Temporary Setback in my A/B Campaign

Whoa! Sorry, looks like it’s been a month since my last bi-weekly newsletter.

You might recognize this problem - the life of a solo entrepreneur, trying to do too many things, while lacking the practical skills to do the job.

Because here’s where I’m at this month - my intention was to branch out my advertising into Facebook ads, and to do an A/B test, to promote my book and audiobook, The Dance of Success. That's where I just run a couple of different ads to see which one gets the best response. Sounds simple, right?

An A/B Test is supposed to test different ad creative (that’s the image, video or photo in your main ad) along with different headlines. My task, then, was to get a couple of different variations of my sweet audiobook cover, maybe add in a different image with my author photo, work my word-magic with some headlines, and Boom! An A/B ad campaign would be running and delivering my click-through stats.

First hiccup - I am desperately lacking in design skills. “Oh, that’s easy - just use Canva!” is what I keep seeing in my social media feeds. So over to Canva I go.

Happily, I see that I already have a Canva account - apparently I signed up a couple of years ago, and I found my login info and a password that still worked (yay me!). But when I went to create my fabulous ad campaign, it hit me: I didn't know even the words to describe what I wanted to do.

I felt like I had sat down in a theatre, only to discover it was showing a foreign film, and there were no subtitles. “Lost” doesn’t begin to describe it.

I discovered I really don’t know what to DO when I get to Canva - it took me hours to figure out my ad creative, and that’s when I discovered that I started with the wrong Canva template and I had to start over from scratch. It was very, very frustrating. Anybody else feel like this with their technology?

And the biggest sting here is the jubilant posts from other authors, crowing about how “easy” it is to put together a professional ad campaign. Argghhhh!

Part of the problem is that I only have the final jpeg copy of my book cover, and I don’t have access to all the component bits & pieces, like the colourful background or the dancing-girl image. At least, I don’t know how to extract those elements from my book cover. I strongly suspect a "me" problem here. Go figure.

So, I’m stuck. I can’t do an A/B test if I can’t figure out how to make an “A” image and a “B” image.

My fall-back solution when I’m stuck is to go read help files and do internet searches. So I started that way - and then quickly fell into a rabbit hole of links and “experts” who never solved my exact problem. After hours of clicking, reading and watching YouTube videos, I am still no closer to figuring out how to design my ad creative and get at least two different images for an A/B campaign.

So this week, I'm re-grouping. My plan is to ask for help from my unfailingly patient social media coach, Charlotte Dillabough , and get clear instructions (again) on how to create images and save them where I can find them again. I think she secretly despairs that I will ever learn, but I do seem to retain more each time I go back to her for help. Little incremental steps will eventually make for success.

I don't really have much time this week to do a lot of aimless chasing links and how-to videos (when do ANY of us have that kind of spare time?). In addition to all my business and promotional activities, I am also planning a 90th Birthday party for my mother-in-law, which is my biggest priority (she's a sweetheart - and wow! 90 years old. Amazing.)

Looking back on my progress this month - just in case you thought all was lost! - it has still been tremendously rewarding. I may not have made much progress in my goal to promote The Dance of Success, but in the big picture I reached many of my other business goals.

My goal to work with 40 new self-recording authors is well on its way to completion: I spent the month working with authors Tom Wayman, Callista Markotich, Wakefield Brewster (many grateful thanks to Frontenac House publishing), and Cowboy Poet Extra-Ordinaire BJ Smith! And it really hit home to me that this is where I belong - helping authors create their own audio editions of their work. A good month, overall.

Stay tuned! I am determined to figure out this whole promotional campaign thing. My next step - asking for the right help!

Have a great couple of weeks, and let me know how your own promotional campaign efforts are working for you.