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Are you a writer looking to do marketing for your Kindle Books on Facebook? If yes, then this article will show you how to do it. Hi, my name is Francisco, and I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing agency. Facebook Advertising is in my DNA. It’s what I do on a daily basis! I also do Google Ads and Remarketing. Over the years, I have worked with plenty of self published authors looking to advertise their books on Facebook. In this article, I am going to;
- Show you why it makes sense for Kindle writers to advertise on Facebook.
- Tell you how to create your own Facebook Ads and what you need to do to create ads that reach the right audience.
- Show you a Facebook Ad for Kindle Books example
Should self published writers advertise on Facebook?
This question is at the center of this article. Is there a place on Facebook Advertising for self published writers? I get asked that a lot. The challenge for most people is that they think Facebook Advertising is for big companies. They can’t imagine individuals doing it.
A bit about Kindle authors
It used to be that getting published was a hard thing. In fact, the entire thing was rather exclusive, and most people who fancied themselves writers ended up disappointed. They sent manuscript after manuscript to publishers, only to have the things chucked into the next rubbish bin. Not that it was the fault of the publishers. Most of the manuscripts were actually such and such trash, so they were right at home in the said dustbin.
Then, along came the internet. That invention has transformed the way we do things in ways that would have been unfathomable way back. With the internet, it became possible for anyone to become a publisher. Leading this charge was Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. This platform made it possible for people around the world to put their work out there without having to go through a publisher.
So, today, anybody can be a writer. All that you need is a little creativity. And it doesn’t matter that your writing may actually be rubbish, as noted above. You can just put it out there and people will buy it. But, there are a number of huddles standing in your way.
You need to market your book to get it before the right audience
The unfortunate thing is that there are literally millions of people who are publishing books out there. The challenge is that it has become rather hard for a book to be noticed within the drivel. So, you need to do a lot of marketing to get your book noticed. It doesn’t matter whether the book is good or bad, at the end of the day. What matters is your ability to promote it to your target audience.
Why do Facebook Marketing for Kindle Books?
Admittedly, there are many platforms out there on which you can do marketing for you books. The one that immediately comes to mind is Google Ads. So, why should you use Facebook? Is it any better when it comes to marketing Kindle Books than any of the other platforms that are out there? Well, the following are some of the reasons why Facebook rocks as far as marketing for Kindle books is concerned;
- Facebook has reach. The platform has over 2.6 billion monthly active users. And this figure is growing by the day. So, you can be sure that whatever the product that you are selling, you will be able to find the right kind of audience on the platform.
- You can target the right kind of people with Facebook Ads. That gives Facebook Ads a higher than normal CTR. Your conversion rate will, as a result, be very good. Let’s say you are into Science Fiction Books. It’s easy for you to target people who are interested in the genre on Facebook. That’s because there are plenty of people there who have like pages or expressed an interest in other activities to do with Sci-Fi.
- Books are not that expensive and people will buy them on whim. The challenge is to get the word out before the right kind of people, as already noted. So, Kindle books tend to do way better on Facebook than other goods and services. Maybe your book sells for $3 on Amazon. If you advertise before the right audience, many will click on your link and buy because, well, it’s only $3!
- You can create your own Facebook Ads. If you have any experience creating covers for your book, which many Kindle publishers do, then you won’t have an issue creating Facebook Ads. Even if you don’t have any experience, this article will show you the way. And if you would rather have professionals do it for you, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me and I will get you going in the right direction.
- Many people get terrified because they think Facebook Advertising is expensive. However, that is actually not the case. I am always telling people that Facebook Ads are cheaper than Google Ads and that is true. In fact, you can get started with Facebook Ads for as little as $10. And for that amount you will reach lots of people as you will see below. And your ROI is great.
How to create Facebook Ads for Kindle Books?
So, how do you go about creating Facebook Ads for Kindle Books? One thing to note is that Facebook Advertising is a multifaceted undertaking. There are many steps involved. However, you don’t need to know everything. And if you have questions, get in touch. In this article, I will focus on elements that are most relevant to writers who have published their books via Kindle. So, where do you get started?
Creating Facebook Ads for Kindle Books is a 3 step process. All these steps are important. However some are more important than others. One thing to note is that for Kindle publishers who are looking to advertise on Facebook, part of the work is already done. Your book already has a cover, and presumably, that cover is a good one.
Remember that people really judge books by their covers. So, you need to make the one on your book as good as it can be. So, why is a cover important? Well, that’s simply because we are going to use that cover in our Facebook Ad for our Kindle Books. So, you don’t have to go around looking for images or videos for use in your book. Anyway, the following are the steps when creating Facebook Ads for Kindle Books;
- Choose a Facebook Ads Campaign Objective
- Set up your Ad Set
- Create the Ad itself
1. Choose a Facebook Ads Campaign Objective for Kindle Books
Facebook provides you with 11 Campaign Objectives for use in your Ads. A Campaign Objective describes what you wish to achieve in your Ad. But you can only have one Campaign Objective for each Campaign. So, you need to decide what you wish to achieve. The following are the available Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives;
- Messages
- Traffic
- App Installs
- Video views
- Reach
- Conversions
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Store traffic
- Catalog sales
- Engagement
Which one should you choose?
The Campaign Objective that you choose depends in what you wish to achieve with your Facebook Ads. For Kindle Books, we are going to go with Traffic because we wish to have people who click on our ads be directed to the Kindle page for our book.
2. Setting Up Your Target Audience
The Ad Set is where most people get it wrong when it comes to Facebook Advertising. This is a section that you wish to focus on a lot because it’s where you define and zoom in on your target audience. Do things wrong, and your ads will be delivered to people who are not interested in your book. Your CTR will, therefore, be dismal. Because we have chosen Traffic as our Campaign Objective, we are going to have traffic directed to our book’s product page on Amazon as already noted.
Audience
In the Ad Set, the Audience section is where you create your target audience. For Facebook Ads for Kindle Books, that’s going to depend on your genre. If you write Romance, then you are going to need to target people who are into that genre. The same applies if you write Science Fiction, Crime thrillers or any other type of book. In Audience, you have a number of tools that you can use to define your target audience, as you can see in the above screenshot;
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Detailed Targeting
- Languages
- Connections
Location
The location refers to the Geographic area in which you wish to have your Ads delivered. Most businesses that are out there are rather localized in nature. A restaurant, as an example, can only have an audience living around 3 miles from its physical location.
Kindle Books, on the other hand, can have a global reach. Anybody around the world can go to Amazon and buy your book. Of course, there are some books that are regional. If you are writing about the United States, then you would need to choose that as your target audience. But for novels, you can sell your book to anyone in the world.
You can see in the above screenshot that we have chosen Worldwide as our target audience. Whatever the location that you choose, you can also choose to target only people living in that location, or to include people who have recently been in that location.
Age
Which age groups are normally interested in your books? For Science Fiction, that would probably be people aged between 18 and 55. That’s a rather wide range. Normally, you would have a narrower target audience but for books, this will do.
Gender
The above also applies for Gender. Some products are gender specific. For Kindle Books, you can target both genders if your books are read by everybody. However, there are some books that are read by women or men only. Romance books are most likely to appeal to women, as an example.
Language
This setting actually applies a lot when creating Facebook Ads for Kindle Books. If your book is in Spanish, then you can choose to have it delivered only to people who speak that language. The same applies for any other language.
Detailed targeting
The detailed targeting section is another important one when creating Facebook Ads for Kindle Books. This is really where you zoom in on your target audience. So, far, we had only generalized with regard to our target audience. We can now narrow down here. As you can see in the above screenshot, we have chosen to target the following people with our Facebook Ads;
- People who have expressed an interest in Pages to do with Romance
- Those that are interested in Ebooks
- Those interested in Fiction books
- Those interested in Romance novels
Connections
If you are a big writer, you probably already have a Facebook Page on which you interact with your readers. Even if you are a small writer, this is something that you should look to get. A Facebook Page comes free of charge, so, there is really no reason for anybody not to have one.
The connections section is useful if you wish to have your Facebook Ads delivered to people who interacted in some way with your Page, App or Event on Facebook. It could be people who have liked your Facebook Page, as an example. It means these people are already interested in your work as an author. So, they are likely to buy any new books that you may be releasing.
Budget and Schedule
This is where you specify the amount that you wish to spend daily on your Facebook Ads. You can either set a Daily or a Lifetime budget. Whatever you do, make sure that you have set a start and end date for your Facebook Ads. That way, Facebook won’t keep deducting money from your account. For a start, you can set a Daily Budget of $5.
With the above settings, your Facebook Ad for a Kindle Book will read between 3.1K and 9.0K people per day. You can expect between 34 and 99 clicks per day, which is actually very good. Facebook Ads have a conversion rate of around 9.2%. What this means is that you will be able to sell up to 9 books per day while running your ads on Facebook.
That may not appear much, but for Kindle Books, the whole focus is on generating sales that lead to reviews for your books. The reviews are how you get the word out about your books. If your book is part of a series, you will also be able to sell more books that are part of the series. So, assuming that you are selling your book for $3, you will be able to get $24 per day from an investment of $5.
3. Creating the Ad
Facebook Ads can be in the form of a Carousel, Single Image, Video or collection. You need to determine which format you are going to go with. Also note that the Ad is what people see. So, it needs to be convincing to get them to take the required action. Unfortunately, you have your work cut out for you because you only have a few seconds in which to convince people. So, make your Ad good.
Example of a Facebook Ad for Kindle Books
You can see our completed ad in the above screenshot. There are several things that you need to take note of here;
- First, we have used an Amazon URL for the book that we wish to market. The image in the ad is from our book cover.
- We added some primary text. This shows up at the top of the ad.
- There is also a headline, which you can see below the ad.
- We added a Call to Action. Probably the best one here would have been “Buy Now,” but it doesn’t seem to be among the options that you see when creating your Ad.
Tracking
This is one great feature of advertising on Facebook. Remember what we mentioned about Remarketing? Well, this is where it comes into play. If you have a website, you can use remarketing to make sure that people who have shown a particular interest in one of your books on your website are shown appropriate ads when they go to Facebook.
That way, you can be sure to turn their interest into a conversion. Tracking happens through what is called Facebook Pixel, which you install on your website. It’s similar to what happens with Google Ads, where some ads seemingly follow you across the internet based on your interests.
Get in touch
If you really wish to do Facebook Ads for your Kindle Books the right way, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me today. It’s what I do best. I have, over the years, worked with a number of writers who I have helped get to the top in their genres. You too can benefit from my expertise. Just get in touch with me today!