Mark Dawson Shares His Secret Facebook Ads Strategy

Mark Dawson Shares His Secret Facebook Ads Strategy Facebook Ads for Authors (with Mark Dawson) Last updated: 04/11/2018Most authors in the self-publishing game will know Mark Dawson’s name. As the author of the highly successful John Milton thrillers, Mark has become one of the most successful indie novelists working today - in large part thanks to his keen understanding of book marketing and Facebook Advertising in particular.Based on an interview with Reedsy (that you can watch below), this post will show you how Mark has used Facebook ads as a tool to build his career as a novelist (as well as his mailing list) - and how you can do the same. What is Facebook Advertising?Facebook Advertising is the core business of the world’s most popular social network. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t make any money when you post pictures of your cat. He does, however, make a fortune allowing advertisers to target audiences in a very focused way, thanks to the enormous amount of data they have on their users.How can authors best use Facebook Ads?At the most basic level, authors can use Facebook ads to find readers who have an interest in books similar to theirs. Finding and leveraging comparable authors has long been at the center of Mark’s strategy.â€Å"My books are often compared in their genre to Lee Child, so one of the things that I do on Facebook is to serve ads just to people who know or like Lee Child - fans of his fan page, fans of the Jack Reacher fan page, and so on.â€Å"You want to find a similar author in your genre like that who you can use to make sure that your ads are shown to people who are likely to like your books.†One of the benefits of using Facebook ads is the ability to test audience sets. For as little as $5 a day, you can deliver your ads to different ‘sets’ of audiences so you can see whether your ad appeals more to readers of Robin Hobb or Terry Brooks; to followers of Tony Robbins, or Gary Vaynerchuk. â€Å"I can typically make most days a 100% return on investment (ROI). I’m spending around $300-$350 in Facebook ads every day, and I make around $600-$700 a day from it.†Naturally, your ability to continually reach new readers this way is limited by the size of the audience your targeting.â€Å"There are some authors in other genres - romance is particularly good for this, as it is for just about everything else - who are also encountering huge success with this. There’s one author in particular who was selling $200 worth of her box set every month, and last month sold $1500. Obviously, you’ve got to invest in the ads, but she is making a 500% ROI: pay $1 get $5.†But beyond creating a simple ad that urges readers to buy your product, Mark uses a couple of ‘intermediate’ techniques for boosting direct sales with Facebook ads:1. Generate a ‘lookalike’ audienceâ€Å"For those who don’t know what one is, you can im port your mailing list into Facebook and then tell them: ‘please, generate a lookalike audience based on this mailing list.’ Facebook will then try to assess what the people have in common in your mailing list, and algorithmically search for people matching the same interests, demographics, etc.â€Å"The results of these ‘lookalike’ campaigns are sometimes better than the ones based on audiences with a shared interest. My best sales ad for one of the boxed sets I have on sale is a 2.2M list of people based in the United States defined as a ‘lookalike’ of my mailing list. I optimize the ads for clicks and typically generate a 50-100% ROI every day.†2. Advertise to people on your mailing listOne thing that Facebook allows you to do is to import the email addresses from your mailing list and match these email addresses with Facebook accounts (provided that these people have one). You can then serve ads to these people as well.â€Å"Some pe ople might ask why I’m saying the same thing twice. ‘You’re already sending them an email asking them to buy the book.’â€Å"Well, not all emails are opened (50% is already a very high open rate), and it’s a standard advertising theory that it takes more than one touch for someone to make a buying decision. So that kind of joined-up campaign is going to be more effective than just an email blast or just a Facebook campaign.Some marketers reckon that ‘effective frequency’ - or number of times a customer has to see an advertising message for it to take hold - can be as high as 10 (or more). So instead of emailing subscribers ten times and getting dumped in the spam folder, you can ensure that your book rises to the top of their mind.†These are some of the techniques Mark has used to become a publishing titan - but their execution requires a bit of finesse and self-education. You can join the waiting list for Mark Dawson’s Advertising for Authors, a paid course that is the best on offer, in our opinion. Or as an alternative, check out Reedsy Learning’s Facebook Ads for Authors course - which is free. (Disclosure: if you end up registering for any of Mark's courses, Reedsy may receive a small affiliate payment.)If you have any questions or thoughts on using Facebook ads to market your book, drop us a message in the comments below.