Because just about everyone in NINC is smarter than me about advertising, I reached out to three people who I know are experiencing success on different ad platforms. And since they were all so generous, this grew into a two-part article; come back in December for more ad advice.
Pam Kelley, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of women’s fiction, family sagas, and suspense, said, “I do well with Amazon ads and have been using them for years. I like them because they allow you to reach readers when they are browsing for something to read—and if you target well, you can reach the readers that are most likely to want to read your book.”
Kelley first points out the importance of having a well-written book that resonates with readers and has an attractive cover.
“Ads do not work equally well for me on all books; it really depends on how the readers like it,” she said. “With Amazon Ads, the cover and targeting are what will get you clicks. After readers click the ad, your blurb needs to close the sale. If you are getting plenty of clicks (the minimum I look for is one click per thousand impressions and at least one sale per 10 clicks, ideally aiming for one in four to six clicks) but no sales, that may either be a targeting issue—the book isn’t similar enough—or a blurb issue. If you have good conversions on most of your keywords, then it’s likely a targeting issue. If you are not seeing conversions on most of your keywords but are getting plenty of clicks, that is a sign that you may want to write a more compelling blurb—and fortunately, you can fix that quickly by testing out a new blurb.”
Kelley also shares that she has done a lot of testing with Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads over the years. She currently run about 90% AMS and 10% Facebook with an occasional attempt at BookBub pay-per-click ads.
“I know others have had luck at BookBub, so now and then I try again, but the only BookBub ad that works for me is the Featured Deal. Some people do better with Facebook ads, so it’s good to try both and see what works for you and your books.”
AMS is where Kelley focuses most of her efforts because it works the best for her and is the easiest to directly measure and scale.
“It’s probably important to mention that I’m wide, and Amazon ads are a key way that I generate sales on Amazon,” she explained. “You don’t have to be in Kindle Unlimited to benefit from them. And if you are in the process of moving wide from KU, ads are a great way to quickly replace page reads.”
The key to success with Amazon ads, noted Kelly, is making sure that your targeting is relevant.
“I think about where my book fits in the store. What other books would be near me on the virtual shelves (my also-boughts)? An also-bought is a book or author that readers buy in addition to your book—could be same day or just in general. But they are very important in influencing where Amazon shows your book, and there is a lot of merchandising that happens through the algorithm that we never see.”
Kelley shared that she considers what books are most similar to hers in terms of style and content. She adds the author names and a name of a new book or one coming soon as well as an older book that still sells well.
“I also looked closely at type of book,” Kelley added. “My books are easy reads, commercial fiction. They are not literary book club books. So, even though some of those books might sell really well, they are not as likely to convert for my book, so I don’t use them as targets because they cost me money.”
The better your targeting converts to a sale, the more traffic the Amazon algorithm will send to your book.
“Targeting tightly is all about training Amazon to send you more of the traffic that does convert. The algorithms love this and when they see steadily increasing sales, they may push a little, too, on top of your ads. If you only can come up with a few ideal also-boughts, that’s okay. You can then peel back the onion to find more. Add those names and a few of their top books to your list.”
First, Kelley suggests, start by looking at your own author page and scroll down to where it says Customers also bought items by and note the authors whose books are listed there. Those are your existing authors, a great place to start with targeting. Add each name to your keyword list, then look at their books and add one or two of their top-selling books to the keywords as well. Look at the also-boughts for each of those authors as well and look through to see if they are similar in terms of tone and style to your book. And, if so, add them to your keywords list. You can also look at the top 100 lists in your genre and find relevant targets there, and look at their also-boughts for more ideas.
“I usually aim for under 100 targets, ideally around 50 per ad is good, a combination of authors and book titles,” continued Kelley. “I would start with broad targeting as that gives you the most combinations of impressions per keyword—example, if you put in James Patterson as your keyword, you will also come up in searches for James Patterson books, Patterson new releases, etc.”
She says that as far as bids, you can choose either Dynamic Down, Fixed, or Up Down.
“I always do Dynamic Down as that is the most cost effective in my experience. Up Down will get you more impressions more quickly but can be quite expensive. Fixed can also be more expensive, but some people prefer Fixed. This is something to test for yourself. The advantage of Dynamic Down is that the algorithm will reduce your bid so you usually will pay less that your bid amount.”
Kelley suggests experimenting with both Up Down and Fixed.
Bid amounts will vary, Kelley shared. “Remember that the amount you bid is not necessarily what you will pay. Here is where relevancy matters as relevancy can affect the price you pay in a good way and can allow you to win more auctions too. You can also experiment here. If you go very low, like 35 cents or less, the danger is that it’s harder to win auctions so these ads are impossible to scale. You might sell a book or two at that very low bid, but you won’t be able to do volume at that level.”
Kelley has had better luck being more competitive and going in the middle range of the suggested bid while staying well under $1.
“Initially you may want to go with these slightly higher bids to get impressions and see which keywords convert. You can then lower your bids a little. Ideally, I like to be well under 10 clicks to a sale. A good relevant keyword can convert at four to five clicks to a sale.”
According to Kelley, a big part of these ads is getting visibility and awareness of your name and the book. Getting that boost in rank will lead to more visibility and organic sales. So while you might not see a big profit on the sales of the advertised book on your ads dashboard, you may see an overall increase in sales on the book—and that makes it worthwhile.
“In addition to the keyword ad [described above], you can also try an auto ad, an ASIN ad, and a category ad. Give those ads a few weeks, and then start mining the search results by clicking ‘search terms.’ There is gold here. You will find targets Amazon tried that converted well that you didn’t even think of, and you can add those names into your keyword ad.”
These days, Kelley said she typically runs ads with under 50 targets. She finds that less is more, especially with a smaller budget of $15 a day or so; spreading that amount over 1,000 keywords would be ineffective.
“What I’ve also found works best for me is to start with a small budget of $10 to $20 a day and only scale that up when the ad is doing well, meaning it is profitable and spending all of its budget. Sometimes Amazon will email you and suggest upping your budget. As long as your ad is profitable, it can be a good idea to try their suggestion. That is how I initially scaled a single keyword ad. The book climbed into the top 100 and was very profitable. I started at about $15 a day and slowly scaled it to about $100 a day and at the point it went into the top 100. That doesn’t always happen, of course. I wish it did!”
So do we all, Pam!
How long should we wait before tweaking our Amazon ads?
“I like to give it at least a week before I look at the data as there is a delay in the data showing,”Kelley replied. “I check once a week after that, and I kill any keyword that has more than 10 clicks to a sale or that has over 5,000 impressions and less than five clicks. I sort by clicks and get rid of the keyword hogs, which are usually high-selling books with lots of impressions and clicks but few sales. As you refine your ad, you should see an improvement in your overall ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales). I like to be under 100 for the ACOS—ideally under 70—but I’ll keep an ad going as long as it is under 100 if my overall sales and profit are up.”
Next month, we’ll dive into a manageable method for running Facebook ads without too much anxiety and how to use BookBub ads to keep your wide books selling.
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Tawdra Kandle is the author of over 145 romances that span genres from contemporary through paranormal. Her engaging and realistic characters bring readers back again and again to devour the steamy love stories she spins. She lives in Florida with a husband, a mischievous pup, and a snarky cat.