Ads, Discovery, and the Author’s Digital Future with Mal Cooper

About this episode

Mal Cooper discusses the complexities of running Facebook ads for indie authors and the importance of creative work in advertising.

* Listen on the app of your choice Mal Cooper — sci-fi author (M.D. Cooper), Facebook ads expert, and co-founder of The Writing Wives — joins Russell to talk about what it actually takes to run ads, why indie authors keep handing money to corporations, and what the web got right the first time around. Here are some favorite insights from this episode. 1. Facebook Ads Have No Silver Bullet — And Never Will Every course promises a system. The answer is always the same: make good creative, test a lot of options, and see what sticks. That’s not a cop-out — it’s the reality of a platform with hundreds of variables per ad, most of them unknowable. You’re simultaneously trying to satisfy Facebook’s AI, get it in front of the right humans, and then convert on your product page. The person running the ads is also a variable. Two different ad managers can run campaigns on the same book and get completely different results — not because one has the secret formula, but because creativity is personal and Facebook is a black box even to Facebook. 2. Do the Creative Work First, the Admin Work Second Don’t follow Facebook’s flow, which buries creative at the end of a long form-filling process…

People in this episode

Host: Russell Nohelty

Guest: Mal Cooper

Topics covered

• Facebook Ads
• indie authors
• digital marketing
• creative work
• advertising strategies

Keywords

• Facebook Ads
• indie authors
• advertising
• digital marketing
• creative process

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Writing Wives, Facebook

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