So you may have heard about all the hype around Facebooks answer to Googles’ Adwords, I know Ed Dale, Dan Raine and the boys over at the Immediate Edge have been talking it up alot.

Well I am here to tell you – The Hype Is Justified, and my predication on November 9 was right on the money, even if I do say so myself

For niche marketers this is the biggest thing to happen on the internet since Googles’ Adwords program launched – it really is going to change the way you drive targeted traffic to your niche sites.

Now before I get into Facebooks Social Ads, I want to touch on why Googles PPC program is so effective…

With traditional advertising, online or offline, it was all about eyeballs – In most circumstances your only option was to pay for the ‘privilege’ to show your advert to prospects, be it via a magazine advert, a radio commercial or a TV slot. And, you’d be charged whether your you received a response or not.

This was all revolutionised when Google launched their Pay-Per-Click program – Adwords.

Adwords gave power back to the advertisers, by allowing them to only pay when their advertisements illicit a response – in the form of a click through to a particular website.

It was truly the best of times, because website owners were able to select the keywords and phrases most aligned with their content and only show their adverts to the target group of prospects who are pro-actively searching for those topics.

It was not only the most target advertising available but it only cost (mere cents) when it worked…. It was a marketers wet dream… until now.

Welcome in the New Era – Facebooks Ads.

By now you would be well aware of the phenomenon that is Facebook – and if you are one of the 25+ million people who use it twice a day add me as a friend. Yes, I said 25+ million people using it TWICE a day.

To be honest, when Microsoft paid $240 million for 1.6% of Facebook, I just couldn’t do the math – it just didn’t add up to me – but that’s just changed when Social Ads was launched on Nov 6.

During the launch, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hit the nail on the head when he said Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online… For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.

Social Ads appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site. Instead of random messages from advertisers, Facebook launched to provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site.

These actions may be things like “Fleur is now a fan of Louis Vuitton”, “Justin wrote a review for Barnes ‘n’ Noble” or even “Rob just joined the Renegade Publicist newsletter” – (more on Facebook Pages & Facebook Beacon in future posts)

Wait For It… Drum Roll Please… Facebook PPC Social Ads

Yep, along with everything else, Facebook also launched a PPC program. Facebook Social Ads allow your business to become part of people’s daily conversations. Your ads can be displayed in the left hand Ad Space visible to users as they browse Facebook to connect with their friends as well as in the context of News Feed attached to relevant social stories.

Instead of creating an advertisement and hoping that it reaches the right customers, you can create a Facebook Social Ad and target it precisely to the audience you choose - based on demographics.

See, Google PPC is great in that it allows you to target your ads based on keywords… but where Facebook takes it to a new level is the fact that it allows you to target based on keywords in a persons profile and demographics such as age, sex or martial status.

So as you can see above, you can get very specific and targeted with your adverts on Facebook… Now, imagine having an info-marketing business that sells products to say a ‘wedding market’, a ‘retired golfers’ or ‘male college students’ – you now have the ability to get really targeted and qualified with your advertisements online.

Which is what the boys inside The Immediate Edge are doing with one of the projects they are working on. If you are an internet marketer and not a member of The Edge, I really encourage you to consider joining because, word around the campfire is that Dan and Ed are in the process of creating a ‘course’ on Facebook Advertising and will be releasing most of the content to Edge members for FREE before they launch the actual product. – You can join here, and send gifts later.

Oh yeah, did I mention the clicks only cost around 5 cents again ?

P.S. Make sure you subscrbe to the RSS Feed, to keep on top of the next few posts covering Facebook Pages and Facebook Beacon… If you thought Social Ads were great, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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