A few tips and tricks for using Facebook Ads #WriterWednesday #AuthorToolboxBlogHop #Author Marketing
[image error]I’ve tried Facebook ads on and off for years. Several authors absolutely rave about Facebook ads. I couldn’t crack the code, however. Using Facebook ads was like burning money. Money I wasn’t willing to spend. So, I gave up and told everyone I knew that Facebook ads were a waste of money and moved on. But then I decided I would make money from this writing thing and took a course to help me with Facebook ads.
While the course helped a lot (A LOT), it didn’t help me crack the code. That’s when I realized you can’t crack the code! Let me repeat that – You Can Not Crack The Code. Nope. BUT there are certain ‘tricks’ you can use that my help make your Facebook ad work. Here are some things I’ve learned that work (or at least make me waste less money).
Bid cap. Unlike with Amazon ads, Facebook ads will use all of your money. That’s right – all of your money. If you set a daily limit of $5, Facebook is using $5 (and sometimes even more than that). This can lead to a very expensive cost per click rate. Yikes! If you want to ensure you get more than a handful of bids per day, but don’t want to mortgage your house to ‘pay’ for your writing career, bid caps are a good idea. You’ll need to play around with the amounts. I find a bid cap of 20 cents works well whereas anything lower leads to Facebook throwing its hands in the air and screaming “I can’t work with this person!”
[image error]
Book covers are a no-no. You need to have a snappy image to capture the attention of Facebook scrollers. You may love your book cover. I know I love all of mine! But a book cover, in my experience, does not capture the audience’s attention as well as other images. With my novel, Finders, Not Keepers, I thought an edited picture of the cover would work. The book is all about a woman discovering a necklace and the cover has a woman hiding a necklace behind her back. Sounds good, I thought. Wrong. This picture works much better.
[image error]
Make it snappy. I have a tendency to want to tell potential readers all about the book. This happens, but then this happens, and then – oh! – this happens. *Cringes* Facebook ads need to be short and snappy. Facebook users are scrolling and scrolling. Attention spans are incredibly short. You’ve got seconds – if not milliseconds! – to get a potential reader’s attention. Here’s an ad that has worked well for me:
[image error]
~~~~
This blog post is part of the #AuthorToolboxBlogHop. This is a monthly blog hop hosted by @raimeygallant. Make sure to stop by the other author blog posts in this month’s blog hop to fill up your author toolbox!
