“Who knows what I can do to make my Amazon kindle ads convert, I tried running ads to my books on amazon and I ended up selling nothing?” These were the very questions John (not his real name) asked in the author’s group we both belong.
According to him he tried running Amazon Kdp ads and got zero conversion. Plagued by this problem he had to reach out and ask for help in the group.
You’ll agree with me that this very question is what every author comes to ask on or before they hit publish.
Knowing the best routes to take to promote books is every authors major concern and amazon kindle advertising is not left out.
I have come to realize that the difference between those who run successful Amazon Kindle advertising and those who don’t is the information at their disposal.
What you know is what elevates you and what you don’t leave you at the same spot.
Right?
Yes!
We are humans and as such we get better, stronger and wiser based on the information we know.
Anyway, enough of the motivational talk.
Let’s get to the business of the day so we can arrive at the nitty gritty of this talk – 10 secrets about Amazon Kdp ads.
In this post, you’re not only going to be learning about these 10 secrets, you’ll learn:
- The importance of Amazon Kdp ads
- The different types of Amazon kdp ads
- And of course the 10 secrets about Amazon Kdp ads.
Sounds interesting right?
Yes!
Let’s dive in!
The importance of Amazon Kdp ads
Amazon kdp ads is very important because it:
- Gets you more sales
- Helps with your organic ranking and organic sales
- Creates buzz and increase the visibility of your book
- It improves your brand awareness
- It helps you to gain insight on your consumer
The different types of Amazon Kdp Ads
The different types of Amazon KDP ads include Sponsored Products Ads, Sponsored Brands Ads, and Lockscreen Ads. These are the 3 the main ads and they function differently.
Sponsored Products Ads
From the image above you can see that the Sponsored products ad appears as a text ad on the Amazon search result page. This usually happens when someone searches for a keyword that relates to a product.
For sponsored product ads, you only pay when some clicks on the ad in order word this is a pay-per-click ad. Likewise to make your product (book) appear you have to select the keywords that match your book.
What I know about the sponsored product ad is that your book will easily get to people who are already searching for it and with this you’re sure to make sales if your book meets their interest.
Sponsored Brands Ads
While sponsored product ads are in text form, the sponsored brand ads are in image form and they are displayed as images on the Amazon book product pages. The success of this ad is governed by keywords and you get to pay for it when someone clicks on the ad. This ad can get your book in front of buyers who are going through Amazon’s product pages thereby increasing your chances of selling.
Lockscreen Ads
This type of ad appears on the lock screen of Amazon Fire tablets and e-readers. Your book ad is seen when a user opens their device. Note that the payment is similar to the other ads, meaning you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and opens your book.
10 Secrets About Amazon Kdp Ads.
1. Amazon is a search engine: Some authors are not fully aware what amazon is – amazon is a search engine. As a search engine it has a machine called algorithm. Also as a search engine it is governed by keywords. People go to amazon just as they go to physical stores to search and buy things that they love. To make your ads successful you’v to input keywords that searchers and search engines can recognize and categorize properly.
2. Plan: “Clear definition of goal is the key to success”– Edison Montgomery. Some authors began their amazon kdp ads without planning. Planning is work, and he who fails to plan, plans to fail. The question is, what are you going to plan?
Budget, countries you want your ad to show, the duration, are you going to hire an expert to see through your ads, or are you going to take a course etc. Everything that needs to be considered in a plan is what you need to have in your plan. Ask yourself why you’re running kdp ads, is it to get more book sales or get more people to subscribe to your email list? All these and more is what you iron out on the table of planning.
3. Research: I can’t over emphasize the importance of carrying out research – You might ask what research has got to do with amazon kindle ads. It has a lot to do with it; your research is the second most important phase.
I want to believe that your book is already in the right category – you can do a simple exercise, type your book title and see if it’s going to come up in the right category. Don’t mind the bestselling rank, once your ad is set that will automatically improve. Back to research, this is the time you study the following:
- Audience
- Search intents(know why people are searching for the books in your niche)
- Keywords (learn how to select keywords – there are 3 methods; Keyword relevance, competitiveness and search volume)
- Reviews
- Spy on your competitors
Video like this will help you spy on your competitor:
4. Ad targeting option: Ad targeting options refer to how Amazon targets your ad using keywords and there are 3 ways to go about this:
- Automatic targeting: In this option, Amazon is at liberty to automatically target your ads to keywords they deem fit. Meaning they make the choices for you based on what they know about your book.
- Manual targeting: Here Amazon permits you to manually select the keywords that your ads will target.
- Negative keyword targeting: This option allows you to take out specific keywords from your ads.
Key note: When setting up an ad, the first rule is “follow your goal and budget.” However, if this is your first time running the ad, you might want to use the automatic targeting. This will cause Amazon to automatically target your ads to relevant keywords. Then the second rule is that as you begin to learn more about Amazon Kindle Ads, you can experiment with different ad targeting options to see the results they bring and know which works well for you.
5. Good copy: Some authors don’t know that a good copy plays a role in making their kindle ads successful that is why they flop. A good ad copy conveys your marketing message to your audience; a good ad copy starts from a compelling and attention-grabbing headline, to an irresistible body and a provoking call to action.
Key note: Try different versions of your copy, this is good way to know what works for you. To achieve this, you can use Amazon’s A/B testing tool to compare the performance of different ads.
6. Good book description: A good book description is like a good ‘’expository essay.’’ A description is what explains your book to the readers.
You must ensure that it attains the goal of describing the benefits, the attributes of the book, and the reasons why the book is good for your audience. Don’t try and over invent the wheel, you can spy on your competitors and other authors to see how they crafted their description.
7. Seek expert help: There are people out there whose job is to run amazon kdp ads for clients, you can seek their help. Most of these experts can be found on platforms such as Upwork, LinkedIn, and Twitter as the case may be. The benefit of using an amazon kdp ad expert is that, they are knowledgeable, and they save you the stress of running the ads yourself.
8. Take courses: This is quiet similar with seeking expert advice, you can take courses that can help you get acquainted on how to run a successful amazon kdp advertising. Udemy is one of the places you can get your hands on this course; however on Youtube you can also get access to free teachings on how to run this ad.
9. Run 3 ads: Is this advisable, yes! Why? Running the 3 ads, Sponsored Products Ads, Sponsored Brands Ads, and Lockscreen Ads will help you see which is converting more and go for it.
10. Write another book: Life happens, sometimes what we write might not be appealing to our target audience, and what do we do? We write another book and keep writing till we get our target audience to notice us and come to appreciate our work.
Who knows what made John’s amazon kindle ads not to convert, perhaps, he didn’t sit down to plan properly, carry out research to learn more about his niche and audience or maybe he had poor copy.
Like Frank Kern a legendry copywriter rightly said, if your ad is not performing well, tweak your copy, if it’s still not doing great tweak the landing page. The point is, there’s always what to tweak to improve your ad performance. Above all I wish you all the best in your next amazon kdp ads.
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