If you’re currently advertising on Facebook, or thinking about it, STOP and get a Facebook Pixel installed on your website right now before you do anything else!
The Facebook Pixel is an essential tool you have to manually add to your website. It enables you to collect and use essential data to optimize your Facebook advertising.
It works by placing and triggering cookies that track users as they interact with your website and your Facebook ads – across multiple devices.
So, what exactly can you do with it?
- Remarketing: Re-advertise to people on Facebook who have already visited your website. You can also use the Facebook Pixel to find new customers who are similar to your website visitors by creating a ‘Lookalike Audience’.
- Conversion tracking: Ascertain how successful your adverts are by finding out what happened as a direct result of them.
- Optimise: Build better targeted ads and improve your ad spend by showing your adverts to only the people who are most likely to convert.
How you install the Facebook Pixel will depend on whether or not you’ve created a pixel in the past:
- If your pixel was created prior to 9 June 2015, you have an older version of the pixel.
- If it was created after 9 June 2015, or if you’re unsure about what kind of pixel you might have, you can check. Look for the comment tag which is located on the very first line of the pixel code. This means you have the new pixel. If you can’t see the comment tag, you have the old pixel. Both pixels are OK, but the standard events vary based on the type of base code.
Once you have your custom pixel, you can use Facebook pixel tracking to collect data on two different kinds of ‘events’. An event is simply a specified action that a visitor takes on your website. There are a set of nine ‘Standard Events’ that Facebook has predefined along with ‘Custom Conversions’ that are events you set up yourself.
STANDARD EVENTS
Standard Events represents the types of actions people take on your website, for example when someone completes purchase. The standard nine include:
- View content: When someone lands on a page of your website (Note: your pixel will already have this on every page by default)
- Search: When someone uses the search function on your website to look for something
- Add to cart: Someone adds something to their shopping cart on your site
- Add to wishlist: Someone adds something to a wishlist on your website
- Initiate checkout: Someone initiates the checkout process on your website
- Add payment info: Someone enters their payment information during checkout on your website
- Make purchase: Someone completes a purchase on your website
- Lead: Someone signs up for something, submits personal details or otherwise identifies themselves as a lead on your website.
- Complete registration: Someone completes a registration or subscription form on your website.
Helpful Hint: Always remember to place the Event on the subsequent page that you want to track. For example, if you want to track completed purchases, place the event on the ‘Thank You’ page, NOT the payment details page as they may drop off here meaning you’ll get incorrect data.
CUSTOM CONVERSIONS
You can use custom conversion events in place of standard events to collect more/other details.
Custom conversions use URL rules based on specific URLS or URL keywords. So, for example, you could use Facebook pixel tracking to record how many people are viewing a certain product or category on your website. For example, if you’re a financial advisor, you can track how many people are viewing your ‘debt consolidation’ page over your ‘first-time home buyers’ page.
Something else you can do is create ‘Custom Events’ by adding more details to Standard Events using additional bits of code called ‘Parameters’. This means you can customize Standard Events based on:
- The value of a conversion
- Product name, category, or ID
- The number of items someone adds to their shopping cart
- A specific search string
- The status of a registration
So there you have it! Now you’re armed with this information, it’s time to get serious about your Facebook marketing! Of course, if you need any help, you know where we are.
