Best FB ad creative I've had for a new ad

[Demesnedenoir]

As the title says, and this is for clicks only, not sales... Mind you I've had ads run better after they've been up and running for a time, as FB figures out the target audience and adjusts CPM, but to run anywhere near 10% click through this early is impressive.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I can see why it would work

How do you target? I recently came across this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C6QXXGSY/ (free currently), which argues that the detailed targeting is a waste and that you should only target FB ads at country, gender and age. And then let Facebook figure out who to actually show your ad to. The idea behind it is that FB has a whole department who does nothing other than figuring out what to show to people.

The advantage being that your audience is larger (since you're targeting almost everyone), and you reach people you would never think of. Ultimately it should result in cheaper clicks and longer running ads.

Not sure if it works or not. I've just put up a FB ad using this idea, and so far the results seem pretty much in line with earlier ads I tried. Roughly the same CPC, and a 7% CTR. Hasn't resulted in many sales, but the same goes for my other ads...

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yikes! The immortal question with all ad targeting. Facebook has screwed up... I mean Limited... their targeting so much due to privacy concerns that... No, I'd still call that rubbish. Not total rubbish, mind you, the theory might not be entirely wrong. However, the best targeting for FB ads I ever found was "A Song of ice and Fire". Game of Thrones and GRRM pull in a wider HBO and gaming audience, whereas ASoIaF was more specific to books and I could run at $0.12 per click or less and generate sales. Now? Ooof. Although this ad is at about $0.15 per click and still learning, so it could improve. It's the sales that seem to be lagging. Even with Amazon Attribution, I'm not tracking my sales all that well. 20% are all I can identify. it's weird. So, I'm attributing other sales to word of mouth and Amazon emails to customers who clicked earlier, which would include both Amazon and FB ads.

Could FB ads achieve that with a generic touch? In theory, yes, but the training time will cost money, and no doubt produce a lot of false leads, much like the "book book book" target will get sales on Amazon ads. I've never had luck with look-alike audiences on FB either, so I don't put a lot of faith in much of its targeting.

Right now, I'm playing with targeting a few authors and broad fantasy categories, then narrowing the audience to Goodreads people to try and refine that to readers and not fans of HBO and whoever else is carrying a fantasy series these days, heh heh.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I strugle finding good audiences on FB. They always seem to run out after a week or so. And there is very few suitable targets to chose from. Though perhaps that might just be me not knowing the ideal audience for my novels. Or maybe that I'm not writing GrimDark enough...

 

[pmmg]

I wonder at the value of FB. It seems to me to be a medium on the way out. My generation used it, but the older and younger generations, are they really on it? And those that are, are probably finding less and less use for it. I wonder if its really a viable thing to put effort in into the future.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Depends on TA. I don't market to YA or New Adult on purpose. Audiences are scattered to the winds at this point, there is no one social media to rule them all... which means good things for Amazon's ad platform in collecting money from writers, heh heh. Very much a find-what-works system at this point. Once I have videos I'll be doing more with that on Youtube, Twitter, and Tiktok.

But my theory goes a bit like this: People clicks on your books, look at them on Amazon, buy OR don't by, and those people (If Amazo is doing there job well) are likely to get emails recommending your book, and if they're doing even better, it ups the chances of their getting fed your Amazon ad when searching for fantasy books on Amazon, AND then FB continues to hit those people with ads, upping the number of times they see your book and cover. Honestly, I suspect the most powerful thing writers have going for them are the Amazon Recommended emails. So long as people pay attention to these.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the younger gens will pay attention to; they've been bombarded with ads forever, so I think it comes down more to book bloggers and influencers.

I wonder at the value of FB. It seems to me to be a medium on the way out. My generation used it, but the older and younger generations, are they really on it? And those that are, are probably finding less and less use for it. I wonder if its really a viable thing to put effort in into the future.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

It's a bitch. The EU screwed the FB pooch over privacy concerns. Bookbub ads are great at micro-targeting, but are expensive as all get out and perform poorly unless you have a major price cut. However, they can teach you a bit about who your audience might be... maybe... and this knowledge can be put to use on Amazon where you can also micro-target those same authors and their books.

So, here's one thing I hope to do June 24-26. It's the 5th anniversary of Eve of Snows, so I'm going to offer it free on Amazon for the first time ever, for 3 days. On those three days I'm going to run Bookbub ads (hopefully) set up with Amazon Attribution to maybe judge the downloads better... maybe. I setup a different BB ad for every author I think is worth going after... or at least as many as I can afford to go after! And find out if I see any major targeting differences between authors.

This may or may not yield useful information... I've never tried it before... but if it does, then I will start targeting the Winning authors more heavily on Amazon.

I strugle finding good audiences on FB. They always seem to run out after a week or so. And there is very few suitable targets to chose from. Though perhaps that might just be me not knowing the ideal audience for my novels. Or maybe that I'm not writing GrimDark enough...

 

[Prince of Spires]

I wonder at the value of FB. It seems to me to be a medium on the way out. My generation used it, but the older and younger generations, are they really on it? And those that are, are probably finding less and less use for it. I wonder if its really a viable thing to put effort in into the future.

You actually very wrong about that. Facebook currently has 2.9 billion users (and still growing by the way), of which 2 billion use the platform daily. Which means that you can reach about 25% of the world population on Facebook on any given day. It's also the third most visited website worldwide (after Google and Youtube). And an average American user uses Facebook for 33 minutes per day. Which is more than TikTok, or Twitter. (see 26 Facebook statistics marketers should know in 2023 )

It might not be the hip and happening platform at the moment, but it's proven that it has staying power and it's not going anywhere any time soon. In 10 years, who knows. But now? It's still a big plaform for advertising. It's also stable, solid and easy to use, which make it great for starting out.

 

[pmmg]

You actually very wrong about that. Facebook currently has 2.9 billion users (and still growing by the way), of which 2 billion use the platform daily. Which means that you can reach about 25% of the world population on Facebook on any given day. It's also the third most visited website worldwide (after Google and Youtube). And an average American user uses Facebook for 33 minutes per day. Which is more than TikTok, or Twitter. (see 26 Facebook statistics marketers should know in 2023 )

It might not be the hip and happening platform at the moment, but it's proven that it has staying power and it's not going anywhere any time soon. In 10 years, who knows. But now? It's still a big plaform for advertising. It's also stable, solid and easy to use, which make it great for starting out.

I dont know how I could be wrong, I was asking and speculating. There was no claim of being right.

Anyway...I do wonder at the value of facebook. Maybe the value is there, and the advertising there is well spent, but I do suspect it is a fading web location. IF the number you posted are accurate, then maybe its still doing well.

I suppose the real question comes to, what is the target audience, and how much of the target audience is using facebook? In my observation (which is not scientific) ppl from my generation do, people from the next generation down, may have an account, but they use something else.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

TA is certainly key. Booktok can do amazing things with the younger set. But, their ad platform is swinging like a pendulum in a hurricane from what I understand. So, I think part of the issue is that sure, some demographics aren't on FB, but where are they that you can reach? Twitter ads appear to be improving in theory, we'll see about reality, but outside of hitting the lottery with a viral bootok video, I'm not sure where the YA/NA audience resides in ad space these days. Snapchat ads? No idea.

And they'll all get hit by privacy laws, except Amazon, I'd wager, because their ads target your shopping and not the person.

I dont know how I could be wrong, I was asking and speculating. There was no claim of being right.

Anyway...I do wonder at the value of facebook. Maybe the value is there, and the advertising there is well spent, but I do suspect it is a fading web location. IF the number you posted are accurate, then maybe its still doing well.

I suppose the real question comes to, what is the target audience, and how much of the target audience is using facebook? In my observation (which is not scientific) ppl from my generation do, people from the next generation down, may have an account, but they use something else.

 

[Prince of Spires]

It definitely is about finding your target audience. But it's also about being able to reach that audience at a decent cost.

Amazon ads are great for finding your target audience. However, clicks can quickly become very expensive. If you want a bit of volume, you can easily pay $1 for a click. The reason is that you're bidding against other authors, many of whom have long series where a single sale of book 1 can make them $20+, making that $1 click economical.

Other platforms can get confusing or difficult to manage.

The thing with FB is that you can get decent targeting, with relatively cheap clicks, compared to Amazon. It's easy and there is plenty of tutorials to set it up. That's the value there.

One thing that also plays into it here, is that it's actually surprisingly hard to get Amazon to spend your money. You only pay when someone clicks (which is good), but you need a lot of views to get those clicks. And those are harder to get then you might think. With FB it's easy. You give them $5 a day, and they will spend $5 a day. This makes it easy to see if your target is actually doing something.