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Interesting Comparative Stats

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
So, I have identical Facebook ads running in Canada and the US, started this ad first in Canada. Today I noticed that the US ad had caught the Canadian ad in total clicks. This is also the most effective ad I have in every country I'm running ads, BTW.

US: Clicks= 101, Reach 1146, Impressions 1239, cost .12/click
Canada: Clicks= 101, Reach 2326, Impressions 2638, cost .18/click

Same ad is running cheaper in Australia and Uk than in Canada, .16 and .11 respectively, but not sticking much money there right now. Despite the UK being cheaper, the click:reach ration is best in the US.

Part of this could be a higher saturation of Kindle Unlimited subscribers in the US, as the ad emphasizes KU. Nonetheless, I found it interesting how differently the ads were performing in these two countries.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
So, about $18 for the U.S.? For one day, right? There's no way to know if any of that translates into actual sales, is there?

I've thought about running an FB ad, especially since A Child of Great Promise has had almost no readers.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
There's no way to know if any of that translates into actual sales, is there?
The way I understand it there's currently no way for authors to track the efficiency of facebook ads. You could try anyway and see if it does anything to increase reads/sales, though. If there aren't many coming in on a normal day, then a day of ads might have a more noticeable impact.

Not entirely true. The book Help, My Facebook Ads Suck, by Michael Cooper describes a way of doing it, but it's in violation of Amazon terms of use, so it's probably not something to be discussed here.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
It's common for people to have no idea whether their marketing works or not. All the analytics have not necessarily helped.

If you're going to run a facebook ad, here's my advice. This comes from me - not an article or publishing book, just me, so make of that what you will.

Number One: Pick a small, highly targeted population. Avoid using mass keywords like "Likes Lord of the Rings" and stick with more niche works that are closer to yours. Get the number of people seeing the ad down as much as possible.

The goal: You want 1,000 people, all of whom have seen your ad. NOT 100,000 people, 1,000 of whom will see it.

Number Two: Run ads two to four times on this group. Change the caption, or the photo, each time (but not both). An easy way to change the photo is to zoom in on the cover, or to zoom out so that the cover is on the left and you have a line of text as the right side of the photo.

The goal: You want these same people to recognize the ad after seeing it a few times. The chance-to-click should increase with each viewing.

Number Three: Finish up with a "one last try" ad, something like "on sale today only."

The goal: At this point you should have a little credibility and need to ramp up the impulse drive.

Now, I'm pretty confident that this would be a solid facebook ad buy strategy, so far as facebook ad buy strategies go. I can't, however, promise that you will even come close to breaking even with this. Facebook may be a cheap place to run ads, but you get what you pay for. It isn't the most effective.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Well, let's put it this way... FB ads only drives enough KU downloads that in Canada I hit #21 Epic Fantasy & #2 in a smaller category without a single sale and 0 page reads in Canada. That was with 2 ads I think? Set at $5/day each. One ad just went nuts that day for clicks, no idea why. There's no way any other ads were doing anything because I wasn't running anything there.

And I do about $5 per day on one ad, but I just shut down everything else and bumped this one ad in Canada to 10 and the US to 20 to see how well they scale. That 101 clicks cost about $12.

Added 33 more clicks in the US since the original post. But in the US market, the rankings are flipping up and down too much to read much into it... that's why I like the smaller foreign markets for kind of guessing what's going on from those clicks.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
AMS ads on the other hand... not seeing much. But you can't tell on KU.

Oddly enough, moved a couple paperbacks on AMS but nothing else visible.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Note: I can tell FB ads generate downloads because the rankings move in Australia, Canada, and UK and I watch them falloff and move up day to day by spend. Actual numbers are an unknown, obviously. And, most PB and Ebook sales in foreign markets would have to be driven by FB. My goal isn't to drive traditional sales (paperback and digital) I'm out to drive KU downloads into as many peoples accounts as possible in order to get as many reads and reviews as possible. I'm gunning first for Bookbarbarian promo, then a Bookbub, then have a book 2 release.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Run some $1 per day ads, see what kind of reaction you get to them. A person can narrow down what's working pretty quick. $0.20 per click is a solid rate, means your ad is doing okay from what I've run and what I've heard from others. Also watch your gender gap, I once had an ad running 80% female so turned it to delivering to all women... dropped my rates by about .05 per click.

So, about $18 for the U.S.? For one day, right? There's no way to know if any of that translates into actual sales, is there?

I've thought about running an FB ad, especially since A Child of Great Promise has had almost no readers.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
My take on Bookbub ads... NOT the promos, which are reputedly great... overpriced! Don't bother. You will get a sale here and there and move some KU (again judging by foreign market ranking spikes) but the price per click is nutty... unless you don't care about how many are served and just set a low per click spend limit and let it run and hope to catch some cheap times. But even then, a FB ad is going to drive clicks better from what I've seen, and cheaper.

AMS is Great for impressions, and it never ever hurts to have people seeing your product... that's the indirect benefit. Click price isn't terrible, and got 100K impressions on Amazon for very cheap while also getting a couple paperback sales. So, I'll keep running that just to keep slipping into the consciousness of buyers.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I'm working on something similar with people who engaged with the a promoted post with the book cover that also said: Epic. Dark. Fantasy. Figure that should fine tune a target audience.

It's common for people to have no idea whether their marketing works or not. All the analytics have not necessarily helped.

If you're going to run a facebook ad, here's my advice. This comes from me - not an article or publishing book, just me, so make of that what you will.

Number One: Pick a small, highly targeted population. Avoid using mass keywords like "Likes Lord of the Rings" and stick with more niche works that are closer to yours. Get the number of people seeing the ad down as much as possible.

The goal: You want 1,000 people, all of whom have seen your ad. NOT 100,000 people, 1,000 of whom will see it.

Number Two: Run ads two to four times on this group. Change the caption, or the photo, each time (but not both). An easy way to change the photo is to zoom in on the cover, or to zoom out so that the cover is on the left and you have a line of text as the right side of the photo.

The goal: You want these same people to recognize the ad after seeing it a few times. The chance-to-click should increase with each viewing.

Number Three: Finish up with a "one last try" ad, something like "on sale today only."

The goal: At this point you should have a little credibility and need to ramp up the impulse drive.

Now, I'm pretty confident that this would be a solid facebook ad buy strategy, so far as facebook ad buy strategies go. I can't, however, promise that you will even come close to breaking even with this. Facebook may be a cheap place to run ads, but you get what you pay for. It isn't the most effective.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Okay, so digging into Amazon US a little, I glanced at the New Releases top 100 earlier in the day in Norse/Viking Fantasy and I'm pretty sure I was just outside the top 20. So I thought... hmm, more visibility if I can get to #3 for the New Release sidebar. So, popped the FB US promo up to $20 and it is just getting clicks at an absurd pace compared to any of my other ads... but now I check in and #7 in the New Releases of Norse/Viking, While only moving 3 spots in the full category. But in the Dark Fantasy Category moved up 30 spots or so (easier moves in the lower 400's there).

No idea what the hell it all means, but it's fun to watch, LOL.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Run some $1 per day ads, see what kind of reaction you get to them. A person can narrow down what's working pretty quick. $0.20 per click is a solid rate, means your ad is doing okay from what I've run and what I've heard from others. Also watch your gender gap, I once had an ad running 80% female so turned it to delivering to all women... dropped my rates by about .05 per click.

I'm not understanding this. When I read $0.18 (or whatever) per click, I am picturing that every time someone clicks on the ad, you pay eighteen cents. But then you say to run an ad at one dollar a day. And what does FB tell you about the clicks? I would not have thought gender. If there's a place at FB where all this is explained, please point me there, so you don't have to re-hash for the noob.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
No, no. The FB ads I'm running are on impressions, so the rate you pay per click depends on the effectiveness of your ad. Bookbub you pay per click and the bidding is nuts.

Like since my original post here, I've picked up 67 clicks which cost about $8.04, but if I'd gotten 5 clicks, it still would've cost $8.04. It makes you refine your ads, for sure.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Update: 185 FB clicks on a KU focused ad since I started this thread. Total spend for 286 clicks $30.08. That's cheap. I also discovered that this ad is nailing the female demographic at about $.10 per click while men are about 0.16... which is still cheap, but women are about 74% of clicks. Eve's demographic is also skewing over 35, but once over 35 it's all about the same. Most expensive age group is 18-24, followed by 25-35. I could be more efficient by dropping 18-24 YO's, think I'll do that as a test.

KU downloads in the US must be the driver... sold one paperback and ebook this morning (not from AMS ad unless it updates slowly to say otherwise) but moved up 130 spots in Dark Fantasy, and 17 spots in Norse/Viking to #30. More interesting moved to #4 from #7 last night in the New Releases of Norse/Viking, where my goal is #3 to hit the Hot New sidebar.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I’ve run a little on mailing list promos but anything effective there tended to be “shotgun” rather than “sniper” targeting. My hope is to refine a target audience and build a little rep before such a thing. Try to go as organic as possible, with a signup with freebie offer at the end of the book.

Are you doing any mailing list promotions, or are you holding off on that for now?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Ok, so... I got to thinking and combining the # of clicks and KDP Rocket's guesstimate of sales to attain a particular rank, I put together this guesstimate on top of guesstimates, LOL.

Between 8-10% of people who click the FB ad either purchased or downloaded on KU. People who (unique) clicked on my one ad in the US was about 9.2% of those Reached (not impressions), and so about 0.8% of Reach became a customer of one sort or another. This is, however, an ad performing better than 80% of comparable FB ads (according to FB's comments).

So, with 2000 clicks, 150-200 KU downloads/cash sales seems a decent estimate. This jibes with the numbers I've read while perusing marketing gab around the net, perhaps a bit high, but the ad was also performing well.

And with those clicks, I'm scaling back all advertising (small presence in 4 English-speaking countries) to await reviews and further organized promo.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
And AMS ads is not kidding about delay in numbers (upto 14 days) or three paperbacks sold today in the span of 8 clicks... I'm betting on major delay, heh heh. It could also be a combo of PB and Digital... but anyhow, all of a sudden AMS ads went from in the red to in the black by a few dollars. However, the keywords of 3/4 suggest they were coming back looking for the book without remembering the full title. So, they may have found it anyhow... but with search terms, who the heck knows.
 

Rkcapps

Sage
Don't know if you've noticed, but it's interesting to note. If you say your budget is $100 on Facebook, they'll spend your whole budget, but AMS don't. They'll only spend based on clicks, which may or may not reflect your budget.

I believe the demographic tools of Facebook are awesome though.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Yeah, AMS hasn't come close to spending my daily budget... I think I have it at $5? In total I've spent $13.26 on AMS with 126k impressions, which seems a decent deal.
 
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