Kobo Promos and Bookbub ads

[notthatamanda]

Does anyone have any experience/luck with running bookbub ads specifically targeting the Kobo links when your book is in a Kobo promo?

Kobo accepts my boxsets/compilations for most of the promos I apply for.  They almost never accept the standalones. Either way if I sell 5 books in a promo, it's a huge win.  I could do a bookbub ad targeted at Kobo readers, I've tried Canva so I might be able to make a halfway (probably quarterway) decent looking ad.

I don't have a mailing list and I see no other options on how to advertise a Kobo promo, but if anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks.

[Marti Talbott]

I've had no luck at all getting a Kobo ad, but I haven't tried a box set. Nor have I tried getting a Bookbub and a Kobo ad at the same time.  If you accomplish it, I will be interested in your results.

[alhawke]

Yes. I did this last month for a Kobo ad running in Australia and got my title up higher in the ranks at #1 and 2 in a few categories. It cost in BookBub ads but it was a good way to push the Kobo promo higher and get more visibility for my new book. I find that relying on the Kobo ad only can be tuff. I've only gotten a couple sales with their promo alone.
{this was for a single title, not a boxset}

[notthatamanda]

Thanks, I might try it.

Alhawke - how do you know what your book was ranked in categories on Kobo?  Or did you target the bookbub ad at all readers and mean Amazon categories?

Marti - I  meant running a Bookbub ad to promote a Kobo promo.  Not doing a Bookbub/featured deal at the same time as a Kobo promo.
Just wanted to clarify for you.

[Marti Talbott]

Oh. I'm a little slow this morning. When I do a bookbub ad, I always include Kobo and all the rest. It does give me added downloads on Kobo. I do that with Freebooksy ads too.

[notthatamanda]

I've never had great success with Bookbub ads so I am just running a couple a week, one for B&N, one for Kobo, to see if anything works.  I've pretty much proven to myself that Bookbub ads to try to sell MY full priced books on Amazon aren't worth my time or money.  The spend on the other vendors is much slower and manageable.

[Simon Haynes]

I'm running BB ads on a 3.99 preorder, but really I'm just trying to gain a bit of visibility in the new release list for my category. (I think I mentioned this the other day.)

Therefore, the ads don't have to pay for themselves, as they're purely for promotion.
 

[alhawke]

Thanks, I might try it.

Alhawke - how do you know what your book was ranked in categories on Kobo?  Or did you target the bookbub ad at all readers and mean Amazon categories?

Marti - I  meant running a Bookbub ad to promote a Kobo promo.  Not doing a Bookbub/featured deal at the same time as a Kobo promo.
Just wanted to clarify for you.

I'm referring to Kobo category ranking on their Kobo page (which do not take nearly as many sales as Zon categories to rank, particularly international, but still will help in greater visibility for Kobo).

I have greater luck with BookBub than Amazon ads because I'm wide. Or maybe it's just that I enjoy creating ads on Canva. I don't know why, but I waste a lot of money on AMS and I'm not sure why I keep doing AMS. But, you know, once I get a sale, it spurs me on to fork out more $$  . BookBub won't show sales, but as a starting author a sale on another platform for me is typically traced back to a click on a BookBub ad.

[notthatamanda]

Good grief, I never even noticed that Kobo had rankings there.  Well I did see the eye doctor yesterday and he did say my eyes were fine, other than being blind.

So thank you for that.  I also attribute the sales on other platforms to bookbub ads when I am running them. Not that hard to keep track of small numbers, unfortunately.

Simon - do you bid extra low on BB ads when you are just doing it for visibility?