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Book Marketing: What Works and What Doesn't - Google Adwords

11/11/2013

8 Comments

 
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As you may know, book marketing is a regular topic on my blog. I've been guerrilla marketing my books for a year now and have tried many strategies. To learn about other tips you can try part 1,  part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8 at each respective link. 

As I am sure you are aware, Google AdWords is quite the behemoth when it comes to advertising these days. Pay-per-click advertising is being used by shoe stores, plumbers  and psychologists all over the world. Business owners sign up, customize an ad, and target it to customers based on very specific criteria. In twenty-five characters or less, you construct a sales pitch and link it to your website or include a phone number. Viola, you'll be racking in the cashola. Or so you hope.

With Google's monster reach and seemingly endless stores of data, you can see how powerful this might be. But, could it work for books? How do you par down a 90k novel into a twenty-five character blurb? Do people who click on Google Ads then go on to buy books? I had thought no, but then I read an article discussing a man who makes a living helping people use Google AdWords to sell novels. (I link to him only to illustrate that he exists. I did not work with him, nor am I endorsing his services in any way.) So, I thought I'd do my own little experiment to see if I was missing the bright glittery Google boat. 

Step One: I read up on Google AdWords. Here are some websites that I found helpful: Newbies Guide, The Savy Book Marketer. I had some prior knowledge from when I'd used this service for another business, but I felt very confused about many aspects of AdWords. Let me be clear, this system is not for the technologically challenged. There are all kinds of tools and buttons that made me feel like I was back in my college level statistics again. Right off the bat I was inundated and overwhelmed. Since I have minimal time for marketing, I did not spend countless hour researching. This may be my biggest downfall when dealing with Google AdWords and may also explain why there are people paying others to help them create ads. 

Step Two: I wrote my ad. I did some research on keywords and use their handy-dandy keyword planner. This is a cool tool that lets you know which keywords are searched most often. So instead of "novel" you might choose "fiction" in your ad. This is helpful and I wish I'd had more time to play around with the keywords. That being said I wrote my ad. Here it is. 
  • Fast-paced Dystopia Novel
  • amazon.com/Breeders-Series
  • 121 five star reviews. Only $2.99
  • "Absolutely devoured this book!"


Then I gave it a $25 budget and sent my little ad baby into the world. 

The Results: In seven days my $25 budget had been spent. Each click cost me between $0.39 and $2.89. Now, remember I only make $2 if I sell a book. If an ad costs me more than I get in sales revenue, that is a problem. In hindsight, I think I need to make my budget less than 3 dollars a day. You live and you learn, I guess, but this isn't play money I'm messing with. This is my hard earned cash (and, people, boot season is fast upon us and Mama needs a new pair of shoes). All joking aside, my ad seemed to work and was clicked on. My sales saw no boost that week. I actually sold about six books less that week than any other week that month. My budget limited my exposure, but again, I am not able to spend endless amounts of cash on a strategy that hasn't really proven will pay the bills. If I spent more time and energy learning the ins and outs of Google, I might make more money. Then again I might not make any. If someone clicks, Google takes my cash regardless if I make a sale or not. 

The Conclusion: I am really not convinced Google AdWords can sell books. If you have A LOT of time to research this very complicated tool, it MIGHT be worth something. Then again, you'll never really know how much it sells because all you know is they clicked on the ad. There's nothing to tell you if they bought your book. 

So, what about you? Any luck with Google AdWords? Sound off below.

8 Comments
J James link
3/24/2014 02:21:43 pm

I too have struggled with the complexity of GoogleAds. I created my advert to advertise my website as a first step hoping that people would then go on to buy my book (Denial a Deceit Discovery) after reading more about it on my website. Without question my website traffic increased but I have yet to see an improvement on sales. This also highlighted that my website was not of a good enough standard. Readers were clicking on and off the website without exploring the pages. The hardest thing is to know what kind of budget to set. Too low and your advert never shows. Too high and you get more clicks but you are probably spending a lot more than you are making in sales. Still a lot for me to explore here.

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Phantammeron Novels link
4/30/2016 10:33:27 am

Thanks for the information. I tried Google ads years ago for a business and did not see positive ROI. But it does take time and careful tracking. I am sure you have info on Kindle advertising, but I am seeing some success with that tool, as its carefully tailored to Amazon's book selling system. It relates to Google Adwords in the sense, what you can learn from marketing there might apply to that system.

What I have found is that you need to work on your book ads, refining your text so your "Click Through Rate" from your total impression ad counts gets to a decent level that beats typical rates. Anything above 0.1% is good. Once you achieve that, you are getting better than average interest in your ads. You then need to track your conversion or sales rate from the click throughs. These are the actual percentages of people buying the book after reading about your book. the Kindle system of course allows you to see those counts, but you have to calculate the percent yourself. Anything 1-5% of the click throughs in sales is average. Anything above, say 10% means your book page is actually selling the book and working better than average, not failing.

Once you see those two numbers, you then lower your "Cost Per Click" value. In Google's system, its hard to control. Same for Kindle as part of that number is driven by impressions and how successful their algorythms feels your ad is. Like I said above, if you can show your click through rate is above .1% and your sale conversion at least 5%, both systems should have no problem either moving your Cost Per Click lower, or go ahead and in Kindles case, move it down to what you assign in the system. For example, setting it to 10 cents a click, which might be lower than what others are paying.

Whats supposed to happen in selling books via ads is your cost per click, and number of click throughs and sales beats what you are spending. As you approach parity where ad cost equals returns in sales, you then have a successful system, as in Amazon Kindle's case, you also make sales through borrows, lending, freebies, and reviews from sales. So the value of both systems then exceeds the sales. All thats a noble goal to achieve. But until you can carefully track sales via Google, its going to be difficult.

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AnnWrites
5/29/2016 06:50:13 am

I'm so glad I found your post! I liked your ad, it's very targeted. Maybe if you had used a book cover (put an image in your adwords ad) it would have worked better. But really the budget kills the effectiveness of the ads. I don't think it's worth it.

Reply
Grace link
10/24/2018 10:37:16 am

Hi

I make a living running Google Ads, and I think that in terms of budget it's not a matter of lowering it, but a matter of determining the ROI. The budget in AdWords is daily, and the objective of your campaign should be either clicks or conversions. If you sell a book for 2.99$, and set a maximum bid strategy (say, 1$ per click), then each click/conversion translate into profit.

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facebook ads parramatta link
1/29/2023 04:55:03 pm

The advertising you have associated with a term that receives little to no monthly search traffic may not be eligible to display. When Google realizes you're targeting a term with a very low search traffic, it will temporarily deactivate it in your account. Google will immediately react to the keyword if search volume increases to a respectable level.

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    Katie French is the author of The Breeders, a Young Adult dystopian adventure and Eyes Ever to the Sky, a sci fi romance. Nessa: A Breeders Story, a prequel novelette is available on Amazon for FREE. Sign up for notifications, or like her on Facebook. 

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