Featured Services: Marketing & Communications Strategy // Campaign Planning // Social Media Advertising // SEO // Analytics
Author Accelerator:
A Lead Generation Success Story
Once upon a time, in the midst of a global pandemic...
Author Accelerator was seeking a comprehensive launch plan to promote their book coach certification program.
Pause—what is a book coach? At the time, I didn’t know the answer to this either. Book coaching is a consulting profession that’s growing in popularity for writers, editors, and other lit lovers who want to coach writers through the process of writing books. Think of them as coaches for Olympic athletes: the coach doesn’t need to have a wall of gold medals at home or even be a pro athlete themselves. Rather, they need to be a scrupulous observer, a committed cheerleader, and an expert in delivering feedback that will help the client produce their personal best.
If this sounds like your dream job, you should download this free video series to learn more!
When Author Accelerator reached out to me in the spring of 2020, they were already doing a lot of things right. They were building high-quality courses and trainings, consistently delivering useful and inspirational content, and every student who graduated from their certification program raved about it. It was time to scale this wonderful community by identifying marketing tactics that would pull in qualified leads and convert new students year-round.
In the midst of the pandemic, as was the case for so many independent businesses, this was a make-or-break moment.
After an insightful discovery session and thorough review of the data across Hubspot, Google Analytics, and their social media platforms, I crafted a multi-channel launch plan designed to attract and guide prospective book coaches swiftly through the user journey from becoming aware, to signing up for class, to celebrating Author Accelerator as a part of their identities.
Every great lead generation campaign gives something away for free. This launch campaign had a delicious goodie at its center: a six-part “All About Book Coaching” video series designed to answer the most frequently asked questions from prospective students. We promoted the video series—gated by a sleek landing page—with multiple levels of Facebook and Instagram advertising, an automated email welcome series, podcast appearances, referral partnerships, and an organic social media campaign to source success stories. Once the plan was finalized, we divvied up the responsibilities and partnered closely to execute. I led the social media advertising and advised on email and landing page copy—providing guidance on all other campaign components throughout its three-month duration, testing and tweaking to optimize along the way.
The Results
62
New certification students (and counting!) acquired during the launch campaign
4:1
Average return on ad spend across all Facebook & Instagram ads
$2.53
Average cost per video series sign-up
33%
Percentage of Author Accelerator’s annual revenue earned during the campaign
Meanwhile, we started giving Google what it wants…
Back in the discovery phase of this partnership, it became clear to me that SEO best practices would work wonders for Author Accelerator as more people learn about—and begin Googling about—book coaching. To start feeding the hungry beast that is Google, I equipped the Author Accelerator team with an SEO Starter Kit, with meta titles and descriptions for their top webpages and a series of recommendations they could easily implement on their own. Only a few months later, they’re steadily rising in the rankings:
And the success story continues!
Through my retainer program, I partnered with the Author Accelerator team for multiple months to keep the momentum going until they were able to invest in a full-time marketing hire. Their pipeline is staying full and new certification students are flowing in because we listened to the data, got creative, doubled down on what was working, and ditched the rest!
Jennie Nash, Founder & CEO, Author Accelerator
“Caroline has been wonderful to work with. I particularly appreciate her strategic mindset and her authority—she knows what needs to happen, and how to direct the project to get it done. The marketing campaign she helped design has delivered the exact results we were hoping for. A bonus of the campaign is that we have gotten smarter, too, simply by working alongside her. I give her my highest recommendation.”
Laura Franzini, COO, Author Accelerator
“I cannot recommend Caroline highly enough. We asked for her help in designing and implementing a robust marketing plan that turned our business around and got us on solid footing. She listened attentively to our needs and experience, develop a holistic, strategic plan for reaching our goals, and went above and beyond throughout the campaign with insights and guidance on how to optimize everywhere we could. She guided us with confidence and honesty in the face of uncertainty. She is an all-around joy to collaborate with.”