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Shareholder.com
The Concrete Network
Me (David Meerman Scott)
Adele Revella

> 150,000 downloads = new clients, speaking gigs, and a book deal

The client: Me (David Meerman Scott)

The situation:
In late 2005, I wanted to develop a marketing program to introduce buyers to my ideas with the goal of securing new clients and paid speaking engagements. The audience I wanted to target included business executives seeking a thought leadership strategist and event planners seeking a dynamic speaker.

Of course, I work with many companies to help them reach buyers directly through online thought leadership initiatives, so I know what my approach would be. Thought leadership is extremely cost-effective marketing compared to, say, an expensive direct mail campaign or search engine advertising program.

In mid-January 2006, I put my own marketing where my mouth usually is: I published a complementary thought leadership ebook, The New Rules of PR: How to Create a Press Release Strategy for Reaching Buyers Directly. I posted the ebook on my site and my blog and sent a news release out about it.

Since then, I have been happily watching the wave of interest from this effort and am amazed by the metrics. In the first few days I had a few thousand downloads.

Two heavy-hitters jumped in:

  • Seth Godin wrote a post about the ebook called What Would David Do?
  • Steve Rubell followed by writing on his blog Micro Persuasion a deliciously controversial post, Direct-to-Consumer Press Releases Suck. (There's nothing like a negative viewpoint to drive viral marketing!)

In just the next three days, 15,000 people downloaded the ebook. With the wide reach of Godin and Rubell adding to the early momentum, nearly 100 bloggers posted their thoughts on The New Rules of PR driving tens of thousands more downloads.

The result:
As I write this, it is nearly a year since the release of my ebook.

  • Some 150,000 people have downloaded the ebook (so far).
  • When I first put it out, there was precisely one hit on Google for the phrase "new rules of pr." The last time I checked there were over 9,000 Google hits because hundreds of bloggers and online media outlets have written about the ebook and thousands of readers have commented on my blog and others. Now, on Google and the other search engines, I "own" the phrase "new rules of pr" which I invented.
  • Dozens of mainstream media outlets around the world covered my ideas such as The Miami Herald, the Associated Press, Toronto's Globe and Mail, and The Sydney Morning Herald.
  • People reached out to me who wanted to do business with me (an original goal of the program) and I have signed a number of exciting new clients as a result.
  • Many people inquired about having me speak at their events (another original goal of the program) and I booked dozens of gigs, many in hip places like London, Hawaii, and San Jose.
  • An expanded book length version of the ebook called The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly was sold to the publisher John Wiley & Sons for a June 2007 hardcover release. (This was not an original goal of the program but a delightful and lucrative bonus)!
  • MarketingSherpa named this thought leadership program to the Viral Marketing Hall of Fame for 2006.

What the client says:
"Not bad for a little ebook that cost virtually no money to write, produce, and promote. Online thought leadership and viral marketing works! You reach your buyers directly and drive revenue. And it can work for you too."
- David Meerman Scott