is just a really awesome way to get your product in front of a lot of audiences. And again, depending on the gift guide, depending on the blog and all that, that again, still lives on the search engine. So next year, sometimes what they’ll do is they’ll update the titles. So they’ll say, the best gift guide for your author friend in 2022, next year, they’ll actually just update it the links. So it’ll say 2023. Yeah, I’ve done that too. So, yeah, it’s just an easy way to get in front of audiences. That’s kind of what it is. And then gift guides are things that people will share, like forward to friends, and it’s just a way to get in front of a lot of people.
Jami Albright [00:41:22]:
Yeah, okay. So we could even get together with I write small town romantic comedies. So if I got together with a couple of other small town romantic comedy authors, we could make a gift guide with some of our books and drive traffic to each of our websites or something. Would that work?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:41:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. And it can be under any niche as well. If you think your audience is moms or you think your audience are whoever, like a specific type of person, like the health fanatic or whatever, if that’s for them.
Jami Albright [00:42:10]:
Yeah.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:42:11]:
And another cool thing that you can do, and this kind of relates to affiliate marketing, which is one of my favorite things, is you can create your own gift guides. Kind of like what you just said. I’ve done that for my business. I actually wrote a gift guide two years ago on my client’s blog. It’s a pet blog, but I wrote a gift guide on the five best children’s books. Something like the best children’s books with dogs or for the dog lover or something like that. And I put my book in there. It’s the first book. So we can definitely yeah, I love that. We can definitely plug ourselves. But yeah, you could put it on the ten products for women over 50 or the best ten gifts for the small time mom or whoever. It can really be anything. If you just start looking up gift guides, you will see the randomness they drill down the Ten Best Gifts for the Pacific Northwester.
Sara Rosett [00:43:21]:
I was going to say, are there specific? What would be your recommendation? We could do our own, we could create our own. But if we wanted to suggest we be included in a gift guide, how would you go about that?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:43:36]:
So there’s kind of a couple of ways. I’ll give you the easiest way. First, so there’s a website called Helpareporter.com. H-A-R-O is the acronym. Helpareporter.com. And you can sign up for that. It’s free. And it’s basically a website that connects journalists and writers or bloggers to sources essentially cool. Someone will write from Entrepreneur.com, for example. I’m just thinking example, we’re looking to feature ten pet businesses to be featured in our roundup of the Ten Best Pet Companies in 2023 or something. And then you kind of pitch yourself. You’d write a little email and you would just say, I found this pitch, this is why we should be included, blah, blah. So that’s how my business got a ton of PR and features, is from Haro. So a lot of people might be like, oh, it’s kind of annoying, but I’ve had amazing luck with it and I’ve had really great features, everything from gift guides to being in really cool articles to being on not me, but my product was on TV publication. Just really cool opportunities. So a lot of people right now are looking for products for gift guides. So right now, I don’t know when this episode will air, but I would say really up until December. Pitch yourself for gift guides.
Jami Albright [00:45:12]:
All right.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:45:13]:
Every opportunity is a way to get in front of a new audience and to drive traffic. And it doesn’t take any effort on your part. You might have to send a sample of your product, but most of the time, these people, they don’t want samples, they just want a link. So you can do that. And I was going to talk about something else and I forgot. Never mind. Yeah. So that’s the easiest way to get into gift guides. The second way is not so easy, but it’s not hard. It just is like, cumbersome is basically like looking at what industry you’re in and then go to Google. You can use search engine SEO tools, but I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole because it’s your deep rabit hole. Your listeners will fall asleep. I love SEO, but people find it really boring. So you can go to Google and just search gift guides. Plug in your book niche. So romantic comedy or historical mysteries or just like gift guide book mystery books or something like that, make it a little bit less niche and then look at what’s already out there. And then there’s really you can do is you could one reach out to that person and say, I noticed you had this gift guide to think it’s awesome. I also have a really awesome book, and I would love to be added to this list.
Jami Albright [00:46:39]:
Oh, cool.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:46:40]:
What do you think? And you can be a bit more aggressive if you have an affiliate program, which is one of my faves. Having an affiliate program will make it so people will be happy to add you to gift guides and things, because then if their reader buys the book, they get a commission. So having an affiliate program will always help you get into more of these gift guides and features and things like that. So I just want to throw that out there. But you can always reach out and say, hey, I saw this gift guide, or I saw this roundup of books. We have a great book. What do we need to do to be included? That’s kind of the second way to do it.
Sara Rosett [00:47:24]:
I think those are great ideas, and you have to do some work to find out where you should send your stuff. But then they’re doing all the hard work, the heavy lifting of writing the article and posting it. So it sounds great. I’m definitely on my list to do.
Jami Albright [00:47:42]:
Mine, too. I just wrote it.
Sara Rosett [00:47:44]:
So you also mentioned influencers. So what would be your recommendations for maybe trying to find influencers and just maybe a tip or two about how to work with them?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:47:56]:
Yeah, influencers are it feels tricky now. I think the influencer I almost want to use, I think everyone thinks they’re an influencer now, and they’re like, if you want me to promote your book, it’s going to be $700 for 22,000 for one instagram reel. I’m kind of poking fun a little bit, but yeah, I think with influencers, with the book space, I think just trying to think, who are my people? Who has an honest even I find the smaller audiences work better for influencers. I have sent product to people with millions of followers and gotten zero sales, yet small audiences of like 1000, 2000 and gotten tons of sales. So I always tell people with influencers, find people who don’t promote every product every single day. Because I think when people do that, it gets very diluted and then they lose trust with their own audience. But you’re just wanting to find people who can for the book. People talk about your book, promote your book in a way that is authentic and all that. But I feel like I’m rambling about the influencer thing.
Sara Rosett [00:49:29]:
Well, it seems like that was kind of a bigger trend maybe a year or two ago, and now it’s kind of fading out a little bit. I mean, I know people still use them.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:49:37]:
Yeah, I think I just see so much BS with influencers. And I’m trying not to say too much negative stuff. I just see so much BS. And I’ve worked with influence before. I’ve never paid anyone from my old business. I didn’t pay anyone. But I would always get people reaching out to me, being like, I love your product so much. We would love to work with you. We would love to collab with you. We’d love to be an ambassador. And instead of just saying, oh, yes, we’ll send you a product and we’ll pay you, or whatever, we just had these brand ambassador contests where we would choose people for a different season sorry, a specific season. And then they would promote the product. They would talk about the brand, they would post about us in exchange for free products. So that worked really well for my business. But none of the traditional influencer things, it never really worked for me. I don’t know. And I was always kind of against I don’t have anything against influencers, and I think you should be compensated for your just I don’t know. For whatever reason, I just didn’t want to pay people. That sounds bad. I don’t know. And now people will come to me and they’re like, oh, my gosh, Kerrie. This person reached out to me, and she said she wants to promote my product for me, and she has 20,000 followers, but she’s wanting to charge me $2,000 for an Instagram post. And I’ll go and look at their account, and I’m like, oh, hell no. You can just tell she has 20,000 followers. But if you actually look at the posts, there’s no comments. There is no engagement, like, talking product every single day. I think that’s why now I have this negative connotation with influencers, is because you see those people and then this poor business, she was almost ready to pay this person. She’s like, I’m not even making $2,000 a month. And I’m going to pay this random person. So I think if you’re going to work with influences, you just have to be cautious and understand within your space. Who are the people that can influence? It doesn’t have to be someone on social media. It could be a like to be honest with you, I think it’s a better idea to find someone on YouTube, send them your book, have them do a debriefing of your book, and that’s an influencer. And you might pay them a little bit of money, or maybe not. But someone on YouTube that can talk about your book, can show the book. And like, this is what I read. I think that is a really good opportunity for an author to work with an influencer. Is a YouTuber, like a YouTuber unboxing or a YouTube book review or something?
Sara Rosett [00:52:39]:
Yeah, I think that’s smart. And you basically just have to do your research, right? You’ve just got to find out if it’s someone who is influential with the people you want to reach. Let’s change the focus a little bit and talk about customer created content because I think that’s something that we all have like an influencer might be a little bit harder to find and reach, but we all have readers and you’ve done some really interesting things to get people talking about your products. So what would be some of your tips in that area?
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:53:17]:
Yeah, and I love this topic. So I always say UGC or user generated content or customer created content really important no matter what product you sell. But if you sell a physical product, you always want to be encouraging people to take a photo of you reading the book or take a screenshot of you with the book and your favorite reading spot and share on your favorite social. So this would definitely be a social media focused thing, but you want to be asking like you have to ask your people. You can’t just assume they’re going to do it, but if you ask them and that could be something that you could add in your book at the end. I know with my business book there’s definitely a million references to go and share with a friend or join our go grab this bonus. If you sign up for the bonus here, blah blah blah, you get extra course materials or something. But I think with any author you definitely always want to be asking people to take photos or videos and post it on their own social media. But you have to ask them. You have to be clear, you have to give them specifics. So for authors, I think you could make it really simple and just literally say, take a picture of yourself reading our book in your favorite reading spot or the most scenic reading spot in your house or I don’t know, something silly like that. And then you could incentivize it by saying, every month we’ll choose one winner and we’ll give you it could be like a $10 Starbucks card or whatever your people like. But if you incentivize them with a little bonus kind of thing, you’re more likely to get people to actually do it. And you also want to have some sort of hashtag or you just say, Tag us on Instagram. Be kind of specific. Don’t say tag us everywhere. Just choose one or two. Instagram or TikTok. Or Instagram. Your audience is on Facebook, instagram or Facebook. Tag us. And every month we’ll choose one winner who will get a $10 Starbucks card. That $10 Starbucks card is what oftentimes will push people to actually end up taking action. People always want to win free stuff, so I would just kind of get creative about that. But you want to always keep asking people. If you don’t ask people to take a photo with your book or share yourself reading our book, they won’t do it. Some people will. But if you want them to do it, you have to ask them. And you have to keep asking them, keep reminding them, have you signed up for our monthly photo contest this month? Share it. Or you could say, take a screenshot of the favorite quote of the book or like a passage of the book that you love and share that. It doesn’t have to be a selfie necessarily, but just really getting creative on what you want people to share and then just keep reminding them. You can’t say it one time, right? I had a monthly photo contest for my business, and pretty much what I just shared is what I did. And it was a game changer with my business. Granted, I had a really cute pet business, and so I would ask people to take photos of their dog with their favorite product from the box. And so I think if you have a pet business, it’s a little bit easier for people to take user generated content. But that’s what I would do. I would say every month we’ll choose one or two winners who will win a free box. And I kept reminding people I made a big deal about it on social media. Every month when we would choose the winners, I would share those winners. I had a highlight on my Instagram saved with the winners every single month. So when people would start to see that, they could go and look at the past winners and again, you’re just constantly reminding people. When I shipped out my product, I had an insert, like a printable insert, and in there it said, want to win a free box? Share your favorite product or a picture of your dog with a box. Tag us here and every month we choose one or two winners who win a free box. So I really reminded my audience and customers constantly. And that monthly photo contest, I mean, at first I didn’t get many people doing it. By the time I sold my business, I would get hundreds every single month.
Jami Albright [00:57:57]:
Oh, wow.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:57:58]:
Tagging me. Tagging me with their favorite product from the box. And it’s literally just free advertising. Every one of those people who are tagging my business, their friends and family and followers are now seeing that and they’re like, oh, where can I get that? Really pretty purple.
Sara Rosett [00:58:17]:
Yeah. And it’s so true that you have to keep doing it. Longevity with a lot of these things is like, the longer you do it, the better off you’re going to be. Like, the longer you do a podcast or YouTube channel, the more content you’re going to have. And if you keep having people share the same hashtag over and over again for a have, it’s going to grow. So, yeah, I love that idea. And I think for readers, it might be easier to start with something like take a picture of the book with your favorite drink, like your favorite cup of tea or your favorite pet. Yeah, because people love to share pictures of their pets. So yeah, something like that would be great.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:58:58]:
Yeah, it can be anything. You can just try it out and then you can tweak it as you go.
Sara Rosett [00:59:03]:
Modify.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:59:05]:
Yeah.
Jami Albright [00:59:06]:
That’s great. Well, this has been amazing. I have got a whole page of notes. We appreciate you being here. Tell everyone where they can find out more about you and what you do. And does your book have a preorder yet? Is it up for preorder yet?
Sara Rosett [00:59:29]:
Well, if you send us the link, we’ll put it in the show notes.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:59:32]:
I have no idea.
Sara Rosett [00:59:35]:
We’re sorry we didn’t ask that question beforehand.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:59:38]:
I think it is, but I’m still in the stage of, like I’m not sure if it I’m not sure.
Sara Rosett [00:59:46]:
we totally get it. We completely understand because we’ve been there too. So, yeah. Tell everybody where to find your website and your podcast and stuff like that.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [00:59:52]:
Awesome. So my podcast is a six figure product business podcast. And my website is my first name, last name, so KerrieFitzgerald.com. And then my instagram is Kerrie.A.Fitzgerald. And again K-E-R-R-I-E. You can definitely listen and say hello.
Jami Albright [01:00:14]:
And the book is on Preorder.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [01:00:19]:
Awesome.
Jami Albright [01:00:19]:
So you can go to your well, Amazon. Anyway.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [01:00:27]:
So confusing. So confusing. Oh, my. Like, I know all know e commerce and all that, but book stuff, it.
Sara Rosett [01:00:38]:
it Is a whole nother world. And it sounds like you’re doing great. I mean, if you’re on Ingram Spark and have that figured out, you’re Ahead of so many people. So you’re doing great.
Sara Rosett [01:00:41]:
Like you’re doing
Kerrie Fitzgerald [01:00:46]:
Ahead of so many people. So you’re doing great. Ingram Spark is definitely.
Sara Rosett [01:00:55]:
There’S some there’s some challenges there.
Jami Albright [01:00:58]:
But anyway, we’ll put the link to the preorder in our show notes too.
Kerrie Fitzgerald [01:01:05]:
Oh, thank.
Sara Rosett [01:01:07]:
So thanks for being here today and sharing all this information with us. I think it will have given people a lot of good things to think about, some new ways of thinking. So thanks to Alexa Larberg for editing and producing the podcast, and thanks to Adriel Wiggins for doing the admin. We’ll see everybody next week.
Jami Albright [01:01:24]:
Bye.
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