Do you think it's worth it to place an ad on Facebook?
Readers, I'm going to need some help on this one.
I don't really know a lot about Facebook or Facebook ads. As anyone who is my friend already knows (and if you aren't my friend, come friend me), I had someone set my account up to include my posts there automatically. I try to log in every couple of weeks and see what's going on, but I don't usually post anything. So my advice is do what I say and not what I do.
Every author should have a Facebook Page, which is different that a basic account or a group. My understanding is that it allows you to have more friends, a vanity URL, and the ability to use fancy promo widgets. Make sure you have images of your books, links to your website and blog, and other info. Remember, this is a page for fans, so think before you post things.
As to Facebook ads, anybody out there try one? Did you feel it was successful?
(P.S. If you are Facebook savvy and you'd like to do a guest post here on setting up and using Facebook fan pages as a marketing tool, PLEASE, read this and send me an e-mail.)
6 comments:
When I first released my book, Tangled Hearts, I placed a facebook ad. The ad allows you to target an audience. I picked women 18+ who love LDS Temples. What a perfect target audience, and the price wasn't too bad. I quit running my ad when it hit $50. Maybe that wasn't enough, but my ad ran an entire day. Sales results: 0 increase. I had better results through giving out my book as a Goodreads Giveaway and Giveaways on LDS Publisher. Maybe had I ran the ad for an entire week, I would have seen results, but my market is small (only 30 people a month GOOGLE LDS Romance) and I have to decide if spending a large amount on advertising is going to increase sales enough to pay for the ad. John Locke spent nearly $20,000 on advertising his books. Until a blog post went viral, all that money meant nothing. It is word of mouth that sells books. So...you can try the ad. It's easy to set up and you can pick your own budget. But the best advertising it to get your book out into people's hands. Donate copies to libraries. Join booklending.com and loan out your book. Do the giveaways. If you have a good book, people are going to spread the word.
I hate to threadnap this comment box, but did you get my two nagging emails about the BoM story critique that I still haven't received, even though it's been over a month since you brought up the subject?
Although I haven't tried to post an ad to sell a book on facebook. I own a wedding decoration company, and for 1 year I tried out running facebook ads, I demo/geo targeted them originally to 18-26 age group women and offered a discount if they mentioned the facebook ad when booking.
I had zero sucess with this.
So I thought going after the target audience wasn't the way to go, maybe I should expand to their parents..
Facebook always used my money, but after giving it several tries off and on a year, all it did was get me some additional facebook "Likes" and never resulted in any additional business.
So I am not a fan of running ads on facebook. I find I have much better success if I run ads on local free classifieds companies instead..
I recently left a job in marketing and advertising and we used to sell ad space for companies and facebook. The only ones that seemed to do pretty well were ads giving away something for free, I never saw reports or heard from any other clients who saw any spike in business...
I haven't done Facebook ads, but I did try Project Wonderful (Penny Adversing) without any increase in sales. Maybe it takes longer and more money, but that's so hard to do on such a small budget. :(
Hi, I would love to do a guest post about setting up Facebook fan pages. I've got a thriving one. You can email me at thecanticlekingdom at gmail dot com.
I've done FB ads and I don't think they're worth the money. It was less expensive and provided more exposure for my books on Goodreads when I did giveaways. Also, giveaways on blogs or sponsorships like LDSPublisher seem to be much more beneficial than FB ads. I don't plan to do any more FB ads.
I have a FB fan page but I don't update it often. I need to be better about that.
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