Find Your 20% and Double Down On It

Hey,

The beautiful thing about advertising is that you don't have to make everything work – so don't try!

This all comes back to the 80/20 Rule, also known as Pareto's Principle. We see it everywhere in life:

– You wear 20% of your wardrobe, 80% of the time

– 80% of a town's traffic is on 20% of its roads

– 20% of a fruit tree contains 80% of the fruit

– The list goes on and on...

And the same is true with your advertising:

– 20% of your Amazon Ads campaigns will generate 80% of your sales

– 20% of your Amazon Ads keywords will generate 80% of your sales

– 20% of your Facebook Ads Campaigns/Ad Sets will generate 80% of your sales

– 20% of your Facebook Ads creative will generate 80% of your sales

With this in mind, identifying and focusing on that 20% is how you best leverage your time when managing your Ads.

To find this magical 20% though, you need to test. And know that the majority of what you test (around 80% in fact), won't work and you need to be ok with that.

Here's a list of what I like to test with both ad platforms (Amazon Ads and Facebook Ads):

Amazon Ads

– Keywords (in multiple Match Types)

– ASINs (using the Expanded and Exact filters)

– Categories

– Sponsored Brands Headlines

– Budgets

– Bids

– Placement Adjustments

– Bidding Strategies

Facebook Ads

– Target Audience

– Excluding certain audiences

– Primary Text

– Images

– Headlines

– Call-To-Action buttons

Once you've found your winners, you double down on them and scale them up.

One thing you don't do, however, is stop testing. You should always be testing new ideas.

Why? Because you should never get too comfortable. Trends can change, ads and audiences can stop working.

By continuing to test in the background, even with small budgets, will mean you always have something up your sleeve you can use if and when you need it.

If you're not going into advertising with this mindset that most of what you test (and spend money on) won't work, you're going to be bitterly disappointed by your results.

Finding that 20% takes time. How much time depends on a number of different factors, such as budget, genre, conversion rates, etc.

Ultimately though, by going into advertising with the goal of finding your 20%, you are 100x more likely to stick it out, and take the rough with the smooth.

If you're in the self-publishing world for the long-haul, this is the mindset you need to adopt.

You got this.

To Your Success

– Matt