This is the first in a new series of blogs which will be written with the aim of helping you understand how the granular facets of online marketing work. Today’s topic is the Facebook pixel; an innovative tool which works to help you increase your conversions and control your targeting, as well as retargeting. In this article you will find all the information you need to understand what the pixel does and why you should be using it.
So What Does it Help You Do?
The Facebook pixel will help you:
Track conversions – A conversion is a completed action that you want somebody to take, such as a purchase, subscribing to your newsletter or even the generation of a lead. By using the Facebook pixel you can track how much these actions (or conversions) are costing you in terms of advertisement spending. This ultimately gives you clarity on the extent to which your Facebook ads are generating revenue profitably.
Optimise ads – Facebook will automatically improve the targeting of your ads so that they reach more of the right people, who are more likely to convert. These include people who subscribe to your mailing list, have purchased from you before or have shown an interest in services like the ones you offer; how it does this will be explained below.
Create retargeting ads – The pixel allows you to target people who have already visited your pages and have perused or purchased your products. For example, if you have been looking at flights to Barcelona you will then be likely to receive advertisements on Facebook which relate to a holiday in the Catalonian capital. You can also target people who have taken specific actions on your website, such as searching for products or adding them to their shopping cart. 68% of people who add items to their online cart don’t end up purchasing, but with retargeting you can remind them to come back to your website and complete their purchase. In fact, retargeted customers are seventy times more likely to buy from you and the ads aimed at these people have a 1000% greater click through rate than ones that aren’t retargeted.
How the Pixel Works
Every business’ Facebook account has one pixel, so how do you target different groups and individuals with only one pixel? The answer is in the way that the pixel is structured, it is made up of two parts:
Base code – This identifies your advertising account and will never change; it is placed across every page on your website.
Standard Event code – This code monitors specified actions that you’re tracking and gathers data. There are 9 standard event actions that you can track for customer actions such as purchases, shopping activity and registration. This part of the code can be changed depending on the action you want to track. Standard event codes will only be placed on specific pages of your website, unlike the base code, as you only want this to be triggered when somebody completes an action.
For example, if you are a carpentry business and somebody has just ordered a table, they will then see a screen which says something like ‘Thank you for your order’. You would attach and apply the standard event code to this page if you were wishing to collect data on people who had made purchases before; these people can then be targeted as known previous customers.
Should I Be Using the Facebook Pixel?
The Facebook pixel is an excellent tool for adding clarity to your data as well as allowing you to target individuals to increase the conversion and click through rates of your adverts. It is a completely unique tool which every company operating on Facebook should make full use of. If you are interested in the correct implementation of this software but aren’t quite confident enough to do it yourself, then get in touch today and speak to one of our social media experts.
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