PPC for Publishing Companies

How do readers find books to read in the modern era? Unless they’re browsing displays at bookstores, consumers are checking out the newest releases online. A significant part of book marketing now involves online promotion direct to the customer, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective methods.

Using PPC in publishing

Typically, book marketing starts about six months before publication, which leaves you working against the clock. One of PPC’s biggest benefits is speed — you can launch your campaign in no time and see results within three months. 

Some other benefits of PPC for publishing companies include:

• Easy testing: A/B testing gives you a simple way to fine-tune your ads, so you can keep things moving.
• Instant top rankings: Using search engine optimization (SEO) can boost your ranking in organic search results, but it takes around four to six months to work. PPC puts you at the top of the page even if you don’t have time to improve your ranking.
• Targeted audiences: PPC lets smaller publishers compete with industry giants by focusing their marketing efforts on a targeted audience.

Choosing your PPC platform

An ad network, or PPC platform, helps advertisers easily buy ad space in multiple locations. While there are several paid advertising platforms to choose from, we’ll focus on the two most widely used — Google and Facebook. Google sees around 5.6 billion daily searches, while Facebook has over 1.9 billion active daily users.

Google Ads

Google’s enormous reach makes it a good option for your PPC platform. Some of Google’s benefits include:

• Multiple networks in one: When you create an ad with Google Ads, you can deliver it across the Internet. In addition to its search engine, Google Play, the Google Display Network, Google Maps, and YouTube are all part of Google’s web.
• Advanced audience targeting: Any PPC platform has ways for you to target a specific audience, but Google goes beyond the usual gender, age, and location demographics — you can segment your audience with detailed information like recent life events, shopping and purchase history, or interests and hobbies.
• Assorted ad types: Google Ads lets you choose the type of ad that works best for your campaign, including paid search, display, video, and shopping.

Facebook Ads

Some of the benefits of choosing Facebook ads as your PPC platform include the following:

• Running on multiple platforms: In addition to Facebook, your Facebook ads can run on their affiliated platforms, including Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook’s Audience Network. Extending the reach of your ads gives you the chance to reach a wider audience.
• Multiple placement locations: Run your ads in Facebook’s news feed, stories, marketplace, suggested videos, and more. Based on how your audience interacts with the site, you can choose the placements most likely to make an impact.
• Several supported formats: With the option to run several ad formats, you can choose the ones most likely to appeal to your audience.

Best types of PPC ads for publishing companies

Once you choose your platform, you’ll need to decide what ads best suit your campaign. Here are a few of the best options for book marketing:

Paid search ads

These all-text ads look like regular search results but include the word “sponsored” to indicate that they’re ads. Appearing in organic search results partly depends on choosing the right keywords, and paid search ads work the same way. Once you’ve selected the keywords to target the most relevant searches, you’ll pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad.

With all the work that goes into cover design, a text-only ad may seem counterintuitive. However, the higher a result is on the page, the more likely users are to click it. Google places paid search ads above the organic search results, and the top three paid spots earn 46% of the clicks for the whole page.

Display ads 

If the idea of a text-only ad doesn’t appeal to you, you can opt for an image with text via a display ad. This type of ad is an excellent choice for books with particularly eye-catching covers.

Instead of tying into keywords the way paid search ads do, display ads let you target a particular market or advertise on specific websites. For example, you can advertise on book review blogs or sites dedicated to interests your target audience shares.

Social media ads

People spend 147 minutes on social media daily — that’s almost two and a half hours every day. Placing your ads on social media gives you a potential audience of 4.62 billion users, making it a valuable investment opportunity.

Social media advertising lets you set your preferences to select who sees your ad based on demographic information, including:

• Location
• Gender
• Age
• Language
• Interests
• Behaviors

You’ll choose your platform based on where your target audience spends most of their time. While this opens up many possibilities, Facebook and TikTok are two of the best options.

Facebook has an enormous user base — 2.91 billion monthly active users — and a diverse advertising system. In addition to marketing your books on Facebook, you can also run your ads on their affiliated placements.

TikTok is a smaller platform when compared to Facebook, having just hit 1 billion users in 2021. It’s an excellent opportunity to reach younger audiences — 41.7% of global users are 18-24, while 25% of United States users are under 18. Choosing TikTok as your PPC platform also lets you tap into the marketing power of BookTok to target audiences when their interest is at its highest.

Instream ads

If you’ve visited YouTube lately, you’re probably familiar with instream ads. These can be anything from sidebar ads to short commercials that play before or partway through a video. With 14.3 billion monthly views from 1.7 billion users, instream ads offer an easy way to reach a significant audience.

With instream ads, you can choose: 

• Your daily budget.
• How long you want your ad to run. 
• Where you want YouTube to run your ad.
• Who you want to reach.

With the popularity of BookTube channels, YouTube represents an opportunity to market your latest releases directly to the audience with the most interest.

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WebFX can help with your online advertising campaign

Pay-per-click advertising is an effective way to get online communities buzzing about your upcoming releases. Still, there’s a lot to keep track of when it’s time to start marketing a book. Which platform will you choose? What type of ads will you run? How often will you track and test your results?

At WebFX, we have the expertise to help you run a successful campaign for your new releases. You can check out our PPC management and paid social media advertising services or browse our knowledge base to learn more about paid advertising.

We’d love to put our knowledge to work for you. Fill out our online form to request a free proposal, or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist today!

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