In the following article, we'll go through the main items that need to be considered when advertising on Amazon ads if we want to increase our chances of success.
Research smartly
Start by identifying where your book can get exposure and sell well. Study your competitors: note their keywords, covers, prices, and categories. For example, if a competitor’s book ranks above 50,000 on Amazon, it’s worth analyzing their ASINs, keywords, or categories for your campaigns.
When incorporating these into your ads:
Monitor Impressions — Are your ads being seen?
Track Clicks — Are viewers engaging?
Assess Conversions — Are those clicks leading to sales or reads?
This analysis will help determine whether your targets are worthwhile or need adjusting.
Clear campaign structure and naming convention
Organize campaigns to make analysis easier. Keep match types, targets, and strategies separate. For instance, avoid mixing broad and exact match keywords or combining author names with genre keywords in one campaign. This separation allows you to see which group performs better.
Naming conventions are just as important. A good example:
SP_RPO_LitRPG-ASINs_Exact_F — Sponsored Products campaign for Ready Player One, targeting exact LitRPG ASINs with fixed bids.
With clear structure and naming, you’ll know at a glance which campaigns are performing well and can scale them accordingly.
In other words, be the Marie Kondo of your campaigns.
💡 Pro Tip: Organisation and clear naming conventions make BooksFlyer that much easier to set up as well.
Ensure target exposure
Avoid stuffing 999 keywords into one ad group. Amazon’s system limits exposure, and most targets won’t receive impressions. Instead, create smaller ad groups with fewer than 50 targets to ensure each gets proper visibility.
Analyze patterns in the data
This sounds a bit Dan Brown-ish, but Amazon Ads provide valuable insights that help you understand where your book stands in the market. Common scenarios include:
I barely have any impressions on any of my ads — either you are bidding too low for the genre or no one searches for those keywords/ASINs. Raise your bids a few cents each week until you see results, or add new relevant keywords/ASINs.
I have impressions but no/few clicks — Examine your advertised book against the competitors'. More specifically: book cover, book title, book price and reviews. These are the elements people will see on the ad. Make sure the first three are aligned to the best sellers in your genre, and as for the last one — rating should be at least 4 stars for best results. If you are an unknown author, the more reviews you have, the better, so make sure you promote your book as much as possible!
I have clicks but few sales/reads — If less than one sale per 20 clicks, check your book page. Is the blurb engaging? Is the price competitive? Are your Look Inside pages appealing? Compare these elements to successful competitors.
Tip 1: Always, before making a decision based on data, make sure you have enough data.
Tip 2: Patience. Do not pause a whole campaign just because overall it looks like it's not performing as expected — analyze it at a target-level. Sometimes, especially when starting new campaigns, there will be more spending than revenue.
Be patient
Amazon Ads require patience. Metrics like clicks and impressions update within three days, while sales and reads can take up to 14-30 days. Reacting too quickly can lead to poor decisions. That is why we take into account the last 60 days of data when making changes to the bids, to make sure we have a recent but full picture of the target's performance.
For newer books (or those with fewer than 100 reviews), initial ad spend will likely not yield immediate returns. Amazon is a competitive market, and if it does not have a clear picture of how relevant your book will be for your targets, it will make you pay more. Hence, focus on building visibility and relevance over time.
Tip 1: If you're particularly budget-conscious, you can limit your exposure by creating smaller and fewer campaigns to avoid a lot of extra spend with no initial return.
Increase your relevance on Amazon
Books with higher relevance see better results on Amazon. Here’s how to boost yours:
Get Reviews: There are few things that sell better a book than a good amount of great reviews (+4 stars) from other readers. Make sure you promote your book every now and then to give this an extra push. If you are not getting the reviews you expected — either in quantity or in quality — revisit whether your book fits market expectations for your genre.
Publish More Books: Series and standalones tend to sell less overtime, especially with the ever increasing offer in books. If you have already done well with your prior books, writing additional ones will give you boosts of visibility with each new launch that can help you reach additional readers.
Use Other Ad Platforms: Platforms like Facebook and BookBub can bring external traffic to your Amazon page, improving overall performance.
If your book is relevant to your audience, not only will it sell better — you will spend less per bid. Amazon would rather give the impression to books that will get clicks and sales, than to books that won't, even if at a cheaper price.
Test, test, test!
I cannot emphasize this enough. There is no one size-fits-all when it comes to advertising. You need to test, analyze results and decide your next actions. You do not need to begin testing everything, everywhere all at once. In fact, you should not if you want to get clear conclusions.
You can just start small, with 2 or 3 different campaigns to control your spend and be able to focus it on a bunch of targets at a time. The more data you get, the better decisions you'll be able to take.
If you have done all of the above and yet you do not get a good return after a great optimization process — it may be that Amazon is not the right tool for you. For some authors, Facebook and Bookbub offer better results, and that is completely fine. But you need to have data in order to arrive to this conclusion, so do not rush it.
Last but not least...
The more you know about how you want your ads optimized, the better you'll be able to exploit the tool. Hence, for a more detailed understanding of Amazon ads, I tend to recommend Amazon Ads for Authors, by Ricardo Fayet or, if you prefer a more dynamic approach to tackle this, you can enroll in the Self Publishing Formula Ads For Authors course (only opens twice a year).
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