A New Decade in Marketing

Putting your best book forward is always the best advice when trying to sell as an author. And, you’ll need to make sure your advertising dollars are working as hard as you are. If not, you may find there’s a serious hole in your bucket.

Times are changing, and the cost of Amazon and Google Ads are skyrocketing. That’s one of the reasons authors went the social media route. It was cheaper. It may still be.

Amazon does more than 50% of all US book sales (and over 80% of Ebook sales), so let’s look at some sobering numbers. They get 83.3 million global visitors per day (obviously not all looking for books). Ever wonder where they come from? Allover, of course, but less than 5% come from Social Media – so perhaps that’s why you aren’t getting traction selling your books if that’s the only place you are advertising.

Which Social Media platform is most popular? Well, any campaign should give each a try. Specific books/authors have better success in different places for different reasons. Overall, a combination of all outlets is likely to give you the best results, but you better steer the most money where it’s doing the most for you. That means knowing where the clickers/buyers are.

Youtube Dominates Clicks

That’s right! Youtube sends 62.3% of the total clicks Amazon gets. Youtube has 2 billion monthly logged-in users. 200 million US users. They click. They buy. So learn about Youtube.

Facebook sends 21.33% of the total. They have 2.4 billion users. 220 million in the US.

Reddit sends 5.79% of the total. They have 330 million users. 165 million in the US.

Twitter (8,800 tweets per second) sends 5.73% of the total to Amazon. There are 356 million active tweeters. 68 million in the US.

Pinterest sends 1.04% of the total to Amazon. They have 273 million users. 108 million in the US.

Google has more than 80,000 searches per second.

Social Media Giants send this many hits to Amazon each day:

YouTube: 2,594,795

Facebook: 888,394

Reddit: 241,154

Twitter: 238,655

Pinterest: 43,316

While there is no exact number for how many of those clicks are going to books, Amazon’s gross book revenue is less than 10% of their total sales. Making a hasty (and arguably, shaky) estimate, if we guess that 10% of the clicks are to look at books, then only 4,332 of those clicks come from Pinterest, while 259,480 could be coming from YouTube. Yikes!

Where to Spend Your Advertising Dollars

So, where should your advertising dollars go? Well, if you are paying the same cost per click, each SM outlet should produce the same results. They won’t, of course, but a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead, right? Still, if you are paying per 1,000 impressions, there might be a different story.

Reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest each have close to 3 million users but send less traffic combined to Amazon than Facebook does with their 220 million US users. So, you might want to crunch the numbers to see if you are getting your money’s worth on your advertising!

It may take longer to get your desired number of clicks on Pinterest than Facebook! Just make sure you compare apples to apples (or cost per click to cost per click). You’ll also want to compare your conversion rate at each site. Site “A” might get you a conversion (book sale) for every five clicks while another only gets you one sale for every ten clicks. If the cost of the first ad is twice as expensive as the second, it’s a wash. If the second ad costs more than 50% of the first, it’s more expensive and producing less.

All in all, take your total sales per site and compare that to your cost for a campaign and put more of your advertising dollars where you get the most bang for your buck.

Other Options to Sell Books

You need great covers and a great blurb to get reader interest in your book, but that’s not all. Buyers get hooked on great writing, but your author website is what can turn readers and buyers into lifelong fans.

That means you need quality posts and some free reading. If your website is dull, so’s your writing. Update your content regularly (twice a week seems to be a very popular number) and have some free content.

As far as boosting your image and your book sales, your interaction on your social media pages counts too. You should be posting there a couple of times per week also. That means you should have something new on at least one outlet every single day. Is it worth it? Successful authors say yes. Unsuccessful authors say no. Think there’s a correlation?

If you don’t have the time to do all that interaction and secure emails for a newsletter that should go out at least monthly, hire someone to do the job. You might not have $2,000 to hire a top-notch book marketing professional to handle your first book blast and keep the wheels turning for a month, but you can probably find a few hundred dollars to get a personal assistant to put the word out daily for at least a few weeks.

You can check places like Guru.com and writer/reader boards for social media and book marketers. Just make sure your “professional” has a successful track record.

Before you Launch

Think critically about your latest book and your writing career. After spending a year writing, don’t your words deserve a good editor? Doesn’t your killer novel deserve a killer cover? How about some advertising and reader interaction? Of course, they do.

In the end, you’ve to go to stand out. If you don’t see the practical logic and advantages of treating your book like gold, neither will your readers, because they’ll never see your masterpiece. You’ve worked hard. Find a way to market your story!