Stop Using Facebook Ads to Sell Your Book on Amazon…
Without Doing This First!
You’ve seen the ads.
You know exactly what I am talking about. If you are reading this, chances are you are a self-published author. And if you are a self-published author, your social media feeds are filled with posts and ads from other self-published authors that look a little like this one here.
It is probably more likely that you are guilty of doing this yourself. Don’t worry; I am not judging you. I did the same myself when I first started my self-publishing journey.
I ran a Facebook ad similar to this a few years back for my title Jackie Wins Them All.
It looks cute. It has all the makings of an attractive ad; a big, bold graphic of my character, a lovely book cover, a positive review quote from Kirkus, and a call to action. The copy that supported this ad included a description of the book, more reviews, and another call to action.
Jackie Wins Them all is one of my more popular titles. The year it was released (2020), it sold hundreds of copies, and to date, the overall sales are in the thousands.
But I can’t tell you whether or not this ad had any impact on those sales.
Well, it must have, right? I sold hundreds of books. How else can I explain the sales if it wasn’t for this ad?
Glad that you asked…
Upon releasing this title, I ran a multi-channel marketing campaign, as I do for all of my titles. I used a combination of social media posts, Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and I partnered with influencers.
This particular ad was used in my social feeds and Facebook ads. Like most novices, I boosted my Instagram posts (do not recommend), ran Facebook traffic ads, and provided influencers with links to my book’s Amazon product page.
HUGE MISTAKE!
Why? Because there was no way for me to know whether those marketing efforts were effective. I had absolutely ZERO way of knowing if these ads contributed to selling any of the hundred books I’ve sold.
As you can imagine, these efforts did not come cheap– especially some of the influencers I worked with 🙄 (a story for another day).
When investing so much money in advertising, it would kind of make sense to have a way to know if it was a good investment or not.
It would have been great if I had a way to ATTRIBUTE the sale of a book to a source.
Yes, I told this entire story to talk about attribution 😬.
Attribution is one of the most crucial components of an effective marketing campaign.
I like to think of it as THE most important aspect, but the marketing gurus might try to fight me about that claim.
The dictionary defines attribution as:
“The action of regarding something as being caused by a person or thing.”
In other words, being able to say or think that one thing happening is the result of something else. Like cause and effect... ish.
In the case of advertising and sales, attribution is knowing that a sale is the direct result of an ad.
When you direct Facebook ads or social posts to your Amazon book listing, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not that particular post or ad led to any sales.
Sure, you are provided with insights. You can see how many people clicked the link, but does it tell you how many people actually made the purchase… you know… the thing you really, really need to know?
NO!
But Fabian, what about Facebook Pixels? Is that not what they are for?
Unfortunately, Facebook pixels can only track the activity on websites. It is a snippet of code inserted into your website’s code that creates a connection between Facebook and your site. This link/connection communicates to your Facebook ads manager, letting you know that someone who clicked your ad made a purchase.
Facebook Pixels cannot be implanted into Amazon product listings. This means there is no link/ connection between Facebook and Amazon to communicate sales. Once someone clicks the ad and heads over to Amazon, they are lost. You have no idea what their next actions were.
This is where you are probably anxious to find out if there is a solution. The answer is yes. But before I get to that, it is important to fully understand the impact proper attribution can have on your marketing efforts.
Let’s take a deeper look at the fantastic impact attribution can have on your marketing.
Example Time!
Let’s say you are running three ads.
(For the sake of simplicity, we are not going to factor in the cost of goods or any additional product related costs)
You are investing $10 on each ad.
The three ads all point to your book, and you generate $100 in sales.
Amazing right?
You invested $30 and made $100 for a net profit of $70.
You are in the green, and it is time to make it even greener, so you decide to scale up and invest even more money into these ads. 💸
You do that, and of course, you make even more money, and eventually, this story has a happy ending. 🥳
Let’s look at this exact scenario but with attribution in place.
Same three ads
The same $30 investment
The same $100 revenue.
But now, you ensured attribution is appropriately set up and can identify what sales were generated by each ad.
You discover that Ad 1 is responsible for $90 worth of sales.
Both Ads 2 and 3 only generated $5 each.
That is right; two of your ads actually lost you money.
In the first example, you had no idea it was happening. You saw the profit, and that is all that mattered.
Now that you can ATTRIBUTE these sales, you can be more strategic with your next steps. You can now make the decision to:
Cancel ads 2 and 3, and only run ad 1. By doing this, your $70 Net profit turns into an $80 net profit. $90 (ad1 revenue) - $10 (ad1 investment) = $80 net profit. You are now netting $10 more while spending $20 less.
Cancel ads 2 and 3, and use the ad spend from those towards ad 1. Let’s say that the ad1 return on investment remains the same, where every $10 lead to $90 in sales.
Once you allocate the budget from the poorly performing ads to ad1, you can expect the now $30 investment to turn into $270 in sales, netting you a profit of $240. 🤑
Think about that.
Now that you have attribution in place, you made $170 more off of the same investment. 🤯
That, my friends, is why attribution is essential.
Now…
Remember I said there was a solution?
I lied… 😂
Just kidding, there is.
The Solution
The solution is called Amazon Attribution, now available for authors and booksellers in the Amazon Advertising Console.
For a long-time, authors and booksellers did not have access to all of the fancy Amazon marketing tools other brands and agencies had access to. Don’t ask me why.
Now, we have a way to measure the effectiveness of other marketing platforms pointing to our book listings on Amazon.
Here is a summary of how it works:
Within the Amazon Advertising Console, you can create custom traceable links to your product page on Amazon.
You would then take this link and use it as the destination link for your Facebook Ads, Instagram posts, TikTok posts, and Influencer partnerships.
When people click the link to access your product page, that interaction is now captured by your Amazon Ads account.
You now have a visual chart of these key performance indicators to make better marketing decisions.
This is all easily accessible via your KDP account.
The video below is a complete walkthrough on how to go about setting up your first Amazon Attribution campaign.
With that said…
Stop Using Facebook Ads to Sell Books on Amazon…
Without Setting Up Amazon Attribution First! ✌🏾
