Aw’right, y’all. My Facebook ads for Indie Authors campaign is done and since a few of you asked me to share my experience, I’m doing that now. Consider me your canary in the coal mine. Your pebble in the well. Your cat in the minefield. LOL!
Here we go:
I ran two ads for my Indie Author M.A. Aikens-Plum Lane Books Facebook page and book, Whims of God. I budgeted $25.00 for one Facebook ad at a rate of $5.00 p/day for five days and another budgeted at $35.00 at $5.00 p/day for seven days. These are Facebook's CPC ads (cost/charge per click) which means each click on a Facebook ad takes money from that budget. Now, I made an error and submitted the same Facebook ad… twice. Blame my arthritic fat-fingers and that was probably the day I lost my glasses. Anyway, the same Facebook ad ran twice, which was fine, I just ended up paying an extra $25.00 for an extra ad. For Indie Author business reasons, I put it on a credit card, so the extra amount didn’t cause a panic attack in my bank account. Running an identical Facebook ad didn’t seem to make a difference in either direction. Both ads had nearly the same data sets and measurements after their run. So, as to that detail, my advice is… wear your glasses and don’t fat-finger ‘submit’ buttons twice. Ugh...
Before we continue, lets discuss an often overlooked and underutilized detail that is paramount at the start of any Indie Author ad/marketing campaign. Before writing books, I wore different hats as a web designer/manager, content/copy, and SEO writer. One of those hats was marketing strategies. While I had classes in the ways and means of pushing products, my lessons were old and not terribly applicable to today’s social media trends. The last time I pushed a product online, Facebook’s ad platform was wearing diapers. It was THAT long ago.
But no matter the time, nor the place, nor the marketing options, one marketing element still holds true: What are you trying to gain?
That is, and will always be, a universal question before starting your Indie Author ad campaigns. However, when discussing Facebook marketing, I rarely hear that question asked first anymore. Thankfully, in Facebook’s marketing pages, when you’re filling out your Indie Author to-do list, that question is asked.
My goal was competitive website placement. My Indie Author website (margaretaikens.com) and my book’s title, Whims of God, are shared by others already ranked in search engines. Not a large population, but enough that it makes my M.A. Aikens-Plum Lane Books website and Whims of God book rank lower in a Google SERP (search engine results page) below the top five categories. Not awful, but not great either. Top ten is nice but top five is better, so I had to SEO my website’s pages and run ads that would reflect those changes. Doing so will help my website rank higher. Higher rank translates to more visibility. More visibility translates to sales.
Here's the rub, it won’t last. Someone with a similar Whims of God and M.A. Aikens name and/or keywords will trample me again. And I will, in turn, tweak my Indie Author keywords and make mad love to Google’s algorithms and I will duel with my competitors in a game of ‘King of the SERP Mountain.’ This is the way of the SEO/Google world. It is website-eat-website and it… never… ever… ends.
That’s where Social Media marketing for Indie Authors comes in. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are cheap and fast alternatives to website battles in Googleland. Indie Authors should use them. Use them in place of a website. Use them for ads. Use them for product dissemination. Use them to warble your books. Use them.
So, that’s what I did. I warbled.
I chose Facebook’s marketing option, ‘get more website visitors’, and ran two (technically 3) Whims of God ads. One ad (the fat-fingered ad) was static (unchanging picture/definable information) with one image of my logo and a link to my M.A.Aikens Plum Lane Books website. It ran for five days, $5 a day, at a cost of $24.98 for one and $24.99 for its unexpected twin at a total cost of (because it was duplicated) $49.97. The other ad was dynamic (video/moveable parts) and offered a slide show of ads, including a video I also shared on my M.A. Aikens and Plum Lane Books Facebook page. That ad ran for 7 days at $5 a day for a total of $32.38.
All three ads ran for five and seven days. Because of my fat-finger, the cost came out to $82.35. Had I not fat-fingered, the cost would have been around $57.
The end result of seven-day data and totals:
· Post Reach: 7,944
· Post Engagement: 305
· Link Clicks: 257 (people who viewed ad and opened link to site)
Website Stats/Data During Ad Run (Based on Competitor Sites in Books and Literature/Worldwide):
· Most Popular Traffic Source: Facebook
· Unique Visitors to Site: 212
· Average Session on Site: 9 minutes
So, you’re probably asking if this translates to sales. Yes, but not a ton. I’m not buying yachts yet. But I sold three copies of Whims of God in seven days from a source NOT on my M.A. Aikens-Plum Lane Books website. Which was my aim. Although I do sell from my Plum Lane Books ecommerce page, selling via Barnes&Noble or Amazon is easier and so those venues are prominently displayed and hyperlinked (above the fold) on my Plum Lane Books website pages.
For me, the numbers were worth the Facebook marketing investment. My Indie Author website is better placed in searches, I made a few sales, and my branding for Whims of God improved inside FB where my demographic (whose target market was streamlined via these ads… thankyouverymuch) frequents more than other social media venues. But again, this float will not last. Which means, I’ll have to invest again.
So, the endgame for Indie Author marketing using Facebook ads was decent for me. I gained FB followers, my book, Whims of God, was seen more, and that visibility resulted in sales. Not hundreds, but more than I had the week before.
If you consider using Facebooks ads for sharing your Indie Author wares, ask yourself two questions before you begin: “What am I trying to gain?” and “Who are my target market?”
Answering those questions first will help define your Facebook ads for Indie Authors marketing goals.
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