Launching a product using social media provides multi-media rich global platforms that makes it easy for each social network community to share the message and let other people know about your brand.

Promoting, marketing and launching any product globally was usually left to multi-nationals with big budgets and access to prime time TV and other expensive mass media and to be effective required multi-million dollar budgets.

Here is a case study of Guy Kawasaki’s launch and promotion of his book ‘Enchantment  The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions‘ and how he used a multi channel social media marketing strategy and tactics that can be applied to any product.

This approach or a subset of his campaign can be applied by anyone with the right discipline and appropriate resources and ‘yes’ you will need a marketing budget but it will not need to be 6 or 7 figures.

Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist (Garage  Technology Ventures), a well known blogger and also famous for his RSS aggregator “Alltop”

He was involved in launching and marketing the Apple McIntosh in 1984 and has written ten books with ‘Enchantment’ being his latest.

So how did he launch and promote his book using social media?

1. Facebook

The Facebook fan page was built specifically for the book and its main aim was to provide a community site on the largest social networking community on the planet that would engage and then share. To build up the fan base that provided critical mass to share an incentive to “like” the page was achieved by giving away a free book. In this case it was his first book “The McIntosh Way”

Primary Goal:

Create an incentive for people to “like” the page by providing a free product and so grow his fan base

Cost: Approximately $2,700

2. Website and Blog

He realized after 2 months that Facebook was great but limited and needed a site he owned that was not restricted to the whims and restrictions of the Facebook environment and its terms and conditions. He built the site which was part of his own website.

Primary Goal

To make it easy for his book reviewers to obtain information and images necessary to review the book.

Cost: Approximately $4,000

3. Book Reviews by Other Bloggers and A-Listers

Building a tribe before launch becomes very apparent here and with Guy’s access to his Alltop data base of 20,000 bloggers he was able to offer a free review copy to all 20,000 and from that he attained the following traction. He used eCairn to indentify the social media movers and shakers to find other bloggers outside of his own database listing.

• 1,300 requested a copy
• 150 interviews
• 200 reviews

All reviews appeared on his website which gave visibility to all the reviewers as a way of saying thank you.

Main Goal:

To provide 3rd party credibility authority and social  proof that was widespread and ubiquitous

Cost: $16,000 (but this was borne by the publisher)

4. Email

The shiny new toy ‘social media’ is not the only marketing tactic that he used and they knew that a 160,000 emails (130,000 acquired over 30 years of making contacts including his blog and website) would be highly effective.

The numbers and results for this

• 30,000 extra email from AlwaysOn
• 3.75% click through rate

Primary Takeaway:

Again it is the building of a marketing base via email prior to launch that is vital to have in your tool kit and assets to ensure launch success

Cost: Approximately $4,500 set up and $1,000 per month (allow 3 months) for the email campaign (Total $7,500)

5. Banner Ads

This was a 6 week campaign on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and Twitter (Promoted Tweets). They used Clix Marketing for managing the campaign. Both Google Adwords and Facebook ads are easy enough to do your self

Primary Goal

To get access to potential buyers outside of his sphere of influence and use the power of Google and Facebook to target the rightaudience.

Cost: Allow $2,000-$3,000

6. Photo Contest

Every one loves a contest and they work well on Social media. He offered 5 cameras and an Apple iPad. He had a Facebook contest app designed by Strutta.

Results

• 1,150 entries
• 35,000 visits
• 70,000 entry views

Primary Goal

To create ‘Buzz’ .

Cost: Approximately $6,000 (App $2,000 and prizes $4,000)

Major Takeaway: Start a tribe before even writing that book or product so that when you launch you have a a fan base that will be ready to buy and spread your message for you whether that is on Facebook, Twitter or Blog. Guy used his blog, website and his social media community on Alltop as his primary platform for marketing his product.

7. Quizzes

He took a quiz he had in his book and took it online and provided it in two channels (Facebook and his website). The surprise here was that the website version results far exceeded the Facebook results.

• 700 took the Quiz on Facebook
• 2,900 took the quiz on the website

He used Wildfire which costs $400 per month to create the self-serve quiz and used Electric Pulp to create the website version ($3,000)

Primary Goal: To engage and also create more buzz.

Cost: Approximately $5,000

8. Infographic

The popularity of the infographics was taken into account and  resulted in reviewers and bloggers embedding it in their sites. He hired Column Five to create the graphic which provides an overview of the book in one image.

Primary Goal: To provide a media that could go ‘viral’.

Cost: Approximately$2,000

9. PowerPoint

He had created a PowerPoint presentation  that would not only be used at key note presentations but would also be published on Slideshare and spread the brand and buzz.

So far it has been

• Viewed over 40,000 times
• Favorited over 180 times
• Embedded in over 90 websites
• ReTweeted 81 times
• Shared on Facebook 126 times

Primary Goal: Placement on the Slideshare social networking platform to make it easy for people to share and embed

Cost: Approximately $3,600

10. Slideshow on YouTube

Thank you is a small phrase that produces big results and as a way of saying thank you to all the companies and people involved in the book project launch and promotion he created a slideshow on YouTube. They used Animoto to create the slideshow.

Primary Goal: Provide another online digital property that spreads worldwide and as a minimum will be shared by the all the parties mentioned

Cost: Approximately$1,000 for design and $50 a month for the software (professional edition)

Total Cost: Approximately $50,000

(Including $16,000 for books from the publisher and $34,000 by Guy)

This could be reduced significantly by doing some of this yourself and also focusing on the channels that provide the greatest leverage.

The major takeaway is that you need to build a tribe before you launch any product or book. Guy Kawasaki has worked over the years to build his tribe and here is a snapshot of its size.

• Twitter: 351,000 followers
• Email subscribers: 130,000
• Bloggers: 20,000
• Facebook: 52,000

Have you started growing your tribe?

This case study was sourced from Guy’s own article about his book launch on Mashable.

Image by KEXINO