Protect Number One

Hey,

Welcome to the weekend! Hope you are looking forward to a bit of time to recharge and reflect.

We had a much better night of sleep last night after taking the boys to the doctors yesterday. Turns out they both had ear infections so were prescribed a round of antibiotics; within an hour of giving the boys their medicine, they were like different kids altogether; playing, smiling and laughing again, which was wonderful to see :)

Many authors consider spending money on their own keywords, such as their pen name and book titles, is a complete and utter waste of money, because they "already appear organically for those search terms".

What they don't understand though, is that if you're not targeting your brand keywords, other authors will be targeting your pen name and your book titles, and they'll be stealing sales right from under your nose.

You have to remember when running brand protection campaigns, as I call them, you're not just ensuring that you're appearing at the top of the search results pages. You're also appearing on your book product pages - the pages where conversions happen.

In the search results, Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands Ads appear BEFORE the organic listings. So, if you're not running brand protection campaigns, and a reader comes to Amazon to search specifically for your books, they will see books by other authors BEFORE they see yours and could very easily be drawn towards these other books - forgetting that they came to Amazon to look for your books in the first place!

Looking at your book product page, you'll see a number of carousels of other books available for readers to be distracted by, such as:

Also-Bought
Also-Viewed
Sponsored Products (Amazon Ads)

You have very little control over the books that appear in the Also-Bought and Also-Viewed carousels, although, over time, your books will gradually start to populate them, if you have enough books.

With the Sponsored Products carousel, however, you can populate this with your own books today - with Amazon Ads.

You've paid with either time, money or both to bring readers to your book product pages; don't lose them at the last minute by neglecting to run brand protection campaigns.

As humans, we are easily distracted and with so many other books advertised or promoted on our own book product pages, readers will easily be drawn away.

When you're running brand protection campaigns, however, if readers are drawn away, the chances of them being drawn towards another book of yours, are that much higher, so you have less chance of losing the sale.

So, always protect number one. If you're not, I can guarantee that you're leaving money on the table.

To Your Success

- Matt