Fun With Social Media Ads

A new month is upon us, so time for some new images for my ads on a Certain Major Social Media Platform we’ll call VisageTome.

(VisageTome is, of course, Facebook. I wrote this post on FB and it gets twitchy if you mention FB in a post, so I usually use a euphemism like “VisageTome” when discussing it on FB itself.)

In the last (nearly) three years, I’ve run something like 250 campaigns on VisageTome, and here’s what I’ve learned about advertising fantasy books.

-Advertising a discount or free book works best.

-The narrower you can get the targeted audience, the better.

-Just be careful that it doesn’t tip over into too narrow.

-Target US and UK audiences separately.

-The images that get the best conversion results are square, prominently feature a woman who isn’t showing too much skin (and too much catches the attention of VisageTome’s bots), who is either holding a sword, doing Something With Magic, or both.

-If you can work a dragon into the image, all the better.

This seems like a lot of work, and it is, but it’s worthwhile. In December, for the CLOAK GAMES series I got back $3.98 for every $1 I spent advertising CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP.

-JM