THE SATURDAY SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR NEWSLETTER

Get 1 actionable Facebook Ads tip to help you reach more readers and sell more books, every Saturday (you'll also learn a thing or two about running a six-figure author business).

I'll also send you my Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass (for FREE) as soon as you sign up.

This FREE three-day video course will show you how Facebook Ads actually work (it's not what you think), how to create and test Facebook Ads that drive book sales and I'll also reveal my unique Facebook Ads Strategy. Sign up for FREE below.

600% Scale

Aug 26, 2022

Hey,

It's Friday once more and this weekend, we are going to be converting our garage into our new home gym, so I'm excited about that! Hope you have a great weekend lined up too :)

Today, I'd like to share a case study with you of an Amazon Ads account I manage for an author, where I have, over the course of nearly 6 months (March 2022 - August 2022), scaled their Amazon Ads:

- Spend up 403%
- Sales up 605%
- KENP Royalties up 456%

Those are some big numbers, so here are the screenshots:

I started by first assessing what was and wasn't working with this authors account.

What I found was that their brand keywords (i.e. author name, book titles, etc) were performing exceptionally well, which wasn't surprising as he is very well known in his genre.

I also spotted one HUGE opportunity that truly turned his account around - Automatic Targeting Campaigns.

He wasn't taking advantage of Amazon's algorithm and the knowledge it has on his ideal readers. So, the first new campaign I setup was an Automatic Targeting campaign for Book 1 of his best-performing series and has been responsible for around 200,000 page reads and 100's of sales, since launching.

This author was only running a handful of keyword targeting campaigns that had 300-400 keywords in each, but only 15%-20% of the keywords in the campaigns were actually receiving impressions, clicks and sales. So I turned off every keyword that hadn't had a single click or impression in the past 30 days, allowing the budget to focus on what was working.

A lot of the keywords that were working were the brand keywords I mentioned above, so I pulled those out into their own Brand campaigns in various different match types; these brand campaigns alone have generated around 350,000 page reads and 100's of sales.

Category targeting campaigns have also proved very useful, after consistent optimization and testing to find the best performing categories.

Now, not everything I've tested in this account has worked well. One strategy that didn't work well in this case, but has worked like wildfire in other accounts, is ASIN Targeting. They have generated a few sales and page reads for sure, but really not at the scale I like to see.

The other targeting that hasn't worked was keywords related to the genre of his books; it was author keyword targeting that worked well for this account.

And this is just the Amazon Ads I'm running in the USA - I've also launched Amazon Ads for this author in the UK, Canada, Australia and most recently, France.

Overall, this author has seen a substantial increase in organic sales and page reads as a direct result of the Amazon Ads, which is why, even with an ACOS on the Amazon Ads dashboard of 72% (considered high by some authors), is actually wildly profitable, with the Page Reads (not calculated in Amazon's ACOS) and the organic sales and page reads generated from the increased bestsellers rank and therefore visibility.

So, that's a rundown of what I did and what has and hasn't worked.

I wanted to share this case study with you to demonstrate that Amazon Ads is very much playing the long game and a lot of what you test (and spend money on) won't work, which is perfectly ok and perfectly normal.

Don't expect overnight results with Amazon Ads. Find what works and over time, scale it up. It took me around 6 months to scale this particular account. It might take you 3 months, or it might take you 9, 12 months.

Just take your time, double-down on what is working, and eliminate what isn't working.

Always play the long game.

Have an amazing weekend.

To Your Success
- Matt

THE SATURDAY SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR NEWSLETTER

Get 1 actionable Facebook Ads tip to help you reach more readers and sell more books, every Saturday (you'll also learn a thing or two about running a six-figure author business).

I'll also send you my Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass (for FREE) as soon as you sign up.

This FREE three-day video course will show you how Facebook Ads actually work (it's not what you think), how to create and test Facebook Ads that drive book sales and I'll also reveal my unique Facebook Ads Strategy. Sign up for FREE below.