Hey,
I started out working in digital advertising over sixteen years ago and while it can be very difficult to generalize about three very different ad platforms, there are some general rules that I recommend everyone consider:
#1
Donât spend what you canât afford. Experienced advertisers may look at this a little differently but when you are starting out with ads, the old gamblerâs rule should apply: only spend what you can afford to lose.
Certainly donât borrow money for an ad campaign â thatâs putting incredible pressure on yourself and greatly increasing the chances of a terrible outcome. Roll back your book profits into marketing instead. Itâs a nice, organic, and sustainable way to grow your business. And whether you have a lot to spend, or a little, start small. Only increase budgets when you are sure the ads are working â and by that I mean selling books, rather than generating traffic or hoovering up Likes.
When you are much more experienced â i.e. when you have tried-and-tested targeting and you already know that your ad assets convert â you can start campaigns off much hotter, but you need to build to that point. You canât shortcut that process when starting out without taking huge and unnecessary risks.
#2
Do explore other paths to readers before deciding advertising is the most suitable. Advertising sounds sexy⌠when itâs really tiresome number crunching for the most part, or epic frustration as you spend hours wrestling with technical issues, or a boring slog learning how the systems work.
Advertising is also a massive time-sink as well as a real money-pit. A whole legion of course sellers and tool floggers and incentivized affiliates might claim that advertising is the cure for all your ills but remember that itâs only one part of the big world of marketing. Other approaches may work better for you, especially when youâre starting out or your budget is restricted.
I especially recommend that beginners (and anyone on a budget) pay attention to the world of deal sites â itâs often the cheapest clicks youâll get anywhere and no specialist knowledge is required.
#3
Donât blindly take advice from anyone â a good approach generally and especially important in the world of advertising. Everyoneâs ad knowledge is built on constantly shifting sands and is heavily skewed by their own personal experiences. Question everything and everyone.
Iâve been working in online advertising on and off for over sixteen years and Iâm still frequently wrong, or just stumped, or catch myself acting under any number of cognitive biases â and I might not realise until after the fact.
I also know that for all the talk in advertising of data and spreadsheets and testing, itâs a deeply pseudoscientific world where data is cherry picked and where theory becomes best practice and then dogma, without being subjected to nearly enough scrutiny.
Most advertisers are chasing results above all, rather than scientific rigor, so thatâs understandable â just keep in mind that things are never as âobjectiveâ or as âprovenâ as they seem, even when everyone is experienced and has the best intentions. And thatâs before we get to all the bluffers and schemers that advertising attracts.
#4
Do take a look at each of the three major ad platforms before deciding where to spend all your ad dollars: Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook. Play with each of them a little. Dip your toe into some resources and get a feel for what works where. Look at the strengths and weaknesses of each platform â because they are wildly different in so many ways.
Go deeper again, if you want my advice, and check your comp authors on each platform are viable targets because one of your key authors might not be targetable at all on Facebook but might have a healthy following on BookBub. Or they might have no followers on BookBub. Or might be too expensive to target on Amazon.
Time invested researching these things is often money saved on bad ads.
#5
Donât ask âwhich ad platform is hot right now?â Theyâre all hot if you know what youâre doing and theyâre all not if you donât.
#6
Do focus on one platform first, though. All of the ad platforms are challenging enough to master when you focus on them. Trying to make headway with all of them at once is going to melt your brain. While the fundamentals of digital advertising can often stay the same, best practices on each platform can often be utterly different.
Learn each platform individually, and in turn, and approach each platform as a distinct problem to be solved. Besides, mastering one platform is often more than sufficient. Getting a handle on two is just gravy. (Iâm not sure I know anyone who is excellent at all three, by the way.)
Finally, stick to the three platforms of Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook. Thereâs always whoâs sure theyâre about to crack Twitter or Pinterest or Google. Iâve been hearing that for years and Iâm still waitingâŚ
#7
Donât get too disheartened if you canât crack one particular platform. Move on to another, it might be more your speed. I was able to master BookBub Ads relatively quickly, Facebook took me a lot longer despite having far more resources at my fingertips, and Iâve never been able to fully crack Amazon Ads â despite being on fairly intimate terms with the Amazon algorithms for some time now.
You donât always know what will work in advance; you might need to play the field a little before finding your perfect match.
#8
Do seek out book-specific best practices for advertising. As someone with a general marketing background, I can tell you that books are⌠weird.
We are selling super cheap products with tight margins where the customers are uber-picky and have the most bizarrely niche tastes and we are competing in a marketplace with maybe 1m suppliers and over 8m products. (Itâs quite the marketing challenge btw, so donât feel bad if you are struggling with it.)
Anyway, my point is that general advertising advice can sometimes lead you astray. I personally love some outside resources (Jon Loomer for Facebook ads is great, for example), but always keep this caution in mind with Facebook Ads, and Amazon Ads to a lesser extent.
#9
Donât listen to obvious BS from people with something to sell. I hear people saying things like âAmazon is just pay-to-play nowâ or âFacebook has completely throttled organic reach.â
Neither of those things are true, as a simple glance at your inbox or newsfeed should show you, which will be filled with Amazon recommendation emails and organic Facebook updates respectively. I can get still get excellent organic reach with my Facebook Page. Itâs harder than it was â it takes work to keep the content focused and engaging â but it is doable. And Amazon makes millions of organic book recommendations every single day by email and in various locations all over its site, which drive millions of book purchases.
Ignore anyone saying otherwise â such things usually originate with (surprise!) someone selling a course or tool which "solves" the âproblem.â
#10
Do figure out how organic visibility works on Facebook and Amazon because itâs not only a potential alternative to advertising, itâs also something that will massively augment the ROI you get from your advertising efforts.
If you know what makes content enticing and engaging and share-worthy on Facebook, you can bake that into your ads as well. And if you know what triggers Amazonâs giant (organic) recommendation engine, you can bake that into your marketing campaigns as well.
#11
Donât be in rush. Set your expectations appropriately. Save up a budget for learning the platform. Learn the fundamentals. Understand how the system works. And take your time on these critical steps before rolling your ads out.
Spend significant time ensuring that the product is in good shape (thatâs your book), that your ad assets are in fine fettle (your ad text and image, where appropriate), and that you are pointing these things at the right people and that the ensemble you have put together in terms of the product and its packaging and your ad assets are all screaming âThis is the kind of book you loveâ to all those readers youâre aiming at.
#12
Do focus a lot of attention on optimizing your landing page. Whether you advertise on Amazon, BookBub, or Facebook you will, most likely, be pointing your ads direct to your listings on Amazon (or elsewhere). Conversion is the most critical variable in advertising and probably the most under-discussed.
The experience that readers have when arriving on your bookâs page will close the sale or drive them away â and everything must be in harmony, working towards that goal: your cover, price, title, blurb, sample.
Authors invariably waste dozens of hours in the advertising weeds when the real problem was on their bookâs page. If the traffic you are sending to your bookâs page is good quality â i.e. the right readers â then the problem is invariably with your landing page.
While we are on the topic of conversion, Amazon is far better at closing the sale than any other retailer â it has crunched a gajillion data points and iterated its sales pages endlessly. Which means you should probably start off just pointing ads to Amazon before trying to solve the harder problem of other retailers (or direct sales).
Ignore that advice if you wish â as with any advice that doesnât work for you â but perhaps keep it in mind if you struggle to get ads to convert outside the Bezosverse. Perhaps there are more fundamental issues you need to solve before attempting more difficult advertising challenges (same goes for advertising full price books over deals, btw).
#13
Donât forget that things can vary a lot by genre. Not all best practices are universal across every single book niche. Yet another good reason to test everything at a lower level before making bigger bets.
#14
Do remember that most common problems have well-established solutions â at least in a meta sense. For example, if your ads arenât getting enough impressions, itâs usually an issue with bids (or maybe budget). If your ads are getting impressions but no clicks, itâs usually a problem with your ads themselves (targeting, image, or text). And if you are getting clicks but no sales, then itâs usually a problem with your landing page.
These are all just rules of thumb, but they have endured since I started in online advertising in 2004 â holding up remarkably well across different platforms too. It might not be right 100% of the time, but itâs true often enough to be useful and should â at the very least â save you precious time when trying to diagnose issues with our ads.
#15
Donât succumb to gamblerâs fallacy. Whole cities have risen from the desert because of this, bankrolled by our desperation to dig ourselves out of a hole, by digging in the same spot which dug the hole in the first place. Another $100 isnât going to flip an ad from bad to good. Please note this fallacy is easier to avoid if you follow Rule #1.
Dave
P.S. Writing music is in Irish this week with Ronan OâSnodaigh and TĂĄ'n t'Ădh Liom.
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