If you are unaware of the immense opportunity and potential offered by Facebook advertising, in terms of both reach and conversions, then you need to listen up! Facebook gives you the ability to run hyper-targeted campaigns for a fraction of the cost of more traditional marketing streams – it’s a marketer’s dream. Plus, you can take control over the copy and visual elements, as well as access to various handy reporting metrics.
As if this wasn’t useful enough, Facebook’s advertising platform also allows you to reach people who have already visited your website and even performed certain actions. Say hello to the Facebook pixel. Initially it can seem a bit overwhelming to implement for those who are not technically minded, but it is a highly valuable tool that can help you squeeze people through your sales funnel. In this post, we explain what the Facebook pixel is, how to set it up and offer advice on making the best use of it.
What is the Facebook pixel?
The Facebook pixel is essentially a line of code that you implement on your website. Once installed, it can track visitors, conversions and the behaviour of your website users. With this information you can create custom audiences that can be used to run epic remarketing campaigns. Crucially, the Facebook pixel does not just track visitors via Facebook, it tracks all website users. This enables you to seamlessly connect your Facebook advertising strategy with your other marketing streams.
Setting up and testing
Firstly you will need to create a pixel (don’t worry, Facebook does this for you) by visiting the ‘Pixels’ tab in your Facebook Adverts Manager.
The Facebook pixel is made up of two components: the pixel base code and the event code. As a starting point and to get the fundamental use out of your pixel, you will need to install the pixel base code in the header of all pages on your website. If you are not particularly code-savvy then it is worth asking your website developer to implement it for you. Or even better, download a plugin that enables you to add the code without any risky interference with the back-end code of your site. We recommend ‘Head, Footer and Post Injections’ (you can thank us later).
For an extra level of remarketing savviness, you’ll want to make use of the event code. This allows you to track actions that happen on your website, either as a result of paid or organic reach. You can track both standard events (nine in total) and custom events. Although a little more complicated to implement, the data provided from this kind of event tracking can be invaluable to running highly successful marketing campaigns.
One you have installed your Facebook pixels onto your website, you’ll want to test that it is working before you run any campaigns. Facebook Pixel Helper is a super handy tool that enables you to validate your Facebook pixel to ensure it is working correctly. It will also help pinpoint and troubleshoot any issues, plus it can aid you in improving the overall performance of your pixel.
Remarketing
Using the Facebook pixel allows you to reach people who have already shown a genuine interest in your business. For this reason, it is often a more effective way of driving conversions than pushing cold traffic to your website. Of course driving new customers to your website will still be a key part of your Facebook advertising strategy. However, you should be using remarketing as an additional approach to complement your brand awareness. Think of it as having multiple touch points across multiple platforms with your prospects, thus increasing your ability to remain (dare we say it) ‘front of mind’.
In order to launch a remarketing campaign, you need to build a custom audience.
Custom audiences
A custom audience does not just have to be those who have visited your website. Facebook allows you to target people who have visited specific web pages, so you can get far more personal with your approach by dividing your audience in terms of the pages they have viewed. For example, you can target people who have looked at a particular product or service on your site and create truly bespoke adverts for them. As a result of this tailored targeting, you are more likely to send your conversion rate skyrocketing.
Due to the handy customisation options in terms of targeting, the Facebook pixel enables you to target people at different stages of your sales funnel. You could push prospective buyers / clients to make their first purchase or sign up, then you could up-sell to current customers once they have already purchased / signed up, and so on. To make this easy to do, make sure you have a ‘thank you’ confirmation page following any purchases or sign ups that has a unique URL. All you’ll need to do is pop that URL into the customisation options that Facebook offers et voila!
Respect where people are in the sales funnel and you will be able to leverage the remarketing potential of the Facebook pixel to extraordinary effect.