Should You Run A Black Friday Deal?

Hey,

Before I dive into today's newsletter... I. just wanted to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving if you're celebrating today. Have a wonderful day with your friends, family and loved ones.

Whatever your thoughts are about Black Friday/Cyber Monday, it's a time when consumers, including readers, are expecting deals.

Having said this, we've never run a Black Friday deal on my wife's books before.

This year though, more for an experiment than anything else, we are going to be running a Black Friday deal on all the books in the series. This was a very last-minute, spontaneous decision that we came to on Tuesday morning!

We have absolutely no idea how it's going to go, but we did want to test. If it doesn't work, we won't do it again. If it does work, there's a chance we may run another one next year.

Our main reasoning for not running a Black Friday deal before on Lori's books is because we feel it devalues the brand somewhat. You may feel the same way about your books too.

Books are relatively low-priced as they are, especially Kindle versions, and margins are tight, so reducing the price of books to next to nothing does sting a little.

We generally reserve price reductions to coincide with book launches, as it just helps get more eyeballs on the new release.

However, the implications of a successful promo can be amazing:

– Reach more readers

– Some of those readers will become lifelong fans

– Improve the Bestseller Rank(s)

– More visibility and therefore organic sales and borrows

– A long tail of page reads after the promo has finished

– With the improved ranking, more sales at full price after the promo has ended

– More reviews and ratings on the books in the weeks following the promo

With that, here's what I spent Tuesday afternoon working on in preparation for this Black Friday deal:

– Setup a Kindle Countdown Deal on all the books in the series

– Each book will be priced at 99¢ from Friday 25th - Monday 28th November

– Created 4 new Facebook Ads (Images, Primary Text and Headlines)

– Using the same 4 Ads with my best-performing Audiences

– Amazon Attribution links setup – sending people to the Amazon Series Page

On Friday morning, I will turn off the current Ads (sending people to Book 1 of the series) that are being used with my best-performing audiences and put all the budget behind these new Black Friday Ads instead.

I will be increasing the Facebook Ads spend somewhat over the course of the Black Friday weekend, to around $350 per day. With this sort of budget, you need to be using big audiences; I'd recommend an audience size of at least 1,000,000 for best results.

Promo Sites

One thing I haven't used for this Black Friday deal is Promo Sites. I always use them for promotions and launches, but with this Promo being such a last-minute decision for us (and also with it being a popular time to run discounts on books), there just wasn't the capacity with many of the Promo Sites I like to use.

Amazon Ads

You'll have noticed, I'm sure, that I'm putting most of our budget and energy into Facebook Ads, rather than Amazon Ads. The reason for this is that Facebook Ads can drive a huge amount of traffic very quickly; much like turning on a tap.

Amazon Ads are more of a trickle, that takes time to build up. Yes, they can generate a lot of traffic, but it takes a little longer and doesn't have the huge quantities of traffic available on-tap, as Facebook does.

Speaking of Amazon Ads, I'm not going to be doing anything special here; I'll just keep them running as they are.

The only task I will be doing later today though is increasing bids and budgets on the Amazon Ads.

Black Friday is clearly a popular time for advertisers, so costs do rise, without a doubt. Increasing your bids and budgets can just help you be that little bit more competitive in the Amazon Ads auctions.

I'll be tracking the performance of the Black Friday deal and will report back next week on how it all went.

I will share stats, screenshots as well as my advice and recommendations for running your own Black Friday deal, or even just a promo at any time of the year.


To Your Success

– Matt