Facebook has become a pretty integral part of every day life. With 1.28 billion active daily users Facebook is forging ahead, leaving its competitors in the rearview mirror.
Facebook has become a goldmine for marketers. But, as the social media giant has gained popularity among all demographics and introduced ads, organic reach across business pages dropped steadily. So, marketers began to rely more and more on Facebook for business to reach potential new customers.
A well-crafted Facebook ad is a powerful tool in the hands of the right person! Facebook ads are easy to use, carry an affordable price tag, and allow you to build a custom target audience. The level of customization available gives marketers far more bang for their buck rather than running a full-page glossy ad in a magazine that a client may skim through while waiting for the dentist.
And, there’s one particular aspect of Facebook ads that makes them so darn powerful. Meet the Facebook tracking pixel…
What’s a Facebook pixel and how does it work?
The Facebook tracking pixel is a snippet of code you can add to your website that uses cookies to track visitors’ specific actions. Once added, the pixel works in the background, gathering interesting information and insights about the people that visit your site and browse your pages.
Here are some ways you can use the Facebook pixel to your advantage.
1. Use it to track conversions
You can use the Facebook pixel to track a number of factors, including:
- How people view and interact with your ads
- What ad attracted the most leads
- Whether the ad converted a customer via mobile or desktop
- Create and track custom goals that mirror campaign goals
2. Show specific ads to warm audiences
A person who already knows who you are and what you do, and has browsed your site or saved your items to their favorites lists is far more likely to respond to a targeted ad from you. After all, they already know, like, and trust you.
By using the Facebook tracking pixel you can target users that have already taken a specific action like downloaded a whitepaper or read a specific article.
3. Create better target audiences
Once you’ve gathered data on how your website visitors interact with your content, you can then can use that data to create a lookalike audience. This new audience mirrors your existing customer base and draws on:
- Demographics
- Interests
- Likes
- Habits
- Interactions
All in all, targeting better audiences will ensure that you are targeting the people whom you know will probably love your stuff.
Creating a Facebook Pixel
So how do you activate this wonder of wonders?
Easy. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager, click on the hamburger menu and select Pixels.
Click on Create Pixel and follow Facebook’s instructions.
Now it’s time to install it!
How you install your pixel is up to you. If you use a tag manager or an e-commerce platform that has Facebook ads integration select the Use an Integration or Tag Manager option. You can also manually insert the pixel code by using some sophisticated copy and paste skills.
Facebook will ask you to install two different bits of code. The first is called the pixel base code and needs to be installed on every single page of your site. To do that copy the code and paste it into the website header.
One of the easiest way to do that in WordPress is to install the Insert Headers and Footers plugin from WP Beginner.
Paste the pixel code into the header and click save.
Next, you need to install the event code.
This is where the real magic happens. The event code allows you to track various specific actions users take on select web pages.
Facebook has created a series of standard events that they believe are useful to marketers. The events you can track are:
- Search: Use it on a search results page to track a specific search term. You can use this to show the user ads for the same product or for products that solve the same problem.
- View content: Use this either on product pages or high-value content pages that you want to track, such as white papers, specific landing pages or sales pages.
- Add to cart: This one is pretty self explanatory, but you can use it to track abandoned carts and show the user targeted product ads.
- Add to wish list: This can give you a pretty good idea of what different users want and can be handy for future warm ad campaigns, particularly around the holiday season.
- Initiate checkout: This event triggers when the user starts the checkout process.
- Add payment info: This triggers when the customer enters payment info.
- Purchase: This event happens when the order is complete.
- Lead: This event tracks when a lead converts by taking a specific action like signing up for a newsletter or an opt-in.
- Complete registration: This is triggered when the user subscribes to one of your compelling offers.
And, if you want to get super specific, you can define your own parameters and create a custom event.
So where do these event actions go? You’ve got a few different options! You can set them to happen as the desired action happens or just after the action happens.
Once you’ve decided which actions to track and set up your pixel, it’s time to test it and make sure it’s working correctly.
This process can be somewhat complicated, especially if it is your first time playing around with Facebook pixels. If you use WordPress, then you can try using a PlugIn like the Facebook Conversion Pixel or Facebook Pixel for WP. Otherwise, just take it slow and experiment with different parameters.
Outline your goals for different ad campaigns and have fun triggering different events—you never know what may work or what you might discover!
Level up your Facebook ad game
You can use Facebook pixels to create highly targeted ads and experiment with re-targeting and creating event triggers. This allows you to eliminate a lot of the guesswork and actually create ads for an audience that would enjoy and benefit from the content and products you offer.
The future of digital marketing doesn’t lie in vague general offers. It’s all about being able to offer the customer custom suggestions that make their lives easier. Use the Facebook pixel to level up your targeting game and leave them amazed.
Facebook Ad management capabilities are now also available right in MavSocial, allowing agency and enterprise users to easily create, manage, and publish ads for higher customer conversions.
