On Fri., Jan. 22 our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” jumped to the number two spot on Amazon’s most popular books on public relations. While our book has received strong reviews and positive mentions in several publications, including The Costco Connection and PRWeek.com, this was quite a jump in the rankings and it was due to an increase in the sales of our book.
So what led to the sales increase and jump in our book’s ranking on Amazon.com? Our book was not photographed on the floor of Tiger Wood’s car, nor was “Strategic Public Relations” selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Instead, as part of our integrated communication strategy, we decided to advertise the book on Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO). In the ad, which Peter writes himself, Peter included the following testimonial about our book,
“Check out Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR – A new book that I read, liked, and recommend. The principles in the book are straightforward and simple, so they can be applied to any business.”
The HARO e-mails reach a targeted audience of more than 100,000, many of whom are focused on public relations and communications. This, coupled with a 75 percent open rate, ensured the message about our book was going to reach individuals interested in strategic communications.
The HARO e-mail helped spread the word about our book and Peter’s endorsement influenced readers to purchase our book. The day our ad appeared on HARO’s morning e-mail, sales of “Strategic Public Relations” significantly increased.
We are thrilled with the results. We anticipate January will see our highest number of sales from Amazon since the book was published last year. We have also seen an increase in Web site traffic.
The bottom line is that we are huge fans of Shankman’s HARO. If you have a product or service that is relevant to his audience, we encourage you to reach out to HARO as it can be an excellent vehicle for increasing visibility and driving awareness.