Using Amazon’s Book Marketing Services to get book sales is one of the easiest and cheapest ways for authors to use. The power of advertising on Amazon is that it gives you the ability to place your book in front of targeted book buyers at a price you determine. Plus, advertising on Amazon is cheaper than using any other social media platform’s ads.
Amazon’s Book Marketing Services allow you to place an advertisement for your book alongside other books on Amazon. This helps you get your book noticed and puts it in front of more Amazon shoppers.
When running Amazon ads, you are only charged when a person clicks on your ad. This is called cost per click (CPC). The benefit of the CPC model of advertising is you only pay when someone is interested enough in your ad to click on it and check out your book further. When creating your ad, you can specify the amount you are willing to pay per click, so everything stays under your control.
Why Authors Need to Use Amazon’s Book Marketing Services
People on Amazon are already ready to make a purchase, which makes Amazon a great place to spend money on ads.
When thinking about what platform you should spend your ad budget on, it is important to know how an audience interacts with that platform. For example, are they on that platform to socialize, to learn, or to buy? Your ad and the messaging around that ad will be different for each platform and should be based on your target audience.
Here is a list of how people engage with the top 4 social media platforms:
- Google: People use it for search and email.Â
- Twitter: People use it to engage with quick bits of news and tweet celebrities and politicians.Â
- Facebook: People use it to engage and catch up with friends.
- Amazon: People use it to buy products and write reviews on items they have purchased or books they have read.
Amazon is a great place to spend your ad budget. Think about it – people who use Amazon most likely have an account and are logged in – they are ready to shop. Even if they don’t click on your book, they might still remember the name. Usually, a potential buyer needs to see your book and hear about it a few times before they make a purchase.
Amazon’s Book Marketing Services for Authors Made Easy
When using Amazon’s Book Marketing Services, you’ll get the opportunity to place your book in front of targeted book buyers at a price you determine. The first step in using Amazon’s Book Marketing Services is deciding what kind of ads to create.
Types of Amazon’s Book Marketing Services Ads
There are two types of Amazon’s Book Marketing Services ads available: sponsored product ads and product display ads.
1. Sponsored product ads
Sponsored product ads are ads that are placed on the results page of a customer’s search. This means Amazon customers will see your ad when searching for a product similar to yours.
When placing sponsored product ads, you choose particular keywords for which you want your ad to appear. For example, if you select the keyword “grimdark”, your ad will appear on the results page when an Amazon customer searches for that genre of books.
I recommend using a sponsored product ad to help your target readers find your book. You can even use similar books or author names as your keywords for this ad. This way, your book will appear next to books you know your audience already loves.Â
- Product display ads
Product display ads allow your ad to show up alongside a specific product or a group of products that you have targeted. For example, imagine you are promoting your memoir with Amazon’s Book Marketing Services. By choosing a product display ad, you can ensure your own memoir shows up alongside other memoirs. This way, you are targeting readers who love other memoirs similar to yours.Â
Now that you understand the basic concept of Amazon’s two types of ads, let’s take a look at how to create your first ad.Â
How to Create Your First Amazon Advertising Campaign
You can get started with building your first Amazon advertising campaign once you have a book published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Here are 3 steps to follow to begin your first campaign:
- Log into your KDP account
- Select the book you wish to create an ad for
- Click the “advertise” button
Following these steps will allow you to create either a sponsored product ad, a product display ad, or both. Now that you know how to create your first campaign, the next step is creating the actual ad. Below you will find the exact step-by-step process to creating a sponsored product ad and a product display ad.
How to Set Up a Sponsored Product Ad
- Come up with a name for your sponsored product ad campaign. You might benefit from having a specific naming system for your Amazon’s Book Marketing Services campaigns, particularly if you intend to run multiple campaigns.
- Choose the maximum daily expenditure for your campaign. You won’t always be charged the full limit, and you will never be charged more than the maximum daily expenditure on any given day. Starting with a lower daily budget at first and scaling it up based on positive results is a good approach to take.
- Choose your campaign length – you can either run your campaign for a defined period of time or indefinitely. It’s sensible to pick a specified time as a test when first starting to advertise on Amazon.
- Choose between automatic targeting and manual targeting for your ad. Automatic targeting leaves the choice of the sponsored product up to Amazon, while manual targeting allows for your input into how your book will be advertised.
- Select the search engine keywords that you want your ad to appear on. You can choose from either selecting keywords suggested by Amazon or inputting your own choices. A good approach is to go broad and target a large number of keywords. Many authors make the mistake of only selecting a limited number of keywords, and see limited results accordingly.
- Specify the default amount you are willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad. This will act as a flat rate for all keywords at first, but you can tweak and specify this rate further down the line.
- Write 150 characters of custom ad text. This should be intriguing, convincing, and able to persuade a potential book buyer to click on your ad and check it out further.
- Select a debit or credit card to which the cost of your Amazon ad campaign will be billed. If you haven’t previously added a card to your Amazon account, you can do so here.
- Click “launch campaign” to send your campaign to Amazon for their review. It takes 1-3 days for the review to be carried out. As soon as Amazon verifies that your campaign meets their requirements, it goes live and customers begin seeing your ads.
How to Set Up a Product Display Ad
- After clicking “advertise” on the book you want to create a campaign for, select “product display ad” from the screen displaying your campaign type choices.
- Your product display ad will be shown to Amazon customers either “by product” or “by interest.” Choosing “by product” allows you to dig deep and choose precisely which products your ad will appear alongside, while “by interest” allows you to choose a wider category, with your ad appearing next to all products in that category.
- Select whether Amazon can automatically place your ad next to similar products to those you have chosen. This is a good way of gaining exposure through relevant products that you don’t know well enough to personally choose.
- Pick a campaign title.
- Specify a maximum overall budget for your campaign and select your CPC bid.
- Write the headline and text for your ad. There is a 50-character limit for the headline, and 150 characters for the text, so be sure to focus on grabbing attention and encouraging Amazon shoppers to click on your ad.
- Clicking “submit your campaign for review” begins the 1-3 day review process to ensure your campaign meets Amazon’s guidelines. As soon as it’s approved, your campaign will go live.
Amazon’s Book Marketing Services platform is a great opportunity for indie authors to get more visibility on Amazon and pull in more readers. So go ahead and spread the word about your book!