I Spent $166.66 on Amazon Ads for my First Book. Here’s What I’ve Learned.
What I Got Right and What I Got Dead Wrong
It’s been a month since I started running Amazon Ads for my first self-published book, How to Get into Marketing in Your 30s. Here’s what I got right — and what I got wrong — when marketing an Amazon KDP self-published book for the first time.
What I Got Right
In my book marketing plan, these three hypotheses proved true after four weeks of testing.
Keywords with a CTR of Less Than 0.3% Really Aren’t Worth It
Most of the best practices pages I’ve read suggested that 0.5% CTR (ad clickthrough rate) is great, and anything below 0.3% either needs retooling or needs to be dropped. My top-performing keywords that drove sales were around the 0.5% CTR range.
Broad Keywords Would Drive a Lot of Initial Impressions
Keywords like “marketing books” and “career books” initially provided 5-figure impressions for me. My book is aimed at adults at the earliest stages of considering a marketing career — essentially searching on Amazon but without a clear compass (yet).
Thus, my keyword strategy aimed broadly, while my product strategy (title, book cover, and keywords) was highly specific, offering them an initial sense of direction they were looking for.
Competitor Bidding Strategies Work for Especially Niche Books
Competitive bidding is the strategy of bidding on your competitor's keywords. However, as a niche book (marketing careers for people of a certain age), I didn’t necessarily have an obvious direct competitor in Amazon’s book marketplace.
What I did have, however, was foresight into what marketing books my target audience would initially search: popular books by popular authors that are more general and inspirational, simply because they don’t know (yet) that my book has the tactical answer they’re looking for.
(Sorry, Seth Godin.)
There is, however, a drawback to relying too much on branded keywords.
What I Got Wrong
Even though I’ve done paid Facebook Ads and Google Ads in the past, Amazon Ads are a whole other ballgame.
Clicking Too Many of the “Suggested Bid” Buttons
It’s probably because the suggested bid is such an easy button to click for every keyword in my list, but it’s also because I thought I was doing myself a favor by acting quickly to change bids as fast as I can.
What happened, however, was that I burned up my daily budget way faster than I should’ve. Make sure you go slower and bid lower on the keywords that are starting to show potential instead of going full tornado mode into bidding on the hundreds in your list.
Adjusting My Daily Spend Instead of Optimizing Keywords
Even I made this mistake on my first day running Amazon Ads, probably because I’ve been out of the paid ads game too long.
Haphazardly adjusting the daily budget isn’t nearly as effective as optimizing per keyword. Make sure you’re paying attention, especially in your early learning stages of what’s working and what’s not.
Spending Too Much on Branded Keywords
Even though my first few sales were for branded keywords of other marketing books, the sales themselves were expensive and took a huge bite into my profit margins — essentially swallowing them whole.
Don’t neglect to build your own brand for your books. People who know your brand will more likely buy your products. Those that don’t know you will take more time to convince — which means it’ll cost more if you’re relying only on paid ads.
What’s Next?
I’ve slowed down my spending on branded keywords altogether. Even though it’s exciting to see sales, there’s really no point if they’re unprofitable.
I’m also reshifting my focus back to Facebook (Meta) Ads, which have proven to be much more effective in yielding qualified marketing leads that I can nurture on my own, rather than direct, unqualified sales leads on Amazon. More on that later.
