ok! Here we are– part 2 in the paid ads series!
I’m hoping you did every single thing on the list in this article, because if you did not, you are going to waste even more money on ads by starting keyword-specific campaigns. Please! Go back and work your way through the list!!
I’m going to trust that you did everything on the list and then ran some low-cost automated targeting ads for a week or two. If you did that and got some conversions, great! Let’s move on. If you did that and didn’t get any sales, go over to this article to try to figure out why. Does your book need a new cover? More reviews? A better description? Is it not competitive in its genre? Don’t shoot the messenger, but I would love for you to solve any egregious problems with your book before you spend any more money on ads.
If you’re totally happy with how your initial Automated Targeting campaign went, frigging great! Let’s proceed to the next step.
Log in to your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account and go over to the “Promote and Advertise” part of the specific book you’re working on, OR go to ads.amazon.com and see if they will let you log in over there. Sometimes Amazon gets their sh*t together and consolidates the logins. Worth a try! Also, I know you know where to log in by now, because you’ve been monitoring your automated ad, right? RIGHT?!
Anyhow, find the Automated Targeting ad you ran, click down into the ad itself (which looks like this):
Then look for this section:
You’re looking for two things:
1. Keywords that generate clicks and sales.
2. Products your book has performed well against, and
You’re going to use this information to create a Manual Targeting campaign:
- Focus on high-performing keywords identified in your Automated campaign.
- Use any product that your book converted against.
- Use the keywords from your keyword research and anything you found on Publisher Rocket.
Go through the same interface as when you started the automated ad, then choose “keyword targeting.”
Both of these types of ads work great, and you can run them both at the same time (you’ll need to start them separately). As with all things Amazon, the more specific you get the better, so make sure you are prepared with a good list of keywords and/ or a list of competitive titles. As with the “Automated Targeting” rant, I will encourage you to never ever take Amazon’s default suggestions. Remember, they are trying to make money for themselves, which they do when they sell advertising clicks, not when you sell books.
Here’s an example of how they are going to try to do that in the “Manual” keyword interface:
This is hilarious. If I click the “Add All” button and start this ad, Amazon is going to advertise this book against the words “Book,” “Cookbook,” “Free Books,” “marketing,” “sap,” “how” and “free,” and is going to charge me up to $1.21 PER CLICK for that privilege.
Again, no thank you, and please get ahold of yourself, Amazon. I would be happy to come in for a meeting if you’d like some feedback.
The way to best use this particular interface (and to harness the magic of the Amazon suggested search algorithm) is to switch over to the “Enter list” tab. Switch to “custom bid” and set the bid for something really low like 10 cents. Also, uncheck “Broad” for match type, because that gets us back into “Amazon wilding out and advertising your book against random words” territory again.
Your screen will look like this:
ok, now enter the topic/ genre/ subject of your book, and hold on to your hat! This part is cool.
Well, will you look at that?! Amazon is actually being insightful and helpful. Most of these suggestions are what my book is actually about. I will just repeat this type of search with phrases like “how to market a book” and “marketing self-published books” until I have a list of about 50 keywords. When you get the hang of this you can go up to 100 keywords per campaign, but for right now let’s stop at 50 and get this thing launched.
Nice! You should have a similar list that is related to your book’s subject matter or genre. You can use the names of other authors, other books, and anything else you think might be relevant or get someone to buy your book. Also, if you never filled out the seven keyword slots when you published your books, take some of these great keywords and fill those out right this minute!
Next up is “Negative Targeting,” and we’re skipping that because this is our first ad and we don’t have that kind of insight yet. I swear we’re almost done!
“Campaign bidding strategy” is after that, and I recommend that you choose “Dynamic bids, down only” because you never want to give Amazon permission to spend MORE of your money than your default bid. “Down only” is a good option because that way, Amazon can LOWER your bid to see if doing so will still yield a click. If/ when it does, great! You’ll know that for the future.
You made it! You’re on the very last choice before you can launch this ad!
I know, that was stupid complicated. I feel your pain.
The very last thing we’re going to do is fill out the “Settings” for the ad. Here’s what mine looks like:
Amazon has now moved this down to the very bottom, which is even more problematic for you because you are likely to be fed up by then and miss this “gotcha” moment. The default for this screen is “No End Date,” but you should actually NEVER start a brand new ad with no end date!! Having no end date is going to make you think you can “set it and forget it,” which you absolutely cannot ever do with paid advertising. “No end date” is just Amazon wanting to stick their hand in your pocket and start taking your money from now on, whether or not your ads are working. They are counting on the fact that you are a right-brained creative ADHD type and you will probably a) forget this ad is running, b) forget to check it regularly, and c) never come back to optimize it. So, whatever they are offering you here is what’s going to happen from now on, and I promise you, you’re not going to like it when you get the bill at the end of the month. Remember, you have to pay Amazon for these ads whether or not they result in book sales.
So— change that date to two weeks from the day you start running the ad. You want to schedule this like everything else in your life that costs money and needs maintenance. You wouldn’t enter into an open-ended, paid agreement with no end date with any other company, so don’t do it here.
The second problem is that you have absolutely no idea what to set your daily budget for, and Amazon’s certainly not going to give you any guidance that might discourage you from getting in over your head. They’ll let you set that sucker to $100 a day and spend every penny! They do not care if you sell no books and end up cash flow negative. They made money, so who cares about you?
I advise people to just set this for $5- $10 dollars per day at the beginning and check it every single day. You will have ample (just, so many!) opportunities to raise your daily budget, so start small and manageable and scale up as you gain more knowledge. There is no need to “go big or go home” at this moment in your career.
Shockingly, YOU ARE NOW DONE with your second ad! Hit that beautiful blue “Launch campaign” button at the bottom.
This button right here!! I made the screenshot huge so we could celebrate this moment together.
