Years ago, the cost of advertising was so high that you needed an ad agency to help you handle your business advertising. Nowadays, social media has taken over with relatively cheap and efficient solutions.
The Facebook advertising option gives you the flexibility you need as it allows for a DIY-friendly way to boost your message reach.
With Facebook advertising, you minimize money spent on creating ads while you reach more than the number of followers who regularly see your posts.
The Tactics
Facebook allows you to set an advertising budget for less than a cup of coffee. Therefore setting up Facebook ads is a way to effectively promote your book (or other product) without overspending. However, one needs to be wary of trying it out without specific goals in mind.
Take advantage of the low cost and try out your messages and ad creative to achieve a specific goal. As with any advertising, ask yourself the five Ws. who, what, where, when and most importantly, why.
Here are some things to note before starting a Facebook ad campaign.
Who is Your Target Audience?
In Facebook ad, you can target who you want to reach whether fans or friends. If you intend to grow your fan base, then targeting your audience is a good option. If you want to post for current fans, you might simply boost it to your friends and followers.
Prospective readers can be targeted based on their interests, age group, location, and any other demographic characteristics.
Targeting a specific people in your ad helps you reach your ideal audience at a low cost than other advertising means.
What’s Your Purpose?
When you don’t know the purpose of a thing, is impossible to get the results you desire. Therefore, you should have a clear purpose when boosting your Facebook posts. Posts about your favorite color or hangout spot might put a smile on the face of a fan or generate a bit of likes and comments, but it’s not going to sell more books.
What kind of post will an author make?
Post about an upcoming book launch and ensure it is promoted to fans that live in proximity to the book launch. So, in this case, “fence” your post within a geographic area where your audience is located.
What’s Your Call to action?
Your sole aim is to make your fans take action concerning your Facebook advertisement. With this in mind, you should ensure that you have a call to action. Do you need them to share it with a friend or tag a friend? Subscribe to your mailing list? Or Buy your book? There should be a well-defined path you want the fan to follow, which will also help you measure the success level of your ad campaign.
For instance, you could test run a Facebook ad to get more information about your future marketing efforts and book success. To obtain such information you might need to send out two versions of the same ad with one difference to compare the effect of that change. You get more useful information with the slightest change.
A/B Testing
If you want to do a comparison check between two book cover designs, for example, you could compare both by promoting two identical Facebook ads for a reasonable fee.
Two ads with an identical copy could be created with specific targets such as same gender, location, and interests for the same budget and time. The only difference between both would be the cover image you want to compare in the ad. By tracking the number of users that clicked on your ad, you could determine the most effective cover which would make a great marketing copy.
The good thing about the A or B test is that there is no right or wrong answer. You only want to see your target audience responses and see which got the better response.
When it comes to book publishing, several things are subjective especially in issues like book cover as we might have a different perspective to it. But, tests like this gives you an insight into what your audience will prefer, and it also gives you valuable information about your audience (data-driven information) and helps boost your book’s publicity.
Where will it Stand Out?
You should carefully select Facebook contents that stand out for promotion. Use high quality and attractive photos and reduce the amount of text you post, make use of a concise and well-written sentence. It’s important to add a touch of humor to your post, but it shouldn’t be done to the detriment of your entire post. Watch what you post and don’t post what will portray you in a bad light such as grammatical errors or low-quality images.
Limit When Your AD is Boosted
Boosting too much content can have an adverse effect on your ad campaign. We all know how we feel when a friend posts too many messages and you get so bored that you skim through without reading it.
Pro Tip: Too much advertising, is like paying to get ignored.
If you are a writer serious about growing your profile, then you should take advantage of what Facebook has to offer. You can build your authorship profile with the organic opportunities on Facebook while you occasionally boost your great contents with a paid Facebook ad.
Why?
Spending quality time to map out a solid strategy for your Facebook fan page will go a long way to promote your book and build a loyal fan base.
The decision about when to make a paid ad is one you should make based on data and gut feeling. Be clear of your ad goals before deciding to part away with your money.
A well-planned organic and paid Facebook advertising campaign will boost your online presence and guarantee more sales.
If this all sounds too complicated, let Briggs & Schuster help you succeed.