#066: An Update on Facebook Sales Ads For Amazon

Read Time: 2.5 Minutes

A few weeks ago I wrote a newsletter about a different way to run Facebook Ads which involved using the Sales objective rather than the Traffic objective.

N.B. The Traffic objective is the traditional way to run Facebook Ads when you're sending people from your Ads to your books on Amazon.

I recommend reading that newsletter here to understand the differences of the two objectives (Traffic and Sales) and how this strategy works.

In today's newsletter, I'd like to update you on how our initial test worked and what our plans are with this alternative strategy moving forward.

The Results

Now we've had some time to collect the data and let the Ads run for a while, I thought it was about time to share some concrete numbers.

In short, the numbers weren't great, but here they are:

Conversion Rate: 1.1%
Cost Per Sale: £9.26
Cost-Per-Click (CPC): £0.11
CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions): £10.91
Click-Through-Rate (CTR): 14.90%

The metrics that mean the most to me are Cost-Per-Sale and Conversion Rate.

Although the CPC, CPM and CTR were all great, with the low Conversion Rate and high Cost-Per-Sale, these Ads were completely unsustainable.

This is why when sending traffic to Amazon, the metrics in the Facebook Ads dashboard are secondary to Conversion Rate and Cost-Per-Sale (which aren't reported in the dashboard in a way that means anything to use when driving traffic to our books on Amazon).

The Conversion Rate and Cost-Per-Sale are what really matter and determine the success and profitability of an Ad.

Compare the results above to the standard way I run Facebook Ads when sending people to our books on Amazon (using the Traffic objective):

Average Conversion Rate: 3% - 5%
Average Cost Per Sale: £3.00 - £5.00
Average Cost-Per-Click (CPC): £0.10 - £0.15
Average CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions): £3.00 - £5.00
Average Click-Through-Rate (CTR): 5.50%

You can see that the 2 key metrics (Conversion Rate and Cost-Per-Sale) are significantly better and much more sustainable over the long term.

So to make this new strategy worthwhile, I need to achieve similar or better Conversion Rates and Cost-Per-Sale to our Traffic Ads.

What's Next?

If you read the previous newsletter, you'll see that the success of this alternative strategy relies a lot on the design and layout of the landing page you're sending people to from the Facebook Ads.

So far, we've only tested the one landing page, and it's pretty basic.

We can see from the Ads themselves that the secondary metrics (CPC, CTR and CPM) are all ok, which leads me to believe that the issue lies with the landing page itself.

On top of this though, there's also the problem of adding more friction for people clicking on the Ad; they have to go to another page and click on another button before they get to the book on Amazon. There's an extra step for them.

Glossing over this extra step though, the next thing we'll be testing is a variety of different landing page designs and layouts.

A layout I'm considering is are Advertorial style landing pages.

What's an Advertorial, you ask?

In short, it's a story-based landing page.

It will still sit between our Facebook Ads and our book product page on Amazon, but it's a long-form landing page, rather than a short-form landing page (as in the example above).

Advertorials are there to break the ice and provide more information about the product (the book in our case) before people arrive on the product page where they can make the purchase.

Traditionally, Advertorial landing pages are reserved for higher-ticket products, but hey, I love to question everything, so we're going to give it a go.

I'm not quite sure yet about the content and layout of the Advertorial pages I'll be creating, but when I am, I'll be sure to share everything with you.

In the meantime, we're finalising the new book covers for Lori's books, so I'll be creating some new Facebook Ads next week as well as ramping up the Amazon Ads again.

So, lots to share over the coming weeks and months to help you with your advertising.

Enjoy your weekend and thank you for reading.

See you again next week.

To Your Success
– Matt