One simple reason promoting your book on the new Amazon Marketing Services is better than Facebook ads.

Have you tried AMS’s new advertising options for authors? There’s one thing you should recognize.

Facebook’s ads are powerful, easy to use (although difficult to master!) and you can reach targeted audiences and, if you know what you’re doing, they can be lucrative. Build your audience, sell books, get folks on your mailing list, it’s all possible.

But listening to Mark Dawson and James Blatch on their Self-Publishing Formula podcast today, I learned something very important about the different marketplaces. Think about why people are on the various places where you might be advertising:

Google: for search, for email. Maybe they’re looking for a book? If so, great!
Twitter: hmm, grabbing some quick news bits, following their favorite stars, dunno.
Facebook: catching up on friends, hopefully not looking for news …
Amazon: they’re probably looking to buy something.

Think about #4. Why are people on Amazon’s site? Sure, it might be for their films and entertainment, it might be to buy new headphones, but if they’re anywhere near the books section, they’re probably there looking to buy a book. Even if they are shopping for headphones, maybe it’s for listening to audiobooks (you do have an audiobook version of your book, right?). Maybe your book.

They have accounts with Amazon. They’re probably logged in. Even if they don’t click on your book, maybe they’ll see the book fly by as an ad and subconsciously remember it next time … or the next time when they’re ready to buy a book. But it’s not just a distraction from doing what they wanted to be doing on the site, this is what they wanted to be doing on the site: shopping! Buying! Clicking a single button to purchase something like a Kindle version of your book.

Mark Dawson is the king of Facebook Ads and if he’s talking about Amazon ads, I’m listening.

I’m currently playing with ads on several platforms and will post back here on the site with my findings. But that simple idea that they’re shopping is extremely interesting. Check out Amazon Marketing Services for more.