Q2 Week 3 MARKETING: Promo Data Analysis
Last week, I showed you my stacked promotion for the first book in the Watchers Crew series. You saw that even though I made a profit, it was clear 30 days later that the series was not going to be a success. I hate to call it a failure when I enjoyed writing it and it’s in the black. But it’s clear from that data that my Polyamorous Romance about street racers is not going to hit the bestsellers charts.
In December of 2023, I got a Bookbub Featured deal on a different Polyamorous Romance. This time it was a Contemporary Reverse Harem. The first book, Masters of Restraint, was accepted by BB for a free run in their Erotic Romance category. There are four books in this series. Because it takes place in and around an adult toy company, I made the boxset a little more festive and called it a Knotty or Nice Christmas.
You’ll see below that I grabbed the 30 day time period before the BBFD so that I could compare the data. Before the deal, the series was making about $100 per month.
You can clearly see what happened on Bookbub Day. The following week, I booked a Freebooksy, followed by a Robin Reads a week later.
I did not run any cost per click ads. My social media manager did some Instagram and Facebook posts during the month of December.
I spent $382 on promotions.
I made $1375.15 during December.
So far in the second week of January, I’ve made $360.83.
So it looks promising that this series might remain profitable for awhile. With that data, I’m going to consider some CPC ads and more social promo to get the book in front of readers. Especially since I had a number of free downloads and I want to remind/excite those people who downloaded to actually read the book.
Having a baseline is enough for me to determine if the promo was successful or not. But some authors and advertisers go deeper and measure the data by cost per click or return on investment. Here’s the math if you want to math it.
COST PER CLICK
Track the Clicks: The first step is to track how many clicks your ad received. This is usually provided by the newsletter service. But it’s their data and some may not give it to you.
Calculate Cost Per Click (CPC): CPC is a straightforward formula. It's the cost of your ad divided by the number of clicks it received.
CPC=Total Cost of Ad/Number of Clicks
For instance, if you paid $100 for the ad and it received 50 clicks, your CPC is $2.00.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
If you know how much you spent on the promotion and how much revenue it generated, you can still gauge its effectiveness, primarily through the Return on Investment (ROI) calculation. While you won't have the specific metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC) or Conversion Rate without knowing the clicks or conversions, ROI can be a powerful indicator of the overall success of your ad spend.
Here's how to calculate ROI:
Total Revenue from the Ad: This is the amount you earned from sales that can be attributed to the promotion. It's important to try and isolate the revenue that specifically resulted from the ad campaign.
Total Cost of the Ad: This is how much you spent on the newsletter promotion.
Calculate ROI: The formula for ROI is:
ROI=(Revenue from Ad−Cost of Ad/Cost of Ad)×100%
For example, if you spent $100 on the ad and made $300 in sales from it, your ROI would be:
ROI=300−100/100)×100%=200%
This means you made $2 for every $1 spent on the ad.
My personal threshold is to aim for 2Xing. That means if I spent $2 I want to make $4. But I have friends who are multi-six figure authors, and one millionaire, that 1.5X!
Have you gotten your first bit of data from your first promo this month? If you’re open, I’d love for you to share your results. If you’re data shy, you can just tell me if you’re in the black or not and if you’re seeing the sell through.