Because a husband or niece will need gifts for their favorite Agatha Christie fan, the end-of-the-year holidays offer Agatha Annotated a unique opportunity. We are experimenting with various marketing options this season. I talked about craft fairs before, and this time, it's Facebook Ads. 

Last year, Facebook Ads worked really well for Agatha Annotated. We watched a bunch of videos, read a bunch more articles, and even took a class or two before creating and launching a few ads. The algorithm did its thing to weed out the least successful ones and the more successful ones resulted in encouraging sales. 

This year, however, even though industry experts warned us about major changes with Facebook advertising, we simply did not have time to prepare properly. At practically the last minute, we decided to run last year's ad set rather than not advertising at all. 

On the con side of this strategy:

• Facebook's changes were not taken into account
• ROI may be compromised by our lack of preparation
• Viewer fatigue could happen because they've seen this ad before

On the pro side of this strategy:

• Facebook ad costs are manageable
• Facebook demographics fit Agatha Annotated's demographics
• Anything must be better than nothing

We started the ads before Thanksgiving to give the algorithm time to figure out the appropriate audience. Hopefully, that will put us in the right place for shoppers over the weekend. We'll let you know how it goes!