Should I Run Ads?
In recent months, I’ve been having fifty shades of the same conversation with authors. As a success coach (who primarily coaches creatives), I talk to around 100 individual authors per month, and sometimes more, for about 45 minutes each, so when I say fifty shades of the same conversation, I mean that quite literally.
The question often comes down to: “Becca, I know need to run ads,” or “How do I get better at running ads?” And sometimes, “Should I be running ads?”
If you know me at all, you know I’m never a person who says there’s one universal answer to every question. The answer is always, “it depends.” But… what does it depend on?
Let’s question the premise. Here’s a basic rundown of how I would coach someone through this discussion.
1. What are the assumptions I want to get out into the open?
– First, this question (or the insistence that you need to be running ads) assumes that your primary goal is making money. Some of you will be thinking, “Becca, get to the good stuff” but slow the roll for a sec.
This is an important question.
Only about half the people I coach to are attempting to make a regular living from selling books—which when you take into account all the expenses it takes to run a small business, is a significant amount of money. So already, we see that the answer to “should I be running ads” might be “no” for a good portion of the people who aren’t looking to make a regular living.
(And let me quickly say, if you’re resonating with the “no” answer here, I would read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert… An awful lot of us need to not make our writing about money because of the pressure it creates. Not trying to talk anyone out of something they’ve committed to… but this is a volatile industry. It’s stressful. It is not worth the strain and the stress for some of us who have a high need for stability and security.)
– Second, asking “should I run ads” assumes that you have a platform that will help you in advertising. Some of us are writing genre-mashups that don’t advertise well. (And yes, that is a consideration. I’m not saying don’t write genre mashups. I am saying, they’re hard to advertise.)
If you were to say, “I don’t know why the book isn’t selling,” and then I ask you what your target market is, and you don’t know because it’s such a strange mashup of things, there’s no easy comp (comparable product).
The easiest things to advertise have comps.
The hardest things to advertise have no comps.
Why is this? Because advertising is quite literally the art of enticing people toward your sales funnel by playing on their shared mental real estate. If you’ve ever read market research books, if you’ve ever studied how to create products to market in any other arena, you know, comps are key because a comparable product creates a set of shared parameters inside the consumer’s head (hence: shared mental real estate). And given how quickly advertising has to convert, the less shared mental real estate I can count on, the less I will convert.
The other piece of this “platform” question is: do you have the kind of product line that will be worth spending the money. By this, I mean, asking questions like, “how many books do I have in this series?” (Or how many standalones that have audience overlap do I have available?) “How many series do I have?” “How much money will I make if I convert one reader?”
Because of the learning curve with ads platforms and because of the low conversion metrics (how many people do I have to get to click the ad before I can get a sale), I never encourage people to run ads when they have few books unless they don’t mind sinking costs into ads.
– Third, we often assume that any one individual person is able to run ads and write at the same time. Let me promise you, for certain, this is not true for everyone. If the books are the product that you’re selling, then you have to be able to keep producing the books while you are advertising. If you cannot, then you shouldn’t be running ads.
The most common thing I see in authors with high ad spends is that they’re not writing while they’re running ads because they have to check in on their ads multiple times a day (including absolutely first thing in the morning, which is often detrimental to productivity).
If ads are too anxiety-producing, then don’t run them.
2. If we assume that you do want to make money, you do have books that will sell, and you can keep writing while you run ads, then we ask, are you wired to be good at running ads?
We’ve likely all heard the encouragement, “no one is more invested in your ads than you are.” And while, in theory, that might be true, let me question part of that premise for a second.
Just because you are invested in your ads does not mean that you have the wiring it takes to succeed at running ads. It also does not mean that you will intuitively take to figuring out targeting, audiences, demographics, ad copy, hooks, images, taglines, testing, or data. It takes a lot of skill to do ads well. Not everyone has the capacity to do this well. And not everyone can “just learn” how to do ads well, no matter how invested in our own success we are.
In fact, some of us who are very invested in our own ads… that investment is exactly the reason we can’t run ads. We’re not willing to question our own assumptions about the books as products. (i.e. when something doesn’t advertise well, stop advertising it; stop expecting all books to sell / advertise equally well; etc.) Sometimes, having someone else run your ads (especially someone who is an expert at ad-running) will help you to question things about your books and why they aren’t selling in a new way. Or even just getting coached about your ad-running, which several people are doing now.
For instance, we’ve found that people who are highly intuitive (not concrete, “know things” before they can explain why they know them, etc.) run ads differently than people who are more concrete-thinkers. That means learning a system works differently. It’s more about experimentation and skill-building, rather than system-learning. And intuitive people (which more than 50% of authors are) need more gamification of ad systems and less concrete learning. They often learn by doing.
This drastically changes the way you would learn to run ads.
Yes, you can learn to run ads without being data obsessed or concrete. No, you can’t learn to run ads without spending money running ads—and sometimes, without individualized attention from an ads expert. And yes, this sucks for some of us.
And here’s the really hard conversation. When you can’t afford to hire things out, you’ve tried learning ads, but they don’t work, or you’re not able to find a person who can do your ads well enough…. we are now in essential pain land. Pain is essential to the situation and there’s no escaping it.
Is there anything we can do about this place?
Sometimes. But the answer always takes a lot of time. Because sometimes, the answer is, “you need to write more books before you can advertise.” And sometimes, the answer is, “you need new covers and new blurbs.” And sometimes, the answer is, “you need an ads coach.” And we can’t afford all those things in the moment.
For those of us in that place, I would say: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth waiting for. So if you have to wait until you have more books or more money or more time, then it’s worth waiting for. The gold rush is over. Now we’re just in the regular old industry of publishing. Industry takes money, time, and product. You don’t have to worry about not doing it right now. It can happen when it happens.
The best thing we can do to relieve essential pain (when we can’t change a situation) is to change our expectations. Instead of listening to the, I have to do this right now or I’ll never be able to do it voice, we accept where we are, look at the assets we do have, and work until we can get to the place where we either have more assets, or we have more support. It’s doable. But if we continue to exist in the fear and fervor, we’re going to miss the forward action.
I know, I’m full of the bad news today. I get it. But I just want us all to have a better, saner life. Sometimes, releasing unrealistic expectations is the best key to a better life.
3. If we assume you want to make money, can sell, can still write, and are wired to be good at ads, then should you be running ads?
You know me. There are still considerations here.
1) Are you able to delegate to someone else? If not, then yes, you should run your own ads.
2) Do you have an easy-to-manage platform? (i.e. are you writing in a good genre that’s easy to target, and do you have the money to do the strategies you want) Then maybe you shouldn’t be running your own ads. The easier your platform is to manage, the easier it will be to turn over to someone else. The more nuanced it is, the harder it is for someone to run who doesn’t understand the inside of your brain.
3) How aggressive do you want to be? The more aggressive your strategy, the harder it will be to find someone who is okay spending your money who is capable and qualified. The closer they can be to the stakes (like your spouse or a family member), the easier time they might have. Or if they make a percentage instead of a flat fee. There are always ways around this. But if you’re going to risk big, you often also have to pay others to risk big.
4) Do you have the time? Sometimes the essential pain is that we just don’t have the time to run our own ads. Some of us really do need to offload ads because it’s the thing that can go. This may or may not be comfortable. But sometimes it’s necessary.
5) Do you know someone who is better at running ads than you are who also has time to take over your platform, whom you can afford to pay? I realize this is a tall order. But as the industry proliferates, there will be more and more opportunity to find people who can do this. (Obviously, do your due diligence, and be as conservative as you can until you know the person well enough to trust them. Just had to put in that caveat.) If you have it, I suggest using it. Any way to get you more writing time.
And after all this…
Okay, we’ve Q’d the P. We now know if we meet the assumptions and the qualifications. And now we can make our own choices. I know this is a lot of work to go through just to decide whether or not we should be doing a particular thing. But honestly, this industry is complicated and it needs better decision makers. That’s my goal. To reproduce better decision makers.
And just know, there are many paths to success. Anytime we hear someone say, “you have to do this,” I would immediately question the premise. Even if you end up doing the thing. Some of you will get all the way to the end of this article and still feel like you need to aggressively learn and run your own ads, and that’s as it should be. But an equal number will be relieved to know they shouldn’t be running their own ads.
And the industry has room for both. Success has room for both.
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