Facebook has revealed that their new system, which is to be released November 6th, will allow advertisers to target Facebook users on the Facebook.com site itself and on partner sites, strongly evoking Google’s approach with Adsense and the content network. I’m quite excited about this latest venture - it will give existing Facebook advertisers an even stronger platform to experiment with, while Facebook’s status itself will only increase within the PPC advertising industry.

In fact, if their latest venture is successful, we can no doubt expect the new players in the PPC industry to take on Google in an attempt to take away its stranglehold over online advertising. And with the precision marketing that Facebook offers (as discussed in the previous posts), it will prove to be a serious contenders to the mighty G.

Because CPC advertising on Facebook is a relatively new phenomenon, the people over at Facebook may react unsympathetically to your ads. For this reason you have to be careful and make note of the following:

• If your ad is disabled, or worse, your account is disabled, then politely ask them to reinstate your account stating that you won’t display the same ad again. There is no point trying to explain things or getting them to understand they are in the wrong, you just have to let go and move on.
• If your ad is disapproved, focus on an entirely different offer and try and make the ad less conspicuous than the previous one.
• In the case the URL of your affiliate network is banned (for example, cpaclicks.com/…) simply use a URL redirect to get around this.
• I recommend you open several accounts under different names to maximise your earning potential. Currently, Facebook has a $50 daily maximum limit imposed, however this may rise at any time. Make sure your other accounts are under different names. It would also help if you used gift credit cards instead of your personal one.
• If you feel like its time to take things to the next level, apply for an integrated solution and use the Facebook Flyers pro as a preliminary test of how well the offer converts.

Or you can just set up multiple accounts, and once you have found the right ad with the right earning potential which isn’t going to get brought down by Facebook, you can let it run on autopilot so the cash flows in day after day without you having to worry about it, or even better opt in for an integrated solution and go full scale with your advert. This is exactly what I do. I started out with multiple accounts, each promoting a certain offer with the ad made in a way as to avoid Facebook’s detection, before moving on to the integrated solution. You have to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t in the early stages.

The reason I like Copeac and Facebook Flyer Pro so much is that you can check the stats of both in real time. With Facebook, you can usually start to see your first few thousand impressions and clicks within 5 minutes, so you can literally start making cash as soon as you start. What I recommend you do is have your statistics page in Copeac loaded up with the offer you are promoting at that moment in time, with your Facebook Flyer page stats also open. I then recommend you refresh both these pages every 30 seconds for the first five minutes, as the launch of a new campaign is its busiest point.

Make sure you set your max bids at no more than $0.20, you will thank me later. Just compare both pages frequently, they both should display the same amount of clicks, however, you will need to check how many leads you’re making with Copeac.

And here is the important bit. If you’re making no leads and you’ve received quite a few clicks (20 or more), its time to quickly delete that campaign before you waste any more money. Now please note that this is all dependent on how valuable the lead is. If your lead earns you $1.50 per signup, then I usually set the cap at 15 clicks to 0 conversions. If it converts every 10 or 15 clicks leave it, if not, scrap it. Do this in a way so you will make a profit in the end, and not a loss.

However, if you’re promoting a lead which pays out something like $15 per signup, be more generous with the amount of clicks your willing to let pass before you make a successful lead. I typically allow 20 to 30 clicks (depending on the payout of the lead) before scraping the campaign. So if my lucrative $15 per lead campaign is getting one signup out of every 30 clicks, I let it be, because this usually equates to $8 spent for every $15 earned – therefore a $7 profit.

This all happens incredibly quickly, which means you can earn money (or lose it), incredibly fast.

A little word on split testing: it’s very important that you split test your ads in order to see which performs the best. In order to do this, and because you have a maximum daily budget of $50 with Facebook (at the moment), I recommend you create two ads, each with a daily budget of $25, which promote the same offer, but contain different ad bodies and headlines. At the end of the day, you can see which ad performed better, and refine it even more by tweaking the details, such as age group, gender and network affiliation. You should always split test, because your ad copy can always perform better than it already is, so improve until you’re happy with it.

As a general rule, shocking headlines create an urge for the reader to stop what they’re doing, and either read more of where that came from, or simply click the headline to be taken to a page where there is hopefully more information related to the compelling headline. In our situation, we want to write headlines and ad body’s which will cause the reader to pause and think.

How do we do this?

By being unconventional, controversial or just plain silly.

#1 Unconventional

“Don’t Take Our FREE PS3
We don’t want you to have it, because we know you’d rather pay for it.”

With that ad, you’re bound to get an insane click through rate.

Why?

Because no one likes being called a fool, and many will want to prove you wrong by clicking on your ad, and signing up for the free PS3. Reverse psychology is your friend, my friend.

#2 Controversial

“Playstation sucks!
Which is why we are giving away our entire PS3 stock. Don’t miss out.”

Again, as with example 1, this ad is attractive to the reader. Many will find clicking it irresistible.

#3 Just Plain Silly

“Would you like a PS3?
Well you’re not getting it.“

The idea here is to be as creative and original as you can. Make your ad stand out, yet at the same time make it relevant and attractive enough to click on.

The idea here is to create an ad which creates a sense of “everyone else is doing it, so why not me?” To do this, you need to make it explicit in your ad that many others have benefited from your offer. Here are some examples:

How to Get a Free iPod
Becomes:
How Millions Are Getting Free iPods

Free PS3 Giveaway
Becomes:
How We Gave 15,506 People a Free PS3

Not only do these types of ads make people want to click on them, but they also act as a sort of ‘pre-sell’ – a kind of proof that the page that they are going to land on is the real deal and guaranteed to give them what they want. This is all because of our “social proof” driven technique which subconsciously cause the reader to want to become a part of this offer which “everyone else” is taking part in.

Again, analyse your network affiliation and see if this type of technique will work effectively with them. This works best if you’re targeting 13-20 year olds and much less so with 30+ year olds. As a general rule, the older your target age group, the less likely they are to be taken in by this technique, as opposed to the younger ones who are much more prone to falling for the whole ‘everyone’s doing it’ scene.

If you want your ad to receive clicks, it’s got to be relevant to your traffic. With Flyers Pro, you can choose which keyword to target your ads to, and therefore we want the ad to match the keyword, for the simple sake of being relevant to the page it’s being displayed on. As a result, I want the keyword to be in the headline and the body; having a picture is up to you. If you include it, don’t expect to receive a higher CTR, because I set up many ads without pictures because it actually yields better results for me.

It is also incredibly important that you make sure your offer is completely suited to work with your target networks. I have made the silly mistake of setting up an ad for 18-25 year olds regardless of their country, when the offer was actually only for USA traffic, meaning most of my budget went to waste advertising for 18-25 year olds in other countries.

If you’ve ever written Ads for Google Adwords, you will know that the ads have to be written in a way to please Google ‘quality score’, and at the same time be attractive enough to attain a high click through rate. Now with Facebook Flyers, the quality score aspect is no longer important, as Facebook does not slap high prices on minimum bids the same way Google does. For this reason, our focus should purely be centred upon writing extremely compelling ads – ads which will attract a high click through rate, does increasing the rate at which we can convert the clicks into qualified leads.

I will be discussing ‘social driven’ techniques in the next set of posts.

The golden rule here is to ‘split test’ both types of flyer distribution. You must keep the expenditure the same for both types of Flyer distribution. I would recommend you set the limit at $50 for both to begin with, and then see which one converts at a better cost.

So if you’re spending $50 on CPM for 25,000 flyers, remember that this will only display your ad 25,000 times. If your click through rate is poor, then it might actually work out better for you to use the CPC system, and only pay per click. Nonetheless, CPC almost always turned out to convert much, much better for me and gave me a much greater ROI (return on investment) than CPM. This is because Facebook Flyers naturally have a very low click through rate, so even if you’ve bought 100,000, you might only get 100 clicks or so.

You’ve got to experiment and see which works best for your particular advert, but don’t go overboard and waste large amounts. I have found that $50 is a more than enough daily budget to test any new advertising campaign. But if you really can’t afford to try out which works better for you, take my advice, and just go for the CPC Flyer (known in Facebook as ‘Facebook Flyer Pro’).

The key to making lots of money through Facebook marketing is to go as specific as possible. That is what is so great about Facebook, the fact that you can go right down to specifying an age range, gender and even choosing which cities and colleges or universities to market to. You should not ignore this amazing fact – but rather use it to your advantage.

So search through your CPA networks campaigns and find an offer which is very specific to men or women, or even better teenage boys or teenage girls. The more specific the better, because you can go all out on advertising with the knowledge that you have a very specific offer for a very specific user group. Designer Clothing and Shopping Spree Gift Cards all have a particular appeal to women, much more than they do for men. On the other hand, men are much more likely to sign up to a gym membership offer or an offer to win a free car. Just find an offer which you think is very male or female orientated, and go for it. If it performs well, that is, if you’re making a solid profit, then continue with it. If not, then scrap it for another offer.