#024: The #1 Reason Facebook Ads Fail
Jun 17, 2023Read Time: 2.5 minutes
I've spent countless hours racking my brain as to why some Facebook Ads work like gangbusters, and others crash and burn.
And it all comes down to one core reason...
Engagement
That's all it is.
Create a great Ad, engagement goes through the roof, Facebook pushes your Ad to more people, engagement skyrockets again, lots of social proof is built up, and readers flock to your books to pick up a copy for themselves.
On the other hand, create an Ad that doesn't resonate with anyone, engagement is next to non-existent, Facebook throttles your reach, costs go up, and with very little social proof, sales of your books aren't great either.
You Still Need To Write A Great Book
As a side note here, you, of course, need to make sure your book product page is up to scratch, and doing the best possible job it can at selling your book:
- A price that is fair for your genre
- A professional, on-genre book cover
- A well-formatted look-inside of your book
- Solid ratings and reviews (ideally 4 stars and above overall)
- Enticing blurb that hooks the reader and leaves them wanting more
After all, no amount of advertising is going to sell a poor-quality book.
More Than Vanity Metrics
Typically, likes, comments, shares, etc, are often seen as vanity metrics that stroke a marketer's ego. But these signals are in fact essential if you want Facebook Ads to really work for you (which I'm sure you do).
Facebook wants to provide an enjoyable experience for their users.
If you can enhance that experience with Ads that hold people's attention, and make their time on the platform that little bit more entertaining, Facebook will reward you for that with lower costs and more reach.
Take a look at this Ad below for Book 1 of my wife's series:
It has 12,000+ reactions, 3,200+ comments and 2,200+ shares. Not too shabby, and the important thing is that this Ad converts incredibly well.
Without the engagement, we wouldn't be achieving the low CPCs (Cost Per Clicks) that we are, and therefore, the other 2 key metrics I pay attention to wouldn't be looking too great:
– Conversion Rate
– Cost Per Sale
Our conversion rate on this specific Ad is around 4% - 5%. This may not sound particularly high, but when you're spending $100's per day on Facebook Ads, expect your conversion rates to dip slightly; that's just the nature of advertising.
Today's Action Step
Identify any Ads that already have a lot of engagement (by engagement, I mean likes, shares and comments), or any Ads that are starting to collect some good engagement, and start spending more money on them.
The more engagement your Ads get, the better they'll perform. And to generate more engagement, you need to spend more on them.
If you don't have many or any Ads with engagement, the solution here is to keep testing new Ads until you find some that attract a lot of engagement.
A little caveat here...
Sometimes, though it's rare in my experience, an Ad will generate a lot of engagement but have a terrible conversion rate. Don't spend more money on these Ads!
Use Amazon Attribution to track the performance of each individual Facebook Ad, and calculate the conversion rate and cost per sale.
What you're looking for are Ads with great engagement, solid conversion rates and an acceptable cost-per sale.
I'll be doing a deeper dive into Conversion Rates and Cost-Per-Sale in next week's edition of The Saturday Self-Published Author.
Looking for a little more help?
If you haven't already been through my FREE Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass, it will walk you through how to create better Ads, how to test Ads, and reveal my unique Facebook Ads strategy.
I'll also share my Facebook Ads Tracking Tool with you inside the Masterclass to help you keep tabs on which Ads are working and which aren't.
That's all for today, thanks for reading, and see you next week.
To Your Success
– Matt
