Four Book Buying Decision Factors – Are You Using Them?
Are you using the four book buying decision factors in your online book advertising and promotion? Appealing to them will make your promotional message more compelling to the potential reader. Let me ask you a question. When making a decision, does the decision have to: look right, feel right, sound right, or seem right? This is your internal representation system. It is how you internally represent information that comes to you, and your experiences. You either internally represent it as pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, taste, or self-talk. Do you talk to yourself? Of course you do! Everyone does. This is how we are hardwired, our neurology and we use it to make EVERY DECISION, even buying a book to read. There are four primary decision factors: Visual – look right. Kinesthetic – feel right. Auditory – sound right. Auditory Digital – seem right. Visual Decision Factor For book buyers that are predominantly visual, the book must LOOK like the right book to read. In general, 40% of people in the US are visual. This is why the book cover is the #1 consideration when creating a book. They judge a book by its cover! It needs to look like the type of book they want to read. Why do you think Amazon does not just list only book titles in search results? Create word picture in your ads and book descriptions and use image ads and images where possible. Video too! “The Exorcist meets Law and Order” “Novel of a Woman Who Lived as a Man in the Old West.” “Escape in to a Stunning Sci Fi Fantasy World!” “Looking for a Thriller with a Twist?” Kinesthetic Decision Factor For book buyers that are predominantly visual, the book must FEEL like the right book to read. In general, 40% of people in the US are kinesthetic. This is why it is important to let a reader know how a book will make them feel. Create an emotion in your ads and book descriptions. “Smart, Gripping, & One Heck of a Ride!” “Funny & Touching Family Fiction” “Hauntingly Provocative, Relentlessly Intimate! “Will Break Your Heart & Mend It.” “Captivating Read” Auditory Decision Factor For book buyers that are predominantly auditory, the book must SOUND like the right book to read. In general, 10% of people in the US are auditory. This is why it is important to make the book sound enticing and the right book for them to read. Heavily influenced by what others are saying about the book. Use quotes in your ads and book description. “…one of the most surprising novels…the past decade.” – BookReporter “This is the best how-to manual anywhere for managers…” – Fortune “..author’s story of survival will surprise the reader..” – IndieReader Auditory Digital Decision Factor For book buyers that are predominantly auditory digital, the book must SEEM like the right book to read. It needs to make sense for them to buy. In general, 10% of people in the US are auditory digital. They react to words that cannot be perceived by the senses. Use words in your ads and book description that cannot be perceived by the senses. “Intriguing” “Smart” “Ingenious” “Clever” “Top-rated” “Award-winning” In Summary Everyone has a dominant perceptual mode and a dominant mental process for making a decision. You will need to appeal to all four dominant perceptual modes in your ads and description for your message to have the greatest impact on the book...
Read MoreAmazon’s New Online Book Advertising
Online book advertising just got a boost with Amazon’s “Run an ad campaign.” This is an enhancement to the KDP Select’s book promotion tools: “Kindle Countdown Deal” and “Free Book Promotion.” Yes, it is another benefit for KDP Select authors and only available to KDP Select members. As you may or may not know, in the past Amazon did not allow advertising of a book on Amazon that went directly to a book page on Amazon. You would have to advertise using AdWords and drive traffic from the ad to your own book landing page (see “The Secret to Advertising on Amazon”). Now you can advertise your book and drive traffic direct to your Amazon book page. What’s really cool is that you can target specific books where you want to have your ads show. How would you like your book to show on the Divergent or Hunger Games Amazon book page? You can target where you want your book’s ad to show by either selecting specific products (books) or by selecting shopper interest. The minimum ad spend is $100 and it is pay-per-click advertising. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, not how many times it is shown. Stay tuned! Next week I will have a video podcast showing you how I set up an Amazon book advertising campaign in KDP Select. By J.P. Thompson...
Read MoreThree Ad Extensions You Need to Use In Your Online Book Advertising
To optimize your online book advertising campaign and improve ad performance, you need to use sitelink extensions, review extensions, and the new callout extensions. Why you need to use them: Google gives preference to ads that use ad extensions. It is a great way to add additional information about your book to potential readers beyond the ads three lines of text. Sitelink Extensions Ad sitelink extensions are links that searchers can click on that take them to a specific page on a website. See the image below. Review Extension An ad review extension is a way to incorporate a third party review in your ad. However, the third party review must be from a third party review site or website. No individual reviews, it must be from the site itself (e.g., Kirkus, NY Journal of Books, Foreward Reviews, etc.). See the image below. Callout Extensions Ad callout extensions are a way to include additional information about your book. They are short; 50 characters including spaces. Typically two to three will show at any one time. See the image below. How to Set Up the Ad Extensions On the main AdWords account page, “All Online Campaigns,” click on the “Ad extensions” tab. Then the “View” drop down box (see image) in the second row, far left. There you can select the type of ad extension you want to add to your ad. Summary When doing online book advertising, use ad extensions to enhance and optimize your ads to improve their...
Read MoreIs Your Online Book Advertising Campaign Ready for the Holiday Push?
Now is the time to have your online book advertising campaign in ship shape. So, here four things you can easily do right now to improve the effectiveness of your online book advertising campaign going into the holiday season. Test Your Ads and Keywords. I can’t say enough about this one aspect of running an effective campaign. You absolutely should be testing your ads and keywords for what converts. You want your ads to have a both a high click-through-rate and a high conversion rate. It is not too late to test before the December push. Take the next week and test your ads and keywords. For more about testing, click here. Use a Landing Page Landing pages are very useful tools for testing and selling. Nothing can sell your book better than a well-optimized landing page. An effective landing page is one that is optimized to SELL and track conversions from your different ads. Also, if you want your ad to show on Amazon, you need to drive traffic to a landing page. For more about landing pages, click here. Use Ad Review Extensions Review extensions are a new feature in AdWords and a way to highlight your best book reviews right in your ad. It is a feature that can improve your click-through-rate on your ads. Learn more. Use Ad Callout Extension This is another new ad feature in AdWords. You can use this feature to provide additional selling power to your ad with two to three bullet points about your book. Again, this feature can improve the click-through-rate on your ads. Learn more. This holiday season; take these four actions to improve your online book advertising...
Read MoreThe Secret to Advertising Your Book on Amazon with Online Book Advertising
One of the questions I get asked by authors wanting to do online book advertising campaigns is, how they can advertise their books on Amazon in the “sponsored links section.” If you do an Amazon book search for let’s say, “historical fiction,” it will typically return 12 results and at the bottom of the page Amazon will show up to four ads in the “sponsored links” section. Typically they are ads for books (see image below). Note: Amazon is a Google search partner, which means it is in Google’s search partners’ network for Adwords. So, your campaign has to be set up in Adwords. Here is the process: When setting up your campaign in Adwords, the first step is to be sure you have the campaign set to “include search partners.” Settings > Networks > Google Search Network > (check) Include search partners Next your ads’ destination URL needs to point to your website, a website or webpage you control. If you look at the ads at the bottom of the Amazon page, you will see that all the ads point to websites away from Amazon. This is a must! That’s it! If you want to see how many impressions and clicks your ads are getting in the partners’ network just go to: Campaign > Ads (tab) > Segment > Network (with search partners) This will show you the data for the search partner network. It has been my experience through testing that the vast majority (@90%) of impressions in the partner network are occurring on Amazon. Also, I have found that in my campaigns, the cost per click is significantly less for the ads showing on Amazon than the ads showing on Google. When doing online book advertising, making a few changes to your Adwords search network campaign can help you to get your book advertised on...
Read MoreOh My God, Not My Frappaccino!
There you sit in your favorite chair pensively sipping on your frappuccino, gazing out the window not noticing the people coming and going. You dream about your bestseller and you imagine topping the Amazon charts. Then suddenly reality sets in: OMG, blogging, tweeting, article writing, advertising, book tours, etc., etc. All the things I need to do to expose my book to climb the charts. Sigh! What was that you are telling yourself? I don’t blog, I’m too old to twitter, I don’t know what to blog or tweet about, I don’t know about this SEO thing, I can’t afford to advertise, yada yada yada . . . Let’s get real for a moment and jump out of the box. Don’t blog, don’t twitter, don’t advertise, don’t know SEO . . . as The Terminator once said, “no problemo.” For little more than the cost of your frappuccino you could: Get an article or blog post written for you. Have someone write awesome tweets for you. Have your promo message tweeted to over 100,000 people on twitter. Have a Facebook Fan Page created. Have your message posted for a 100,000+ people to see on Facebook. Submit a press release to multiple press release sites. Get a video made to promote your book or website. And so much more. Fiverr.com is it. You can find all sorts of services on Fiverr.com for a mere $5. Just a little more than the cost of your coffee drink each day, you can do book promotion. This site is a good resource. Don’t blog, don’t twitter, don’t advertise, don’t know SEO . . . “no problemo.” Also, you could do promo activities with a paid search or a display network advertising campaign. Advertise your video on YouTube and get up to 100s of views of your video each week from searches on YouTube – $5.00/day. Have your book seen each day thousands of times on a number of websites like FanFiction.net – $5.00/day. Also, for little more than a few coffee drinks you can get an author interview or do a guest post at @IndieBookPromos (indiebookpromo.com). You are in a global marketplace. Whether you can or can’t do any of the above is of no consequence. It is so easy to find others who can do it for you, which will free you up to do what authors do, write. So, tomorrow as you sit in your favorite chair pensively sipping on your coffee, gazing out the window and dreaming about your bestseller, that great coffee aroma swirling around you enticing the senses, and slowly vanishing from your cup — remember, so too are vanishing readers. Remember! You can do it all for little more than the cost of your frappuccino. EXPOSE yourself, NOW! Until next time… “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.” Casey Kasem By J.P. Thompson TheAdWordsGuy.com...
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