There are nearly 2 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, making it an obvious place to advertise your organization’s products and services. To get the most out of your efforts, the Facebook Pixel is a must have.

Using the Facebook Pixel you can:

1. Calculate Return On Investment (ROI) for your ads.
2. Drive more people to your website and increase conversions.
3. Remarket visitors to your site through Facebook.

How the Facebook Pixel Works

Note, the Pixel only tracks traffic if the user is logged into Facebook at the time of the website visit. While this is a limitation, the benefits of high-quality audiences for your Facebook ads, and much more accurate conversion tracking, make utilizing the Pixel a smart move in your Digital Marketing strategy.

The Pixel itself is a JavaScript snippet, or piece of code, that is placed on every page of your website. So when a user is logged into Facebook, the Pixel lets you know if they visited your site. The base code includes your unique Facebook Pixel ID and is primarily used to associate user actions with your Facebook Ads Manager account. On some pages, you can insert additional tracking for specific events within this base code. This is where the Pixel creates its true value.

Some of the additional events that can be tracked are:

• Searching on your website, including tracking the terms entered by the user.
• Adding items to a cart, or a wish list, including what was added.
• Purchases, including the total amount of an order.
• Leads that arrive on a landing page or sign-up for a trial offer.
• Completed registrations.

How to Implement the Facebook Pixel

Facebook’s documentation is very good and you should start there when you’re ready to implement the Pixel. Additionally, you can visit the Advertiser Help Center for more information or answers to any further questions you may have.

For White Lion projects, once the client has determined the events to track, we place the base code before the closing tag within the HTML of every page on the website. We then add snippets on those pages where a specific event, like a purchase, needs to be tracked.

Calculating your ROI

With the Pixel in place and events defined, you’ll have a better understanding of how much money you’re spending on ads and how much you’re getting in return.

For example, suppose you have ads directing people to a product/service on your site, and that those ads cost you $1 per click. Your product or service is priced at $30. Since the Pixel is now in place you can track when it was purchased. Now suppose you received 200 clicks and made 8 sales. This means you spent $200 for ads and received $240 in sales.

Your net gain of $40 means that on average you received 20 cents every time your ad was clicked. Not bad. Once you have the Pixel in place on your site, Lookalike Audiences and retargeting can help you improve your conversion rate.

Increase Conversions with Lookalike Audiences

The Pixel allows you to identify the people who did actually purchase your product or service. The above is a simplified example. In reality, your audience of clicks and conversions is going to be much larger.

With a large enough sample of conversions, Facebook can generate a Lookalike Audience that resembles the people who did purchase your product/service.

You can increase your conversion rate by focusing your marketing efforts on these people through Facebook since they are similar to your existing customers.

Use retargeting to get users to come back to your site

Remember those 192 clicks that didn’t buy? They’re still considered a warm audience because they at least made it to your website and viewed your offering. Because they were tracked with the Pixel, you can show them follow up ads in Facebook.

The customers that receive these ads are 26% more likely to return to your site and complete the purchase, according to Wishpond. And offering a discount or other incentive through your remarketing ad greatly increases this rate.

Get started with a Facebook Ad Campaign

White Lion can help you put together a solid digital marketing plan incorporating Facebook Ads and much more. We’ll assist you with your content and core messaging, and our development team can implement a solution that lets you manage your Facebook Pixel integration easily and effectively.