The 14-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge

Day #6: How to Create a Keyword Ad and Target Specific Books and Phrases with Ads

Brought to you by Bryan Cohen’s Author Ad School

Here’s What You’ll Learn Today

Why relevancy is so important to your book’s marketing health
How to set up a Sponsored Product Keyword Ad

Relevancy for the Win

To keep our spend lower (and our profit higher) we need to pick the most relevant targets for our books, and making sure we pick the most relevant search terms, book titles, and author names for our ads can help. Furthermore, ensuring our subtitle, categories, and 7 KDP keywords are relevant will also help our campaigns to get more impressions and clicks (which we hope will lead to more sales and KU pages read as well).

Hunting down hundreds of additional keywords per week may seem like a tall order, but using certain free tools can get us the relevant phrases we need to create ad campaigns regularly and send more readers to our book sales pages. With more ads and more relevant metadata, we’ll start gathering the impressions and clicks we need to serve a bigger purpose: determining if our book in its current state is profitable and how well it converts (how many clicks it takes to get a sale).

In the coming three videos, we’ll discuss those very things to help us get closer to a profitable and sustainable author career (you’re doing great on this journey!).

What’s a Keyword Ad?

A Sponsored Product Keyword Ad is a campaign that targets books related to the keyword phrases you’ve chosen for that ad. This ad is the hardest of the three to set up because you’ll have to brainstorm or research the keywords that your book title would fit with. We recommend taking the time to come up with 100-150 keywords to put into each of your ads (though since we’re practicing, today just do your best).

Today, we’ll just create one, but eventually you’ll create a maximum of 5-10 Keyword Ads per week, and the research tips you learn in the next video will help immensely with this.

Keyword Ads use your Custom Bid to determine how much you get charged each time a reader clicks on your ad, so just like with Category Ads, you’ll need to make sure you change both your Default and Custom bid to 34 or 39 cents to avoid any higher cost surprises.

How Does a Keyword Ad Work?

When you add a Keyword target to your Sponsored Product Keyword Ad, Amazon draws from that specific phrase and some phrases that are related to your keyword. When a reader searches for a phrase related to your keyword or when they browse the sales page of a book title you’ve used as a keyword, your book’s ad campaign has a chance of displaying there.

Keyword Ads tend to yield more impressions and clicks when the keywords you’ve chosen are as relevant as possible to your book, leading to the right kind of readers clicking on your ad and hopefully buying your book.

Creating a Keyword Ad

Prior to creating the ad, brainstorm or research at least 100 keyword phrases that you’ll be able to use as the targets for your campaign (today, just do 10-50)
From your “Ad Dashboard”, you’ll click on the “Create Campaign” button followed by the “Continue” button under “Sponsored Products”
For “Ad Format”, you can choose “Standard Ad,” which will bring up the “Ad Groups” header where you can use the name “SPK 1” for now
For “Products,” you’ll select your book from the list or search for your book title in title case and click “Add.” For “Targeting,” you’ll select “Manual Targeting” and “Keyword Targeting”
Under “Keyword Targeting” and next to “Bid,” you’ll select “Custom Bid” from the drop-down menu and change it to 34 cents for a standalone and 39 cents for a series starter (and then repeat the step for the “Default Bid” as well)
Next to the word “Filter By,” you can uncheck the box next to “Phrase” and “Exact” to ensure your keywords will use “Broad” targeting, then click the “Enter List” tab
Take your list of Keywords, make sure they’re displaying with just one phrase per line, copy them into the keyword box, and click the “Add Keywords” button
Amazon does not accept keywords with special characters or that are 50 characters or longer, so if you have any phrases that aren’t accepted, you’ll need to edit or remove them before clicking “Add Keywords” again
You can leave “Negative Keyword Targeting” blank, and for “Campaign bidding strategy,” you’ll select “Dynamic Bids – Down Only” from the list and ignore the “Adjust bids by placement” link
For “Campaign name,” you’ll use the same shorthand formula for your book + the ad type + the target + the bid you’ve selected (i.e., SPWAA SPK Search Terms 39)
For “End,” you’ll choose the last date of this month as your end date. For “Daily budget,” you’ll set $5 as your amount (remember: at these lower bids, you are unlikely to spend that much)
Double check each of the sections (especially the two types of bids of “Custom” and “Default”) and then click the “Launch Campaign” button

Reminder: Two Places to Set Bids

As we mentioned in an earlier video, Category and Keyword Ads have two places where you should adjust your bids.

After selecting Keyword Targeting, you’ll want to uncheck the boxes next to Phrase and Exact. Then, you’ll want to look for the drop-down menu with the options Custom, Default, and Suggested bids.

Remember to change the Default Bid to either 34 or 39 cents depending on whether you have a standalone or a series entry point, like a first-in-series or box set.

Then, you’ll want to make the same changes to the Custom Bid (34 or 39 cents) to ensure that all the keywords you add will be set at that same lower bid.

Want to See Me Create a Keyword Ad Live?

Be sure to watch the screen share at 7:20 to follow along with the visual portion of this lesson!

We’re Almost Halfway There

Tomorrow will be the halfway point of the Challenge. Between those tutorials and the upcoming Advanced Amazon Ads webinar, your Challenge access is beginning to dwindle.

At the conclusion of the Challenge, the support and videos will move to our premium Author Ad School program, which features year-round support and our daily Page Pals writing sessions.

Author Ad School also includes ongoing access to this Challenge material so you can continue it at your own pace.

“Amazon Ads had never made sense to me. Through what I learned in Author Ad School, I was able to earn over $11,000 in one month, more than three times what I spent in advertising. The techniques I’ve learned in Ad School have helped me grow to a completely new level.” – Author LJ Andrews

Author Ad School is For…

Self-published authors
Authors who plan to keep releasing books and writing in series or nonfiction
Authors who need advertising explained in plain language
Authors who want to increase their sales & their profits
Authors who’ve found our teaching helpful

Here’s How You Get It

While some ad courses cost over $700, you can get three months of the best support in self-publishing with Author Ad School Unlimited for as little as one payment of $249 or 3 easy payments of $99.

You’ll also get additional workshops with Bryan Cohen and extra bonuses when you join our premium program for 6 or 12 months.

Click here to join 3,000+ students in Author Ad School!

Day #6 Homework

Take the keyword phrases you brainstormed and create a Sponsored Product Keyword Ad
Use names you’ll remember, select no end date or the last day of this month for the end date, and use a $5 daily budget
Use a 34 or a 39 cent bid, change both your Custom and your Default bids to the right numbers, and choose Standard ad for no copy
Create your campaigns, take a screenshot of your newly set up ads, and post the picture in a brand new post in the Facebook or Slack group with the hashtag #AdDay6 (and your own hashtag)
Spread some happiness to 3 or more authors in the group by commenting on their posts

On the Next Day of the Challenge

We’ll learn what tools you can use to find more keywords in the form of book titles and author names. We’ll also talk about why and how you should create 5-10 new Keyword Ads each week.

It’s now your wonderful opportunity to go off and do that homework.

You’re doing an awesome job! Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video!

Sincerely,
Bryan & the Team