Social media is a great platform for building business relationships. However, it is not a great place to sell your books.
Hear me out please. There are very successful authors doing business on social media, but they are experiencing success with training and coaching. Not running book ads.
I do sell a lot of books and they are not through the benefit of advertising on social media. Other articles are available on how I successfully sell my self published books.
I recently ran an experiment with Linked In and Facebook. Against my better judgment, I reluctantly decided to once again pay to advertise my books and publishing company.
Using Facebook, I created four ads: three for books and one for Red Bike Publishing. Each ad is a pay per click ad and I set my limit to ten dollars a day. I gave each ad a max of a one hundred dollar limit before pausing it. I also limited my ads’ exposure to demographics likely to buy my book.
For example, for my security clearance books, I set the ads to be visible for 22-55 years old and/or small business owners and/or professionals with technical backgrounds and living in the US. For my novel, I set it for women 18 and older, with interests in novels, eBooks and Christian Fiction. I tailored each ad with carefully selected demographics.
I could tell the ads were enticing, as they received many clicks. I also saw my bill running higher and higher, but no sales. The ads rang up costs with no return on investment. You might argue that the audience did not like the link they clicked on, and I would agree with you.
The point is that it is incredibly hard to advertise niche books to the general public. The public might not understand what they are clicking on until they click. If they buy, great. If they don’t, you’re out a buck fifty. The ads provide just enough room for a sentence or two, not enough to really understand the product. Once they click, they can read more and either buy or move on.
Let’s dig further. I went to Google Analytics to see how these ads were performing. Proving my point, I could see that though the audience clicked on my links to see the books, they did not buy. Now I realized that my advertising budget was going down the drain pretty quickly.
So, what does work? Providing informative articles. Looking back at my analytics, I see that all online sales were a result of referrals from my blogs. Out of the thousands of sales annually, I can tell you none came from advertising. That’s why I rarely advertise unless to a specific industry related niche newsletter.
If you need assistance with book ideas or business ideas, check out book based business incubator or our book Get Rich in a Niche.