Running ads on Facebook can be one of the best ways for an independent Author to make money—but probably not for the reason you’d think.
As an indie Author, your best book marketing strategy typically doesn’t have anything to do with driving book sales.
Instead, your best strategy is to use your book to design a successful marketing campaign that will launch your business or career to the next level.
This post shows you how to:
Authors often ask me, “How do I advertise on Facebook?” But here’s the thing: there’s no one “right” way to do Facebook ads.
There are millions of right ways—one for every situation you can imagine.
While I can’t tell you in a blog post exactly how to advertise your book, I can give you a great framework for figuring out the method that’s best for your specific goal.
Like all marketing, it comes down to 2 things:
At Scribe, we publish hundreds of non-fiction books. I can tell you for a fact that our greatest success stories all have one thing in common: those Authors wrote their book for a specific purpose and created an entire marketing strategy around that purpose.
Is there a magic formula for what that purpose is? Not at all. You could write your book to:
A book can help you accomplish just about anything as long as it’s interesting and valuable to the audience you need to reach.
Once you have your goal and you know who you’re trying to find, creating a marketing plan is a matter of working your way backward.
For example, if you want new clients, think about someone standing in front of you who’s ready to sign a deal and get started immediately. Then, ask yourself:
If the answer to that last question is “on Facebook,” then Facebook ads might be a great platform for your marketing campaign.
Facebook is a great platform for finding just about anyone. It has close to 2 billion daily active users, and it knows a ton of information about them—so you can narrow in on the ones who need you (and your ideas) the most.
Are you looking for people in the U.S. who are interested in real estate? Or, better yet, how about people in the southeastern U.S. who watch HGTV and follow any of the top 5 most popular real estate investment podcasts?
Not a problem—Facebook has you covered.
Of course, that’s just one example. With a bit of creative thinking, you can define any audience you need to reach. Facebook’s audience selection tools can help you narrow in on your target audience, profiling your best potential clients.
Ultimately, you want these people to hire you—at least in this example. But that’s the LAST step you want them to take.
Right now, they haven’t even heard of you. You have to walk them through the steps of getting to know you first. That way, they become excited about you and your services.
In creating your Facebook ad, you need to figure out the FIRST step in that process. It needs to be a small, easy action that people might reasonably take after seeing one Facebook ad.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s easy! I want them to buy my book!”
That might be the right answer for your situation. But Facebook ads probably aren’t the best choice for that. Why not? Because:
If what you really want people to do is hire you, then a better first step is to have your Facebook ad send them to a separate landing page that:
Obviously, these are all just examples. To learn more about using your book as a free giveaway (and building a readership with HUGE profit potential), read my post on book funnels.
The best first step for your own marketing plan can be anything that works for your specific strategy. But whatever it is, remember that the key to great Facebook ad campaigns is knowing exactly:
Once you know why you’re running a Facebook ad campaign, you’ll need to set up and optimize your professional Facebook profile. This can be a Facebook page for your business or for yourself as an Author—whichever makes the most sense for your goal.
Either way, make sure your page looks great and provides immediate value to the people you’re trying to reach.
One of the great things about Facebook marketing (and any social media marketing) is that potential readers have an easy way to connect with you so you can build those relationships over time.
If your ad will send people to a sales page as part of a digital marketing sales funnel, make sure you set that page up properly:
If you’ve followed all the steps I listed above, you already know:
Those 2 key factors drive the creation of the ad as part of your overall marketing strategy.
Your ad should include an image or video that will catch the attention of your target audience. The copy should be short and direct, hooking your audience quickly and motivating them to do whatever it is you want them to do.
When you get ready to write your marketing copy, keep in mind that it’s very different from book writing. If you’ve never written ad copy before, here’s a basic formula to get you started:
Ask a question or make a statement that targets your ideal audience. This should be extremely short, helping people identify quickly whether this is an ad they might care about.
Present your book’s key value in as few words as possible.
Add a “call to action,” preferably with some urgency.
When it comes to setting up your Facebook ad, that’s going to depend entirely on what you want your ad to do.
Don’t try to cut corners. Take the time to learn the system by exploring the tutorials Facebook provides. If you’re brand new to Facebook advertising, start with the sections under “Create Ads from a Facebook Page” and “Create Ads from Ads Manager.”
Remember, if you’re looking for conversions—meaning you want people to buy something—Facebook can’t track those sales unless your ad sends them to a landing page you control.
You can link an ad straight to your Amazon page, but the best you can do is track the number of link clicks on your ad. You won’t know how many of those people actually bought your book.
Facebook owns Instagram, so advertising on Facebook gives you access to both platforms. It’s often best to try both and see which one performs better for your audience.
On the other hand, if you know your audience trends toward one or the other, you’ll improve your ad’s performance by targeting your audience where they spend most of their time.
Either way, design your ad for the platform you’re choosing. If you’re using both, be sure to preview your ad on both platforms to make sure it’s optimized to display well, with copy that speaks to that audience.
Choose a daily budget that makes sense for what you’re trying to do. It’s okay to start out small, but don’t skimp so much that you aren’t really learning anything. An initial budget of about $10/day should give you a solid learning curve without going overboard.
That said, it depends on how sophisticated you want to get.
Professional marketers run advertising A/B tests to see which version of an ad does best, testing various images and copy. If you want to maximize your ad performance through A/B testing, you’ll need to reach enough people to get significant results.
No matter how great your ad sets are, you can’t just set them up and leave them to run forever. In fact, their performance will often drop off after a few weeks—sometimes after just a few days. Why? It’s a combination of human nature and the Facebook ad algorithm.
Facebook starts out by showing your ad to the people in your selected audience who are most likely to click on it, based on how often they interact with ads similar to yours. Over time, the system has fewer and fewer new people to show it to, and people who already saw it are less and less likely to click on it.
As that happens, your “cost per click” goes up until it’s time to try something new.
To keep your ad performance as strong as possible, check on it at least once a day to start and then at least once a week after you’ve found a formula that works.
Keep some new options ready so you can switch them out as needed, including timely copy for things like holidays and shifts in the seasons.
Whatever you do, keep trying new things as time goes on. New graphics and copy will keep your ads fresh and your audience interested.
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