The Facebook advertising platform has grown and expanded over the past few years so much so that businesses of all sizes and industries are now using it to their advantage! As a result, Facebook developed the Facebook Pixel allowing businesses to gain data and insight into their audience without having to be ‘tech-savvy’.
So what is the Facebook Pixel?
In simple terms, the pixel is coding which is embedded into your website. It collects data that can be used to track conversions from your Facebook advertising campaigns. This data can then be used to optimise your ads, build specific and targeted audiences for future campaigns and retarget users who have previously visited your website.
Retargeting
Once your pixel is installed and data has been collected, you can begin creating your retargeting campaign by segmenting the visitors who have previously visited your website. The next step is to create a custom audience and enter the criteria required in order to target specific users. You can target all users who have visited your website or those who have visited specific pages on your website. Retargeting is a great way to encourage users back to your website as you know that they have shown an interest in your products/services before, which increases the likelihood of them converting with you in the future.
Custom Conversions
Every business has its own objectives that they are looking to achieve and wants to track specific actions which they class as a ‘conversion’. This conversion can range from an eCommerce purchase, a booking or a lead. By using the Facebook pixel, you’re able to create a custom conversion that accurately tracks your user’s actions on your website. This conversion could be an event or a URL which then can comprise of various different rules. For example, the screenshot below shows a custom conversion being created using 1 rule. This rule requires the URL to contain specific criteria in order to track the conversion.
The next step is to name your conversion, add a conversion value (usually used for eCommerce purchases) and select the category it falls into. Once this has been created and the event has triggered, you will be able to see the data coming through from your website based on this conversion.
Custom Audiences
As the Facebook pixel continues to gather data from your website and social media platforms about your customers and potential customers, this data then becomes an extremely important factor in the targeting within your campaigns.
The Facebook pixel allows custom audiences to be created using a range of sources including:
- Website traffic
- Customer files
- App activity
- Lead forms
- Facebook page
- Events
- Offline activity
When you look at the targeting options available from these sources, you will notice that there is a wide range of ways you can reach out to new and existing users.
Facebook Page
The screenshot below is using a Facebook page as the source which has provided us with a few targeting options:
Through this source, we are able to target users who have carried out specific actions on the Facebook page including those users who have engaged with a specific post or ad in a certain period. Through this targeting option, you are able to show ads to the users who have recently engaged with you online.
Lead Form
A lead generation campaign is one of the best marketing campaigns to run if you’re looking to gain data from users in order to contact them in the future. When running this type of campaign, there is the possibility that not all the users who open the lead form, complete the form. So what can we do? We can target those users who have opened the form in a certain time period to encourage them to either contact you or complete the form – see the screenshot below:
This type of targeting allows you to maximise conversions. We know that these users are interested in completing the form and are likely to complete the form if it is displayed to them once again.
Lookalike Audiences
A lookalike audience is designed to reach new users who are likely to be interested in your business as they display similar interests, behaviours and demographics to existing customers/users who have performed certain actions. For example, if you want to target users who are similar to those who have made a purchase from you in the last 12 days, a lookalike audience would be the best targeting option to achieve this goal.
Your Facebook pixel will be the source used and an audience will be created based on the event selected e.g. purchase.
Due to the various advanced options of segmenting users, visitors and customers from a range of sources, Facebook ads now allow you to maximise your campaigns and marketing investments by allowing you to define and segment users to build detailed, compelling ads.
Get started
This blog provides a brief overview of the advanced options available to businesses by using the Facebook Pixel tool within your marketing activities.
The Facebook Pixel is fairly easy to set up and once completed, will allow you to create specific campaigns who you know are targeting the relevant users, at the right time. By taking advantage of this, you can streamline your marketing efforts whilst maximising ROI.
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