If you’ve got a business that is run on a website and you use Facebook ads to drive traffic to it, you need Facebook Pixel.
As a marketer, you want your ads to have the best returns on investment and more importantly, you want to be able to see it and direct it. With Facebook Pixel you can track all the traffic that comes to your website and run highly targeted ads for audiences who have interacted with your business.
In this article, we will cover everything you need to get started with Facebook Pixel. We will talk you through right from where to find Facebook pixel, how to set up Facebook Pixel for your website and how to use Facebook Pixel to get data for retargeting audiences.
Let’s start right away!
1. What is Facebook Pixel?
Facebook Pixel is a small code of Javascript that when installed on your website, records data of visitor activity. Simply put – whenever a visitor takes an action (called an event) on your website that you want to track (conversion), it records and stores the data which later directly appears in your Facebook Ad Manager and Facebook Analytics.
This data can be used to create custom audiences for retargeting, to measure how effective your Facebook ads are, for dynamic ad campaigns, and to evaluate your website’s conversion funnel.
2. How does Facebook Pixel Work?
Let’s understand this using an analogy.
Think of your website as a shopping center in the center of the city. The front entrance is a gateway for people to come in, explore, sometimes also purchase and then exit the shopping center. So, if your website is the shopping center and the people walking in and out of it are the website traffic, then the scanners at the entrance are Facebook Pixel.
What Facebook Pixel essentially does is it tags the visitors when they enter the store using cookies and collects important data like what products did they browse, did they leave anything back in the cart, what pages were most visited, and more. This invaluable data lets you retarget these visitors by showing them the product they are missing out on and sending them offers which will compel them to complete their purchase.
3. Using Facebook Pixel for Remarketing
The Facebook Pixel has been designed to track and boost the ROI for businesses that invest in Facebook Ads.
Let’s look at how exactly you can use the Facebook Pixel to target and re-target interested audiences.
A. Building custom audiences
Imagine building an audience based on how they have interacted with your business. That’s right – the custom audiences you build with Facebook Pixel are not based on their demographics like age, location, gender, interests, etc. Instead, it is created from the people who have engaged with your website – on pages where you have added pixels.
B. Creating lookalike audiences
Did you know that you can use your custom audiences as a reference to create a wider pool of new audiences? These are called Lookalike audiences. Facebook creates lookalike audiences by finding users who are similar to your original custom audiences. Lookalike audiences help you reach a wider audience of people who may have never visited your website.
C. Track and improve conversions
One of the most beneficial features of Facebook Pixel is it helps you track conversion. When you add pixels to your landing pages, it lets you see where your visitors have come from, what pages they are visiting, and ultimately the ROI on your ad campaigns. With this data, you can do many more things – like A/B testing to improve your conversion rate.
D. Show dynamic ads
With the data that you gather from Facebook Pixel – you can retarget your audience with ads that are most relevant to them. Dynamic ads personalise the ad to promote relevant products to people who have already shown interest in them when they were on your website.
These ads are great for retargeting and can be used to remind your customer to complete their purchase.
Ready to get Facebook Pixel for your website?
4. Step By Step Guide to Set up Facebook Pixel
Part I: Create Facebook Pixel
Step 1: Go to the Events Manager and click on the hamburger icon on the top left corner of the screen.
Step 2: Select Facebook pixel and then click Create a Pixel
Step 3: Give your pixel a name. If you are an agency and will be using Pixel for many accounts, make sure that you name them accordingly, based on the businesses and not a particular campaign, because Pixel will be synced to your Facebook Business Manager – and you get only one Pixel per ad account.
Step 4: Enter your website URL and click create.
Step 5: You can choose to set up manually with a Facebook Pixel code or use Partner integration for your website.
Part II: Adding Facebook pixel to your website
After creating your Facebook pixel, you can either manually add the code to your website or you can choose to use a partner integration for setting it up.
Option I: How to install Facebook pixel to your website manually
Step 1: Go to Events Manager
Step 2: Select the Pixel you want to set up
Step 3: Click on Continue pixel setup
Step 4: Select the option to Install code manually
Step 5: Copy the pixel base code
Step 6: You will have to find the header of your website or locate the header template in your CMS or web platform.
Step 7: Here you will paste the base code at the bottom of the header section, just above the closing head tag.
Step 8: Click Continue to set up Facebook Pixel
Step 9: You can toggle on Automatic advanced matching and verify the customer information that you want to send. This is optional and not required to set up your Facebook Pixel.
Step 10: Click Continue
Step 11: Add events (the action you want to track) using the Event setup tool or by manually adding code to your website.
Option II: Use a partner integration
Facebook has teamed up with web service providers and e-commerce setups to make Facebook pixel integration smoother. It is the simplest way to install Facebook Pixel for your website. Go to Facebook’s partner integration page and you select your partner. You will then be given onscreen instructions to follow – on completing which, Facebook Pixel will be created and installed on your website.
5. Setting up Events on Facebook Pixel
Once you have installed the Facebook Pixel on your website, it is time to start setting up the events that you want to track. Events in Facebook Pixel refers to the action people take on your website – like making a purchase, browsing through products, etc.
When you set the parameters for every event, it helps you unlock Facebook advertising tools that can help you understand your audience better and measure campaign results more accurately.
You can set up events on Facebook Pixel using the Event setup tool and you can also manually code it into your website. You can choose one of the predefined, standard events listed on the Event setup tool and it will find buttons on your website that match the action. You can also suggest new events by navigating through your website and adding events to buttons and pages.
Here’s a list of the standard events listed by Facebook, along with their manual code:
- Purchase: When someone completes a purchase on your website and they land on a payment confirmation page.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Purchase’, {value: 0.00, currency: ‘GBP’}); - Lead: When a website visitor signs up for a trial or otherwise identifies themselves as a lead on your site.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’) - Complete registration: When a website visitor registers with their information for a service provided by your business, such as email subscriptions.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘CompleteRegistration’); - Add payment info: When your customer adds their payment information and then clicks on the button to save their billing information.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘AddPaymentInfo’); - Add to cart: When someone adds a product to their shopping cart on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’); - Add to wishlist: When someone adds a product to their wishlist on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToWishlist’) - Initiate checkout: When someone clicks on the checkout button and starts the checkout process to buy something from your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’) - Search: When someone uses the search function to look for a product and service on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’) - View content: When a website visitor lands on a specific page on your website, that you have promoted or marked as important.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’) - Contact: When a website visitor tries to reach out to your business by dropping in their query and contact details.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Contact’) - Customize product: When someone chooses a variant of a product, such as choosing a color option, size, etc.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘CustomizeProduct’) - Donate: When someone makes a donation to a cause on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Donate’) - Find location: When a website visitor searches for your business’s physical location – like a store or service center on the web.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘FindLocation’) - Schedule: When someone schedules or books an appointment with your business.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Schedule’) - Start trial: When a website visitor starts a free trial of your product and service on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘StartTrial’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’}) - Submit application: When a website visitor fills a form to apply for service, program or product, such as a credit card.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘SubmitApplication’) - Subscribe: When someone chooses to subscribe to a paid product or service on your website.
Manual code: fbq(‘track’, ‘Subscribe’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’})
6. Facebook Pixel Analytics
There is so much you can improve and do with all of the data that has been collected. You will get Facebook Pixel analytics in the ads manager.
The first thing that you will see is a graph that tells you how many times Facebook Pixel was fired in the last 14 days. Below it, you will find four tabs – Events, URLs, Domains, and devices which will help you further analyze the data. Let’s look at each one and understand how we can use this data for better advertisement strategies.
A. Events
In the events tab, you can track all of the events that are currently active and also their activity. This tells you where your visitors are hanging out on your website.
B. URLs
This data will allow you to understand what website visitors are liking on your website – like which product is popular or what blog post is getting the most attention?
C. Domains
Want to know what domains are driving traffic to your website? This data point will tell you where your pixel is firing off of, even if it is coming from third-party sites. For example, you may receive traffic from a guest post or a blog that was written about you. Facebook Pixel helps you keep a check on it.
D. Devices
You can also see what devices people were using when the pixel fired. If your data shows that most of your website visitors were on their phones, maybe you can focus more ads on mobile.
Let’s Wrap Up!
We have given you everything you need to set up and start using Facebook Pixel to retarget customers and boost your ROI. There is a lot more that goes into creating successful Facebook Ad campaigns and we have the ultimate guide for it. It has everything you need to know, right from setting up your Facebook Business Manager account to what your ad budget strategy should be. Don’t forget to check it out.
If you want to dive deeper into Facebook Pixel, tune into this discussion we had with Pam Curry – it’s exclusively available for the InVideo community here.
