For many advertisers, a key book marketing goal is to run ad campaigns that are ROI positive, meaning they make back at least the amount they spend. The cost of a BookBub Ads campaign is variable by nature: As the advertiser, you have complete control over your budget, as well as what your ad looks like, who your audience is, and the rate you’re willing to pay to reach readers. This flexibility is what makes BookBub Ads such a powerful tool for your book advertising, but with so many variables, it also means there are a lot of decisions that go into setting up a profitable campaign!
To help you navigate these choices, we’ve created this step-by-step guide to setting up an ad designed to earn back your budget. Follow these tips as you walk through the BookBub Ads set-up form next time you’re planning a campaign with the goal of driving a positive ROI!
1. Promote a book that will maximize engagement and sell-through
To earn back the money you spend on your ads, you need to ensure you’re driving plenty of clicks — so choose a book that’s highly likely to engage readers and encourage them to purchase more books from you.
Quick tips:
- A discounted book can help generate more clicks on your ad.
- A box set is a great value for readers and can drive clicks at a higher price point, meaning you can get more revenue per sale.
- A first-in-series book allows you to recoup more of your ad spend via sales of later books in the series.
2. Optimize your ad image to drive clicks
As the only thing a reader sees, your ad creative is key to getting them to click (and buy!). Highlight the most engaging elements of the book you’re advertising to convince readers who open their email that your book is worth clicking on.
Quick tips:
- If the book is on sale, prominently advertise the discount price so readers know they’re getting a deal.
- Include a popular trope to intrigue readers.
- Quote a blurb from another author or a great review to add social proof.
- Make the genre immediately evident in the image, so readers can instantly tell what kind of book they’re looking at.
3. Minimize the number of clicks to purchase
When your goal is to maximize the ROI of your ads, you should focus on making the process from seeing your ad to purchasing your book as short and seamless as possible. Less friction means more sales.
Quick tips:
- Use your books’ retailer pages as click-through links to minimize the number of clicks a reader has to make to complete their purchase.
- Optimize your book descriptions on retailers so readers who click on your ad are incentivized to take the final step and buy your book.
- Ensure your messaging is cohesive across your ads and your retailer pages
4. Focus on profitable regions or retailers
Because BookBub Ads compete in a live auction, the cost to reach each reader varies based on the other ads targeting that reader. This also means that some readers can be reached more cost-effectively than others, based on the regions and retailer preferences of other advertisers’ campaigns.
Quick tip:
- Monitor your ad cost for individual retailers and regions, and turn off any whose costs are too high so you can focus your advertising budget on the readers who can be reached more affordably.
5. Invest in reaching the right audience
To run ads that will increase your book sales, you need to reach the readers who are most likely to purchase your book. With BookBub Ads, we encourage you to use author targeting, which allows you to reach a far more granular and relevant audience than targeting by category interest alone. If your campaign uses multiple author targets, you can view the performance and cost of each author’s audience, so you can choose to focus on the targets delivering the most cost-effective results.
Quick tips:
- Target based on author interest, and avoid popular authors in your genre — instead, focus on those with smaller and more highly-engaged audiences.
- Find new author targets by checking your also-boughts on retailers, researching live Featured Deals in your genre, and using our Related Authors tool in the targeting section of the ad form.
- Monitor your ad costs for individual author targets, and focus your campaigns on audiences that engage with your ads at affordable rates.
6. Start with a low budget to learn
When starting a new marketing campaign, use a low budget for your first ad. This will allow you to experiment with your campaign image, messaging, and targeting to ensure that your ads are driving the level of engagement necessary to run a profitable campaign — without investing too much of your advertising budget up front.
Quick tip:
- Start with a budget of $5–$10, and scale up from there if you’re seeing the results you’re looking for. If you’re not, revisit your campaign setup and try again with a similar low budget.
7. Calculate a profitable cost per click
To run a profitable campaign, you need to understand how much you can afford to spend per click while still earning a positive ROI. That means you need to estimate how much you can expect to earn from a click on your ad. From there, you can calculate your maximum profitable cost per click, which you can use to assess your campaign’s performance and set your bid.
Quick tips:
- Estimate a profitable cost per click, factoring in your expected click-to-purchase conversion rate, book price, royalty rate, and sell-through rate. Check out our bid calculator for a framework!
- Use CPC bidding to ensure you never pay more than your maximum profitable cost per click.
- Monitor your effective cost per click (eCPC), which will tell you how much you’re actually paying for each click on your ad — no matter which bid type you choose.
8. Test and iterate to maximize clicks and minimize costs
If your initial campaign setup falls short of your goals — whether it’s not reaching enough readers, driving too few clicks, or exceeding your target cost per click — don’t be discouraged. Learning and making tweaks is an essential part of the advertising process. You can test new elements in your campaign to improve your results until your ad achieves your goals.
Quick tips:
- If your campaign isn’t reaching enough readers, add new author targets or increase your bid so your ad is more competitive and has a bigger potential audience.
- If your campaign isn’t getting enough clicks, test new elements in your ad image — try a new hook, a fresh call to action, or different copy that will better capture readers’ attention. You should also revisit your targeting to ensure the readers you’re reaching are a good fit for your book.
- If your campaign is too expensive, adjust your targeting or use a low CPC bid. Narrower targeting can help you reach less competitive audiences, and a CPC bid will place a hard cap on the amount you’ll pay per click.
