OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Generally, I'm a fan of free marketing like blogging, social networking, podcasting and video creation. All these things take time but are free or very cheap. But sometimes, there is a place for paid advertising, especially around the time of a book launch and I'll be using Facebook for the Pentecost launch.
A few years ago, Google Adwords was all the rage but now the keywords are so expensive as to be crippling especially for authors who don't have much budget. So, in order to create targeted advertising to the smallest budget, you can now use Facebook advertising for your book so I thought you might like to know more as well.
Decide on your target market.
The truly amazing thing about Facebook advertising is that you can target your demographic. This will impact the number of people who will see the advert and also how much it will cost you. You need to decide on country, city, gender, age range, likes and dislikes and you can go down into further splits. As you change the demographics, you'll see how many people the advert could be shown too. The more specific you can be, the better your chances an ad will have an impact.
Create a targeted headline.
You can see on my advert above that I had a headline referencing James Rollins. I think my thriller is similar to some of Rollins' books and so I targeted his fans in the demographics (i.e. people who ‘like' James Rollins). The headline meant that their eyes would be drawn to it as they had already expressed a preference for his books.
I could have also used the same advert with the headline “Like Dan Brown?” and changed my demographic accordingly. It's incredibly important to target the market like this or you'll be wasting clicks. There's no point in advertising a romance novel to James Rollins fans! So think about how you can target a market. For example, a travel book about cycling around the world could be marketed to people who like ‘mountain-biking' or ‘travel'. Which is more specific?
You can also split test ads i.e. create several versions with different headlines or text and then rotate them. Check to see which performs the best and then use that to continue the campaign with. Tim Ferriss (NY Times bestsellers 4 hour work week and 4 hour body) used Facebook advertising split tests to decide on his book titles.
Use a compelling image and text.
There are only a few lines of text available in the body of the advert so make it count. It's very restrictive around what you can do e.g. you can't use all capitals or unconventional punctuation. You also want people to click so you need to word it in an enticing manner or make an obvious call to action e.g. click to buy now. Lorna Jane is a fitness-wear company for women and had a great advert that increases the number of fans for their page as well as promoting a competition. The call to action is very clear.
You also need an eye-catching image so people even look at the adverts. Make sure your book cover looks great as a thumbnail size image. You'll also need a specific landing page i.e. where people go when they click. This could be your Amazon buy page or a webpage specifically for buying the book.
Decide on your budget and length of campaign.
You can control how much you spend and how long you want to run the campaign for. I used $50 maximum over 7 days for the free download. For the Pentecost launch, I will probably invest $200 for 1 week in order to boost the numbers of books sold. I may also primarily target Kindle owners who generally read voraciously and can instantly download a sample. You can see the numbers on the left. Playing around with budget and targeting is a big part of the setup. Otherwise, it is very simple.
Make sure you set an end date on the campaign or the money will just keep going out!
In the week I ran the campaign, I had 60 clicks from the advert and 34 downloads of the first 3 chapters of Pentecost which cost me $40.19 (but it was free as a had a coupon). I will do some more specific measuring when I have the book available for sale but if all 34 had bought the ebook for $2.99, I would have made a small amount of money. Given the very small margin for books, it's not a surprise that there aren't more books advertised. But I think for a specific launch period, it's definitely worth it to raise awareness to try to spike your Amazon ranking which in turn can get you more sales.
It's worth looking at the demographics even if you aren't going to sign up for an ad campaign. You'll get an idea of how big your market is anyway. You can access Facebook Ads here and they have plenty of help.
Have you tried Facebook advertising for your book? Does it sound like something you could use? Please let me know what you think in the comments.
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1 2 3 4 Next »Yeh I can't wait to see the results after I test run a facebook add for my first book. I love your idea of offering sample chapters and I think I'll model that. Even if they don't buy Im sure to get a few fans out of it.
Good luck with the launch Joanna
Thanks Brett. I will be running wekk 7-12 Feb for the real thing so I will post the results after that.
Good post. Why are you targeting US readers specifically? Is it because they're more likely to own kindles?
Hi Livia,
There are 20 million people in Australia.
There are 65 million people in UK
and there are 260 million in America :)
So I target the US because it's a larger market - and because they have more Kindles, more of everything actually
(and 'cos I love you guys!)
Hope you'll keep us updated on the success of your ad strategy! Shows how important it is for writers to identify their target audience as early as possible, preferably in the planning stage before the writing begins.
Absolutely Wendy. I identified my audience before writing and specifically wrote for that genre.
Ooh, this is so cool! I'm such a geek when it comes to marketing, for some reason I find it fascinating. I'm not quite to the coming out with a new book stage, but I hopefully will be soon, and I'll for SURE be looking into this as a marketing strategy.
Sarah Allen
(my creative writing blog)
Thanks Sarah. It's great to hear someone else is fascinated with marketing. I LOVE marketing and am always reading on new aspects of it. Strange as I always considered it a bad thing until I started investigating and now it's addictively fun!
So am I! Online marketing especially is fascinating, as there is literally no limit to what you can do. Sometimes I get lost in all there is to learn, and it makes it fulfilling to take what you learn and help others get on the bandwagon. It's so important, especially for writers who need that extra creative edge to succeed.
I think it's a great idea, Joanna. Relatively cheap, precisely targeted and above all very simple. I tried to get my publisher interested when my last book came out, but my suggestion disappeared into the system. I'll try again this year with Defender of Rome, but if they don't go for it I'll fund it myself and see if it pushes me up the Amazon rankings.
Doug Jackson (Caligula, Claudius, Hero of Rome)
ooh, I love ancient history. I'll go look up your books!
I guess that's one of the benefits of being indie, you don't have to ask anyone! I have heard that some publishers will reimburse you if you have a great idea so maybe you can ask if it works.
I have had a Facebook ad for a week now. I have sold books, but can't tell if it's through the Facebook ad or my own promotion.
I imagine they are not allowed to give out such info, but how do I track who is buying my books. Through Oronjo I can, through Amazon I can't. This is the past I'd like to know more about, whi is buying my books!
Hi Rob,
What you do is set up a special landing page on your site and use that in the facebook advert only so you can tell where the sales are coming from. You can buy a URL for $10 from GoDaddy or the like and then redirect it to separate pages or just use that page in the advert. Hope that helps.
Thanks, Joanna
Thanks for the information. I'd consider doing this. It doesn't seem to be time consuming, and I always believe we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Exactly - what's $50 to give it a try and see if it's effective!
Joanna darling, I will be getting in touch with you either in the wee hours this morning, or this evening--my computer came down with a virus and I am waiting on a new hard drive. :(
This post instantly caught my attention. I simultaneously set up Google Adwords ads and facebook ads for my blog at the beginning of the month. Google Adwords sucked up $75 in the blink of an eye, and while I received hits, no conversion into actual followers. For the word count you get and for how complicated it is to target your market, forget it! Who has the time? I cancelled my account.
As for facebook, my hits tripled (AND I received triple the hits that I was receiving from Adwords for way less money), AND I've been receiving not only more comments on my blog, but personal e-mails from visitors too who said they found my blog through facebook.
The things I like most about facebook ads are a) they give you a reasonable amount of characters to say what you want to, b) it's a budget I can afford, and c) they make it so easy to target your market.
Thanks Krissy. I'm so glad you have some proof of the advertising differences. I tried Google a few years ago and it was expensive even then. I think Facebook ads are only just being discovered and as you say, are SO easy to use. Thanks!
My pleasure! I have now made it a regular routine to create ads each time I add a new article to my blog as well. I can now see, based on clicks, which articles receive a response so that I can pinpoint the types of articles that are most in demand, which only ups the quality of the blog content we can offer our visitors.
Thanks for the types about Facebook ads. I don't have any experience with advertising at all. My husband used Google Adwords to advertise his last album and could really get the hang of it. Facebook ads seem easier.
Facebook ads are definitely easier than Google!
Johanna,
I just read your blog in full, and I think it is very interesting. I have seen adverts on the side of the facebook comment pages, and I think that this could be a very good idea for me to post my advert. However, my computer posting skills are very limited, and unless it is a step-by-step process, I feel that I will have problems trying to post a advert without immediate help. That is selecting an image, (the cover of my book is rather eye-catching,) defining just what and who is in my demographic. For the most closes demographic my book is geared toward Christian readers. Setting up a link to my Amazon.com page is another situation that I do not know how to do. I am not sure that I can make the postings without tech support. Moreover, my publisher has a marketing department that set-up my Amazon and Kindle page for me. They are in the process of creating for me an ad page in an advertisement booklet that is sent to all the major Churches and book stores. Nevertheless, I still feel that a facebook advert page could be good for me in marketing my book. Can you address my issues with posting a facebook advert which I stated in this e-mail?
Hi Kevin,
You really don't need any skill to use the Facebook ads. It's best to just go and try to do it yourself or ask the publisher too.
I seriously think it is more worthwhile than print advertising in terms of cost. You can target "Christians" in specific area or even church FB pages. Best go look at the page and have a play around. You just need a facebook account, you don't need to pay any money to try it out.
Thanks, Joanna