Regardless of the venue, you choose to market your ebook, garnering organic traffic through SEO will take some time. Yes, it’s the absolute best way to grow your presence on the web, but it’s a slow process to get to the first page of Google’s search results.
Meanwhile, mounting a paid AdWords campaign for your ebook can definitely help land it on the first page of results whenever someone searches the keywords associated with it. However, far from being an effortless endeavor, running a successful campaign requires some thought and budgeting.
Do People Want Your Book?
Hopefully, you took some time to verify the existence of a market before you put a lot of energy into writing your ebook. One way to accomplish this is doing keyword research to get an idea of the traffic around the concept upon which your book is based. You’ll do this again to frame your AdWords campaign, this time paying attention to what people are paying to advertise on those keywords. You’re also looking to see if the ones you have in mind are routinely searched on Google, if people running those searches are likely to buy your book and, of course, whether you can afford to advertise on those keywords.
Can You Afford It?
You’ll pay Google a fee each time someone clicks on your ad—whether they go on to buy or not. So you have to buy at a price you can afford to sustain while sales increase. This means determining your maximum cost per click and comparing it to the cost of the words you have in mind to see if you can afford them. Once you identify a group of relevant and affordable keywords, take a peek at the competition. Run searches based on those keywords to see what comes up in the ads. Observing the activities of your rivals will give you an idea of what you need to do to set your book apart.
Conveying Your Unique Selling Proposition
Unless you’ve hit upon some fantastically obscure topic that every living person should have an interest, you’re going to have competition. As you’re considering how to sell an ebook online, remember you approached the topic from a perspective all your own. This is your unique selling proposition. You’ll need to communicate this in your campaign by distilling your perspective on the topic down into one key sentence. Start by thinking about what you offer that your competitors don’t.
Make an Offer They Cannot Refuse
Your ad should demonstrate value (what will the reader get in exchange for buying and reading your book?), it should be credible (if it sounds too good to be true, people will assume it is), it should offer some sort of guarantee (where appropriate) and it should include a call to action (buy now and get a 25 percent discount). Keep these factors in mind as you’re working up your ad.
Observe Best Practices
Always make sure your ad takes the user directly to the landing page where your advertised book is featured so they don’t have to hunt around for it. The page should match the keyword and the ad exactly so there is no doubt in the customer’s mind. Make sure the page reinforces the offer the ad presented and gives them an easily identifiable “buy it now” button.
Your AdWords account gives you the capability of tracking the performance of your ad. You’ll want to do this on a regular basis to make sure you’re getting the traffic you need for the money you’re spending. You’ll also need to optimize your keyword match types to “phrase matching” so your ads are directed to people who are most likely to buy your ebook.
Deploying negative keywords will help you hone your audience even further. For example, if you’re advertising around the keyword phrase “sell an ebook online” for a book about how people can sell ebooks on their own, you’ll want to block Amazon and the names of the other ebook sites so your ads are more likely to reach people who are only interested in selling independently.
There’s one final step to mounting an AdWords campaign for your ebook. After your campaign has been running for a while, you’ll need to tweak it a bit to help it perform better. These include adjusting your keyword bids and monitoring your click through rate along with your conversion rate, looking for opportunities to implement improvements.
Implementing these suggestions will give your AdWords campaign a strong start and set you well on your way to becoming a successful ebook author who actually sells books.
Nice points Stephen in terms of AdWords affordability is always the million dollar question. You also have the SEO angle but no guarantees there.