What and Why
You’ve probably heard of the Facebook Pixel but may not have ever understood the big deal with a simple pixel and how that may impact your advertising efforts. The Facebook Pixel may sound complex, but it’s actually just a piece of code that you put on your site which will let Facebook know who’s visiting your site, actions they’re taking on your site and information of these users. Nothing too crazy here. But the not too unknown secret is the Facebook Pixel can power some great results from your advertising campaigns.
Let me explain further. Through the Facebook Pixel you can unlock three core benefits, in prioritized order.
Understand who is visiting your site
Through the Facebook Pixel you can understand who is visiting your site. Now this doesn’t sound too glamorous but, this is a highly effective audience that you can reach with your Facebook ads. If you know who has previously visited your site, you can specifically target these users through Facebook Ads.
This is going to be one of your most powerful campaigns as you’re reaching users who have already shown intent to purchase your products and services, just by visiting your site. You can then have ads that are custom to this audience. For example, you may want to advertise a discount to close the sale. This pool of audience is obviously somewhat interested in what you have to offer, now you just need to hit them up with a few ads with a compelling offer to earn their business.
Optimize your campaign to the most valuable actions
Within Facebook’s pixel settings, you can create unique events to trigger that are most important for your business. For example, if you’re a retailer, you can have Facebook count every time someone ads an item to their cart, or more importantly, every time someone purchases an item.
Once you are tracking these events, you can then update your Facebook Ad Settings to optimize to maximize these events. In this example, let’s say that you want to spend up to $30 in advertising to drive each order. Once you are tracking these events, you can create campaigns that are designed to drive these conversion outcomes. This sounds like a simple campaign setting, which it is, but it’s very powerful. Once you have campaigns designed to drive conversions, Facebook won’t be focused on just reach or clicks, but rather to drive conversions.
Facebook Look-A-Like Audiences
Once you’re driving a good amount of conversions, you can create a campaign that’s targeting users who are very similar to those who are converting on your site. This is available if you have a Facebook Pixel installed on your site, as Facebook understands who is converting on your site and will understand commonalities amongst these users. Once it has data, it will go out and find users who haven’t been to your site, but behave very similarly to those who are converting. This is Facebook’s secret sauce and it works really well. But you need to make sure you’re bringing in conversions on your site, before you can launch this. The more conversions you have rolling through your site, the more Facebook understands who are most likely to convert.
What to Expect
For any advertiser that isn’t taking advantage of the Facebook Pixel, but is currently advertising on Facebook, you’ll see a really nice uptick in performance. This means you’ll spend the same but drive even more conversion events. Every one of the aforementioned benefits will contribute to the performance of the program (remarketing, conversion tracking and look a like audiences). Given the success I see with the Facebook Pixel, I require all campaigns have the pixel setup on the site, before we start advertising. Without the pixel, you’re driving blindly and won’t reap the benefits that you could otherwise experience.
Additional Facebook Resources
Below are several blog posts that might be helpful that I wrote on Facebook Ads.
Facebook Blog Posts
- Setup Facebook Look-a-like Audiences
- Facebook Custom Audiences
- Top Facebook Advertising Strategies
- Answers to Common Facebook Questions
- Facebook Advertising Support
Facebook Ad Management
Facebook Ad Courses
