If you either don’t advertise on Facebook yet or you don’t use a Meta Pixel, you’re missing out on a very powerful tool that can amplify your business by 10 times.
So, in this blog we’re going to talk about what exactly a Facebook Pixel is, how it can benefit your online business and how it can help you grow.
What is Meta Pixel?
First, let’s cover what the Facebook Pixel even is? The Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.
So in other words, it’s a piece of unique code that Facebook gives you to install on your website. Whenever somebody lands on your website, you’re able to track them and see what they’re actually doing on your website.
However, it goes one step beyond that: It’ll actually give the code and information back to Facebook to allow you to retarget the people that visited your website while they’re on Facebook. That is powerful!
You see this actually happen to you all of the time!
You’re over on Amazon and looking at what shoes you want to buy and then you log out of Amazon because you’re going to go back to work or do whatever you want to do. And then, when you log back on to Amazon and to any other website that you can think of you start seeing your shoes everywhere that you were looking on Amazon.
This is exactly what the Facebook Pixel allows you to do in your online business. You’re able to install the Facebook Pixel on your website and retarget your audience on Facebook, Instagram and other partner websites.
What are the benefits of Meta Pixel?
A Meta Pixel can be extremely useful when you’re not only trying to optimize your ads or track traffic on your website but also when you’re trying to create audiences and look-alike audiences.
The first thing we’re going to talk about is tracking conversions.
Tracking and Optimizing Ads
If you have a Meta Pixel in 10 different ads, you can track the conversion rates of all of those 10 ads. You can see not only how many clicks you get to your website from those ads but you can also then track and see how far they go within your online store.
How many end up in sales, how many end up in leads but maybe they don’t buy at the end. So, you overall you’re going to be able to track a lot of conversions and optimize your ads based on that.
First you can see this ad worked well, then you can make some variations of that ad and optimize continually by iterating your ads and changing little things, experimenting and tracking those conversions.
The second thing is remarketing.
Remarketing
While Facebook doesn’t actually provide you an email, a phone number or any information about the actual user, they do have a user ID that is unique to that user. That’s because Facebook is one of the largest databases in the world and they know a lot about people they will be able to remarket to that person.
Remarketing essentially means if somebody is going through your online store and went to Add to Cart but did not see the thank-you page. That would mean that they added the item to your cart but they didn’t actually finish the purchase.
Now that could be one of any reason. It doesn’t matter. Customers just wanted to think a little bit longer about it. All they need is one or two more ads showing up in their feed to remind them that they are interested in your product or service and they will come back and actually make that purchase. So, remarketing is extremely powerful and it’s something that Meta Pixel allows you to do.
Another way you can use the Meta Pixel is to make look-alike audiences.
Create Audiences
Essentially a look-alike audience in Facebook is an audience out there that Facebook is going to place your ad in front of that is similar to the people that already went to your website already bought things.
This works based on Facebook’s algorithm using their machine learning capabilities. What they do is if you have a hundred people visiting your online store and a hundred people then go and make a purchase on your website. You can tell Facebook to find other people that are similar to those hundred and the more you have the more accurate it will be.
It will look through all of those hundred, sift through all of their files on the Facebook database and you’ll find people that match them in some way. This could be the demographics, what they like it or literally anything about them that matches according to the algorithm.
It can place ads in front of people that are more likely to be similar to that group and therefore are more likely to make purchases on your website.
Is a Pixel the same as a cookie?
A Facebook Pixel is different from a cookie. Essentially a cookie is going to be on your browser. If you’re using Google Chrome or Firefox or whatever, the cookies going to be on there and the pixel is going to be on your website. Although they work very well together to track users throughout their experience on the Internet.
What can a Pixel detect?
First of all, the obvious one is anytime there on any page of your website, Facebook Pixels can trigger that. They can detect if you’re adding things to cart, adding things to a wish list, if you are initiating checkout, or if you add payment information.
They can also detect if you complete a registration or somehow sign up for your website as well as if they actually make a final purchase. Of course there are other things that it can detect and more specific examples. However, you can also do custom conversions.
- Website visits
- Search
- Add to cart
- Add to WL
- Initiate Checkout
- Payment Information
- Create Account – Registration
- Purchase
- Custom
How to create a Meta Pixel?
All you have to do is go to your Events Manager and create one from there. Now once you create the Pixel, you have two options:
- You can either install the Facebook Pixel yourself manually or
- You can use the Partner Integration that Facebook gives.
This means that if your website is hosted on a Wordpress website or a Shopify website, you have the ability to connect directly to Facebook. So this makes setup even easier.
However, even if you have to go through the manual process it’s incredibly easy to install. All you have to do is take the code that is given to you and then paste it on the header of your website.
Regardless of the website that you have it doesn’t have to be one of the bigger websites out there, this is incredibly easy to do. If you’re struggling along the way understand that every single website out there and every single landing page builder has a how to install your Facebook Pixel on their particular software. So, you can’t get it wrong, it’s super simple.
How do I install a Facebook Pixel?
This spot can be tricky because everyone’s site setup is a little different. To get your Facebook Pixel nestled into the exact right spot, Meta has a decent tutorial that walks you through the installation process. They even includes instructions for you.
First, you should go to your Facebook ad account. You actually have the ability to do a manual install or a partner integration as we mentioned before.
If you click on partner it’s going to go to a website or a little pop-up that says are you using Wix, Shopify, Squarespace or Wordpress. And then it’s going to have the ability for you to select the partner that you’re using or the website host that you’re using. After that you’re going to install using that platform.
However, we’re going to talk about the most manual way to install the Facebook Pixel. That’s why you should click on “manually add pixel to your website” option.
After installed the code manually, to copy base code, you should click the green copy code button down below. Now, the question is where do i install that code?
Remember, the Facebook Pixel goes on your website whether you have a traditional website or a landing page that’s where it goes. If you have that platforms, (Wix, Shopify, Squarespace or Wordpress) go to their help section and there’s going to be a resource for you.
Conclusion
Even if you’re not interested in running Facebook ads today, tomorrow, next month or next year, that’s okay. You should install your Meta Pixe today anyway. That’s because all of that data is going to your website within those six months isn’t trackable unless you install your Meta Pixel.
Remember all of this data is going to help you track your audience and it’s going to help you reduce your ad costs.
