Creating seasonal marketing campaigns can be a great way to boost exposure and buzz for a book relevant to a specific season or holiday. And with Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, it’s a chance for romance authors and publishers to increase visibility for their books while romance is on readers’ minds.
We compiled some swoon-worthy marketing campaigns authors and publishers ran in recent years to boost exposure for their books around Valentine’s Day. We hope these examples will give you some inspiration when creating your own campaigns!
Pro tip: When drafting copy for your promotions, research what terms your audience might be searching for. For example, according to Google Trends, in 2017 search traffic spiked for “love stories” during the week of Valentine’s Day more than “romance novels” did.
1. This multi-author Valentine’s Day ebook sale
Julia Kent sent an email to her mailing list promoting a sale that dozens of authors from various romance genres coordinated for Valentine’s Day week. We love how clean and direct the messaging was, and how easy it was to take advantage of the offer:
2. These Valentine’s Day-themed BookBub Ads campaigns
BookBub Ads give advertisers a way to boost a book’s visibility to a targeted audience during a specific date range. Authors can target their own fans or fans of comparable authors, and advertisers have complete control over their creative design. Here are some Valentine’s Day-related ads our advertisers ran during the week of Valentine’s Day last year. Some of them have specific Valentine’s Day messaging, whereas others have Valentine’s imagery — hearts, lips, and of course, the colors pink and red.
3. This “relationship advice” content marketing campaign
Romance author Brenda Novak posed a question to her Facebook audience asking what they think builds a great relationship and makes love last. She encouraged fans to sign up to her mailing list in order to see her compiled list of ideas. This post got dozens of responses.
As promised, she send her mailing list a heartfelt email where she shared this list…
… and plugged the books she’d be releasing soon (along with retailer links!).
This campaign also included a guest blog post, several Facebook posts, and more. She not only got more exposure for herself and her books, but she also provided value to her fans and new readers, so they’d keep coming back to her for more.
4. This Valentine’s Day-themed fan art contest
YA author Jennifer Niven ran a giveaway exclusive to her newsletter subscribers for Valentine’s Day where fans who uploaded fan art to Instagram and Twitter using a specific hashtag would be entered to win a 20-minute Skype call with her. In the newsletter announcing the giveaway, she also plugged her upcoming release.
She also posted the winning fan art design to her Instagram, where it got more than 1.1K likes.
5. This Valentine’s Day-themed reading infographic
Harlequin partnered with the popular blog Harlequin Junkie to run a 20-book giveaway and publish a fun infographic called “Top Five Reasons Why You Should Take Some Reading Time For Yourself This Valentine’s Day.” In order to enter the giveaway, visitors had to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway (it got 1,500+ entries) and leave a comment on the blog post listing their top 5 reasons for reading a romance novel (there were 130+ comments).
6. This well-timed excerpt teaser
A Valentine’s Day promotion doesn’t need to take a lot of effort. Before the release of her novel One with You, Sylvia Day released an excerpt on her website as a “Valentine’s Treat.” The post included retailer links above of the excerpt, garnered 178 excited comments, and helped boost buzz for the new release.
7. These bookish-themed Valentine’s Day cards
Simply wishing your fans a Happy Valentine’s Day can be a great way to spread good wishes and stay top-of-mind. We love this simple post from author Jamie McGuire sharing a few Harry Potter-themed Valentine’s Day cards. (Remember those Valentine’s Day card sets you’d buy in CVS and hand out to each of your classmates? So do we — and we’re fans.)
8. This relevant Valentine’s Day discount
If you happen to have a Valentine’s Day-themed book published (we know, this is really specific), Valentine’s Day could be the perfect time to drop the price, combining the powers of discounting and relevance. Last year, the children’s book A Crankenstein Valentine was discounted mid-February, and it had a BookBub Featured Deal on Valentine’s Day!
Are you creating any Valentine’s Day-themed promotions this year? If so, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
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Click to tweet: Romance authors! Are you running any book promos for Valentine’s Day? Here’s some inspiration: http://bit.ly/2DWEqZe
