What is the IngramID Program and How Does it Help Sell Books?

Ingram ID is a new program IngramSpark has rolled out to help authors sell books through ad platforms like Google and Facebook. If you're wondering about the program, how to use it, and whether you should use it, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a full service self publishing company helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book. And one of the things we spend a lot of time on for our clients is managing all the tools available to help you succeed as an author. And the list of things is long. One of the main services we use for print book distribution is IngramSpark. And along with their print distribution network, which reaches bookstores, libraries, online and in person globally, they have other programs to help you succeed. Because the more books you sell, the more money they make. So your interests and their interests are aligned. Now. One program they just rolled out is called Ingram id. This is a quick way for you to advertise your book via Facebook, Google Search, Google Display, and by creating a unique email flyer to consumers. They say it's easy to use and I'm going to take that for a test run today and I'll bring you along so we can both find out. But additionally, one of the big benefits to this program is exclusive access to their verified reader audiences. These reader audiences are available only in Ingram id. So take a look. I had to create an Ingram ID account because my IngramSpark login didn't work. So once I did that and once I was logged in, it was really easy to add the book that I wanted to use to promote my first campaign. The next step was, was to choose your campaign. I personally, with Book Launchers already have a lot of Google Ads running. Head on over to book launchers.com and you'll probably find that I follow you around for a while. But I did turn off my Facebook ads recently, so I figured I would use this to test Facebook out for you. I always find doing things in Facebook funky, which is probably why all my advertising efforts on Facebook feel like I'm funding Zuck and his family far more than I'm building my business in any way. But for you, I was willing to try again. According to Ingram id, they say our Facebook service offering allows you to quickly target all relevant verified reader audiences for your book. You can choose to insert your book cover as the primary image or upload an image you have created for Google ID offers both Google Display and Google Search advertising. The main difference between Google search ads versus display ads is that search ads are a form of pull advertising, while display ads are a push advertising. That is Search ads only appear to those who are already searching for your product or service, while display ads are paid placements that appear on various targeting parameters. An interesting service they offer is their new dedicated emails. However, cue my sadness as I found out that it's only for women's fiction, thriller, suspense, poetry and romance. But I'm sure I'm hopeful that if it's successful, they'll add nonfiction. Looks like they have either created or partnered with organizations called Bookfinity and Infinite Books. Bookfinity is a book discovery site with over 1 million users with personalized recommendations, reading lists and exclusives exclusive content from authors and publishing insiders. It helps readers stop searching and start reading. These Campaigns start at $1,250, so you should have a big picture plan for any book sales that come through their list. Or you better hope that they're selling a lot of books for that to make sense. Being as these lists are focused on fiction, I would assume the goal is going to be getting someone hooked on your series with your first book and then selling more on the back end. And that's going to make this spend worthwhile. Okay, back to the ad setup. I have to tell you, I was having a lot of trouble connecting my Book Launchers Facebook page until I switched from using Firefox to using Google Chrome. So just a tip, if you're finding that the site isn't working for you to check what browser you're using and potentially switch browsers because as soon as I switched, everything worked like a charm. So now that we're set up, I'm just going to create a basic campaign. Now I am already running ads to a page self publishand succeed.com, but if you aren't already set up like I am for that, you can. You have plenty of options around how you're going to sell your book, including the new Ingram Direct Link. What I would not recommend doing is setting up an ad to sell your book on Amazon because you're going to lose money and not get data to figure out what's working. Now running an ad to your Ingram Share and Sell link, which I showed you how to set up in a different video which I'll link to at the end is going to be very easy. But keep in mind the big drawback with that is you aren't collecting contact information from a purchaser. That is not ideal at all. However, if you are not using your share and sell link for anything but ads Right now, you could do this to get data on your success or the not success of your ads. If you ran this ad to Amazon, you won't know if these ads are working or not. And you're not collecting data from here. The ad setup is straightforward. You'll need to come up with a compelling headline. So think about the hook of your book. Why would someone buy your book today? Then you'll need some imagery. Your cover of your book could be one thing to test. I have an image with incentives we offer on this page, so. So I'm going to try that now. The piece that isn't here that I'm used to with ad setup is conversion tracking metrics. So I'm curious to see what information, if any, we get at the end of this campaign. But I'm guessing we're probably just going to get clicks and click through rates. You can see the warning message that pops up after the ad is created. It says, Ingram ID ads are subject to Google and Facebook ad moderation policies, which are aimed at ensuring a safe and positive experience for all users while adhering to applicable laws. While we've taken steps in Ingram ID to reduce the risk that ads will be flagged, Google or Facebook do sometimes reject ads or choose to show them to a limited audience. Common reasons are one, your ad discusses topics both platforms label as sensitive interests or sensational content like sexual orientation or strong beliefs about politics or religion. Two, your ad uses trademarked words or pictures that belong to others, like a brand logo or a sports team name. Three, your ad can be labeled as clickbait, which means using phrases that try to get people to click based on limited information, such as you won't believe or reveal the secrets. Okay, legal stuff aside, this is a little unusual. I have to prepay for this. Now, I assume Ingram ID is taking a cut on top of the Facebook ad costs because this is a service that makes it easier, but that means it would be cheaper to go direct to Facebook. So the value is coming in their audience and the simplicity of this. Now, this is more money than I would typically like to prepay, but you guys are worth it. So let's do this and see how it goes. Now, you can see here we're only going to get data on impressions and link clicks. We have tracking data set up on our page, self publish and succeed.com that will give us data back. I have a feeling this is going to be rather limited versus what we are used to with our robust tracking metrics that we use for the ad geeks. In the room. We normally use Hiros to track at a very, very detailed level where our clients are coming from. The tracking codes are there, but because this is running through Ingram id, I don't think I'm going to get much data feeding back into Hiros. To make this a more fair test, I have turned off the Google Ads to this page. We're going to relaunch this page with Shopify and Book Vault as our backend this. Anyways, you want to find out more about that, make sure you're subscribed to the channel with the notifications on. But to find out how this campaign goes, well, you will also have to subscribe to the channel because I'm going to talk about that more in a month or so. On the surface, I am going to guess that this will be the one and only time I will use this offering just because I won't get the data that I'm used to. But I can tell you that if you've never done Facebook or Google Ads for your book before, this is a much simpler, much less intimidating way to dip your toe into it. Again, I think it's great Ingram is working so much so hard to help authors sell more books. If you're going to try the tool, or you already have, let's chat about it in the comments below. And I'll mention one more thing. They've added Ingram Premium services. This is what they say about those we offer additional premium services connecting your titles to the right audience of readers. Contact us to market directly through our consumer websites. I don't know what consumer websites they mean and clicking on the link just takes you to a contact form. But it does say that these premium services include access to nearly 2 million engaged reading enthusiasts, social media influencers. They're going to feature your titles with prominent YouTube influencers and engage in effective cross promotion custom ad campaigns. So if you've got budget to spend, they probably have some great ways to help you target your book to the audience that you're trying to reach. Again, not sure how this will work for nonfiction or what the options are at this point, but you know if you're subscribed, I'm going to keep you up to date. Okay, after this video you might be wondering about the share and sell program. The video I did on that is right here for you. And this video is the one YouTube most recommends you watch now. So. Well, you can watch and let me know if YouTube was right. Go ahead and click on over.