Howie Jacobson of Durham, North Carolina writes:
“I teach parents how to raise healthy children in a crazy and busy world, and be a good role model. I’ve written a free 27-page guide called ‘Uncle Howie’s Fit Family Gift Guide 2007.’ It includes helpful information about the four cookbooks that can change your life, the best meditation CDs on the planet, three great healthy snacks for kids, how to get really clean drinking water, and how to train yourself to wake up earlier.
“I want to encourage people to download the ebook and pass it along to friends. Can your Publicity Hounds give me some ideas on how to spread the word online and offline about my ebook and really reach parents who need this kind of advice?”
Approach some of the kid friendly gyms (ie. Little Gym, My Gym) and ask if they can include information about the ebook in their next eNewsletter. Even though December may have gone out already, January is a perfect time for resolutions. These gyms are everywhere, and the I’m sure the gyms are always looking for healthy information to juice up their eNewsletters.
Go to the school districts! As a mother of four, I would love this guide. My school sends everything e-mail and would probably put your link right in the e-mail to the parents. To get started, offer a free talk at the school and then pitch the link. Good tips regarding raising healthy children travels like wildfire among parents.
Contact parenting coaches and educators and offer them a copy that they can read and recommend to their clients.
I downloaded your ebook and it looks like you are an affiliate of several companies, since you link to all the products mentioned within it. If this is true, do you also have affiliates of your own? Can you entice them to distribute it to their email lists by giving them a secondary commission (2-tier) when people buy using the links?
You can also try working with the home-school associations. People who home-school their children seem to be more likely to look at alternative materials to educate their children. Perhaps you could co-brand the ebook with the home school association and get them to distribute it for you.
Howie, a lot people think it’s easy to give away something for free I’m often surprised how even when I offer something free people won’t take it.
Giving away something free is hard work!
Anyway.
Having said that I thought about some things that may or may not help in your opinion but I’ll throw it out there for feedback.
They range from what I might think are easy to hard to harder.
Easy.
Create hardcopy versions of your report and send them to people that write about family life. They might tell their fans about your free giveaway.
Harder.
Do the easy part above but add an incentive.
Tell them for every download their readers make you’ll donate a $1 to Toys For Tots.
Now you’ll make these influential people look like the biggest Scrooge around if they know they can help needy children but DON’T!
To get things started and let them know you’re serious along with a copy of your report include a check for whatever amount but have it already made out to Toys For Tots.
Don’t give them an address where to mail it.
Make them do the work of getting the funds to Toys For Tots.
You want them to commit to the process of helping Toys For Tots because if they do that means they are more likely going to continue with the commitment by telling others of your offer.
Either way you could win.
They send the check then tell their fans you’re ready to cash more checks for charity or they do nothing with the check and your wallet is nothing worse for the offer.
Harder.
Find an enemy against family that’s in the public view. Two old favorites come to mind.
Madonna and Britney Spears.
You could target a family newsletter focused on how to manage being famous and become a good parent all at the same time.
I don’t think there’s a single newsletters like that.
Back to finding an enemy(idea).
Madonna report/release:
“8 Foods From Malawi Madonna Should Be Feeding Her Adopted Child”
Britney report/release:
“Oops! 2 Parenting Techniques Britney Should Never Forget To Use On Her Naked Ambition Tour”
One more idea see if you like it.
The Family Television Awards took place on the 29th but it won’t actually be televised until December 12th.
Anyway this made me think about Joan’s top ten idea.
Can you come up with a
Top Ten Best Celebrity Parent List?
even better….
Top Ten Worse Celebrity Parent List?
(I’m thinking Britney might be on that list for sure!)
Let’s say it’s the former here’s the kicker to it.
Each winner gets a donation to THAT particular celeb’s favorite charity.
Here’s another kicker (maybe).
To get on the list they have to be nominated by another celeb.
Celebs love pr so now the nominating celeb gets pr as well as the winning celeb.
Here’s another kicker on the other kickers.
If the nominating celeb’s nomination wins then they also get a donation to their favorite charity.
Now everyone is motivated and now because of all the celebs attached to it the media is more motivated to cover it.
Write a press release about the free ebook and distribute it through one of the major press release distribution services like PRWeb.
When writing it, make sure you include the same keywords and keyword phrases that people would use when searching for the type of information that’s in the book. For example: fit families, healthy families, etc.
I’ll bet there are lots of bloggers whose areas of expertise are parenting or health and wellness. Let them know what you’re offering. You might even pitch other tips they can use like how to raise a healthier family in 2007.