 Hello, hello, writers. I'm Kristen Kiefer, author of fantasy fiction and creative writing resources, and you are listening to the Well-Sturried podcast, where I share insights, encouragement, and actionable advice designed to help you craft sensational novels and build your best writing life. Always in 30 minutes or less, so you can get back to writing, of course. Ready for the show? Let's get talking. Hello, writers, and welcome or welcome back to another episode of the Well-Sturried podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Kiefer, and today is Friday, October 29th, 2021. Today's episode is titled, How to Market a Book with Amazon Ad Campaigns. This episode gets a little bit into the technical weeds of running an Amazon ad campaign, and you might find it easier to implement this information if you're looking at it directly on a screen. So if you would like to check out the article that corresponds with today's episode, then you can find it listed at well-sturried.com slash marketing. Now let's dive in. Running an Amazon ad campaign can be a great way to introduce your book to new readers and increase sales, but there's no denying that Amazon advertising comes with a learning curve. Let this episode serve as your introductory guide to effective Amazon ad campaigns. As of October 2020, you can run two types of ads through Amazon advertising, sponsored product ads and lock screen ads. Sponsored product ads appear on relevant search result pages and individual product listings, while lock screen ads are shown on readers Kindle lock screens. When creating either type of campaign, you'll have the option to enter a list of relevant keywords that will determine which shoppers see your ad. Good keywords are words or phrases that your ideal reader might search on Amazon when looking for their next great read. For example, if you've written a sword and sorcery fantasy novel, then some of your ad keywords might include epic fantasy, magical quest, Brandon Sanderson, Lord of the Rings, and Hero's Journey. Choosing strong keywords that are relevant to your book boosts the number of impressions your ad receives. Impressions are the number of times your ad is shown to shoppers. The number of clicks your ad generates indicates how many shoppers clicked through your ad to view your book's listing, while orders refers to the number of sales your ad has generated. From these three numbers, impressions, clicks, and orders, Amazon derives two metrics that determine the overall effectiveness of your ad campaign. The first metric is ZTR, which stands for click-through rate. This is the ratio of clicks per impressions. Essentially, CTR indicates the percent of shoppers who, after seeing your ad, choose to click on it to learn more about your book. The higher your ad's CTR, the better. The second metric is ACOS, or Advertising Cost of Sale. This is the percent of your ad's sales revenue that you spent running the ad. ACOS is calculated by dividing your sales revenue by your ad spend. The lower your ACOS, the more effective your ad. With Amazon advertising, ad spend is determined by the number of clicks your ad receives, rather than sales or impressions. If your ad receives a large number of impressions, but no clicks, then you won't spend a dime. But if your ad receives a large number of clicks and no sales, then you'll be in the red. Therefore, it's important to ensure that your ad copy accurately represents your book and that your book's listing, such as its description, reviews, the cover design, and the inside look, effectively entices readers to purchase. With all of this foundational information out of the way, let's create your first Amazon ad together. After logging in to your KDP account, that's Kindle Direct Press, scroll to the book you'd like to advertise and click the Promote and Advertise button. On the next page, find the Run and Ad Campaign section and choose the Amazon Marketplace where you'd like your ad to run from the drop-down menu. Then select Create an Ad Campaign. You should now have the option to choose which type of campaign you'd like to create, a sponsored product ad or a lock screen ad. Most writers choose to run sponsored product ads for two reasons. One, only Kindle readers will see lock screen ads, severely limiting the reach of your campaign. And two, it's very easy for readers to accidentally click on a lock screen ad, which will drive up your ad spend and decrease profit. So that is why most writers choose to use sponsored product ads, and in this tutorial, we are going to create a sponsored product ad together. Ready to dive in? Step one, name your campaign. Under Settings, give your new ad campaign a name. I recommend creating a naming system that will help you better identify your ads once you have multiple ongoing campaigns. You might consider, for example, Book Title plus Ad Type plus Ad Focus plus Date. Using this system, I might name my campaign BYBWL SP Publish 720, which indicates that this ad is for my book, Build Your Best Writing Life, that it is a sponsored product ad, that's where the SP comes from, that I launched the ad in July 2020, and that it's geared towards writers who are interested in self publishing resources. If you find that bit confusing, you will definitely want to check out today's episode transcript at well-story.com slash marketing. Step two is to choose your ad's start and end date. If you'd like your campaign to run for a specific amount of time, such as during a certain sales window, then enter that information now. If you don't know when you'd like your ad to end, simply choose no end date. You can pause or archive an ad campaign at any time. Step three, set a daily budget for your ad. Your daily budget is the max amount you'd like your campaign to cost per day. Setting a budget might seem daunting, but generating clicks and thus ad spend on a new campaign is difficult. I'll explain why in a moment, but suffice it to say for now that new campaigns rarely spend more than a buck or two per day. Set your budget somewhere between $5 and $20 and you should be good to go. If you find that your ad is spending more than you'd prefer, you can always pause or edit your ad as needed. Step number four, opt in to manual targeting. Under settings, you'll be prompted to choose between automatic targeting and manual targeting. Automatic targeting allows Amazon to choose keywords for you based on information from your book's listing. These auto-generated keywords are rarely as effective as those gleaned through active keyword research. Therefore, I highly recommend selecting manual targeting. Step five, set your campaign bidding strategy. A bid is how much you're willing to spend should a shopper click on your ad. I'll explain how to set an effective bid in step nine. For now, simply decide your bidding strategy, which is how you'd like Amazon to manipulate your bid based on the likelihood that you'll earn a sale. You can choose between three bidding strategies. Strategy one, dynamic bids down only. Choose this option if you want Amazon to lower your bid when your ad is unlikely to make a sale, which will prevent you from overspending on clicks made through non-competitive keywords. Strategy two, dynamic bids up and down. Choose this option if you want Amazon to raise or lower your bid depending on the likelihood that you'll earn a sale. Some writers don't like this option because it offers limited control over how much Amazon might raise your bid. And strategy three, fixed bids. Choose this option if you only want Amazon to spend the exact bid amount that you specify. Step six, choose your ad format. Because high quality sales copy can encourage shoppers to click on your ad, thus increasing the likelihood of a sale, I recommend selecting the custom text option in this section of your ad campaign setup. Step seven, select the product you'll advertise. You can feature one specific edition of a book in your ad campaign, such as your ebook or paperback edition. So choose the edition you'd like to promote wisely. The menu provided in the product section allows you to scroll through each edition of the books you've published through KDP. Step eight, identify your targeting strategy. If you selected manual targeting in the settings section, you'll now see a targeting section that presents you with two options, keyword targeting and product targeting. I recommend selecting keyword targeting as this option allows you to target the largest number of potential shoppers via search terms. Choose product targeting if you'd prefer that your ad only be shown on a specific product or category pages. Step nine, add your keywords and select your bids. If you selected keyword targeting in the last section, you'll now be prompted to add the keywords you'd like to target. Though you can choose from a list of suggested keywords that Amazon has generated based on your book's listing, manually entering a list of relevant keywords that you've compiled via research will drastically increase the success of your campaign. If you'd like to learn more about how to conduct effective keyword research, then I've linked an article from Dave Cheson of Kindlepreneur.com in today's episode transcript at well-storied.com slash marketing. With that said, your next step is to choose your bid. This is the price that you're willing to pay for clicks. So you're going to choose a bid for each keyword. Rather than using Amazon's suggested bid, I recommend selecting custom bid from the dropdown menu and setting a very low bid. Think something like 11 cents or 16 cents. Setting your bids low when creating your first ad campaign will help you build relevance within the Amazon advertising algorithm, which I'll explain in detail in the last section of today's episode. When adding keywords to your campaign, you can also choose your keyword match type from among three options. The first match type is broad, which means your ad may target any variation of keywords included within a keyword phrase. So if your keyword is steamy Regency romance novel, then selecting this option would allow your ad to target Regency romance or steamy romance novel. The second match type is phrase, which means your ad will only target the exact keyword phrase or sequence of words within a keyword phrase. So for example, steamy Regency romance novel may target steamy Regency romance, but not steamy romance novel, because you'd be cutting out that middle word. Finally, the third match type is exact. This means that your ad will only target the exact keyword or phrase that you enter. So for example, steamy Regency romance novel will only target steamy Regency romance novel. I prefer to select phrase and exact match types for my campaigns, since these options allow for moderate control over which shoppers see my ads. Step 10 is exclude negative keywords. This is an optional step. So in the next section, enter any keywords that you don't want your ad to target. You might enter keywords that would exclude shoppers searching exclusively for free books or for unrelated products that bear a similar title or author name. Step 11, add your custom text. If you opted to add custom sales copy to your ad, then your last step is to enter this text. You only have 150 characters, so use them wisely. What words would entice your ideal reader to dive into the pages of your story? If you're promoting fiction, then try utilizing your story's hook in your custom text. If you're writing nonfiction, use your custom text to identify the pain point that your book will help readers resolve. And finally, step 12, preview and launch your campaign. Review your ad in the previous section, checking for any grammar or spelling issues or other mistakes. If all looks good to go, select launch campaign to submit your campaign for review. Most campaigns are moderated within 48 hours, and if your ad is approved, then it should receive its first impressions within several days. Congratulations, you have now created your first Amazon book ad. It's important to note that marketing your book on Amazon is not a get rich quick scheme. Building relevance within the Amazon advertising algorithm takes time, which means you likely won't make much profit from your campaigns for several months or even upwards of a year. Why? Well, relevancy is the metric by which Amazon determines whether your campaigns are worth showing to shoppers. The greater your relevance, the more impressions your campaigns will receive, thus allowing you to scale your ads to make far more significant income. To build relevance, you need to prove to Amazon that your ads can generate a high CTR, that's click through rate, and a low ACoS, advertising cost of sale. In other words, if Amazon sees that a high percentage of shoppers are not only clicking on your ads, but buying the product you're promoting, then they'll increase the pull of shoppers who see your campaigns. The greater your ads reach, the more revenue your ad is likely to make. Building relevance doesn't happen overnight. Instead, you must use your early campaign data to hone all of the factors that feed into the effectiveness of your ad, your book's keywords, bid strategy, custom copy, book description, and even your book's cover. Setting high bids when running your first ad will earn your campaign a large number of impressions, but if you haven't targeted the best keywords or written the most effective sales copy, then your campaign will likely have a poor CTR and ACoS that kills your relevance within the Amazon advertising algorithm. Digging yourself out of a low relevancy rating is much harder than slowly building strong relevance in the first place. So be patient. Use the first six months of advertising as a learning experience. Review your campaign statistics frequently, identifying which keywords are resulting in clicks and sales. Create multiple campaigns to test different sets of keywords and sales copy and see what sticks. If your ads aren't performing well, despite strong keywords, then consider revamping your book's cover and description. Continue to study the data and hone your marketing strategy and you'll soon develop a powerful Amazon ad strategy that helps you reach new readers and grow your sales. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Podcast Writer. I hope you found it helpful to your writing journey. If so, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode and to give the podcast a quick rating or review. Doing so goes a long way toward helping the podcast reach new writers and lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm creating. You can also give me a shout out directly on Instagram at christen underscore keeper. For additional guidance as you work to craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, be sure to head on over to www.well-storied.com where I share blog posts, workbooks, e-courses, and other helpful resources for writers. Again, that's W-E-L-L-S-T-O-R-I-E-D dot com. Thank you again for tuning into today's episode, my friend. Until next time, happy writing!