Facebook Pixel: Understanding and implementing it

Facebook is home to over 2 billion active users. That is almost half of the worlds population. It’s easy for your advertisement to get lost in such a vast world if you are not comfortable with the platform. That’s where Facebook Pixel comes to your aid. Let’s find out what the Facebook Pixel actually is and how you use it to better reach the people you want to reach with your marketing.

What is Facebook Pixel?

Facebook Pixel allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. In simple words, it helps you to identify how successful your advertising campaign actually is.

It is a simple analytics code that you place on your website. In turn, it helps you to track and understand all the actions that people take on your website take. 

A Facebook Pixel will help you to:

• Track conversions from Facebook ads
• Optimize the ads based on collected data
• Build target audiences for future ads
• Remarket the ads to people who have already taken some action on your website

Earlier, you would have needed the services of a third party to do all these things. But with the Facebook Pixel, you can do it all by yourself and that too on Facebook itself. 

How does a Facebook Pixel work?

It is a simple code that you place on your website. Once set up, it places a cookie on your website which gets triggered every time someone interacts with your website and your Facebook ad. This triggered cookie collects and formulates the data which you can use to optimize your Facebook ads.

Why use it though?

Though setting up a Facebook Pixel takes only an hour or so, it’s the job after that which confuses many users. Understanding the data it provides and using it effectively needs some time and practice. Yes, it’s confusing at first glance, but the end value you get is definitely worth the troubles. 

Make sure your ads are bringing results. 

Everyone wants results. Everyone wants to know whether the money they are spending is getting them any sales or not. That’s exactly the thing Pixel does for you. With Pixel, you can make sure that your ads get converted into sales. 

Create advanced Facebook ads audiences.

Based on the results it generates, Pixel helps you to create advanced audiences. You can either create custom audience based on the people who visited your site, interacted, completed specific actions, etc. Or, you can simply retarget the people who have visited your website in the past 1-180 days. In short, it helps you to show your ads to the right kind of people.

Unlock additional advertising tools and campaign metrics.

Set up new type of conversions that help enrich the reports you see in your ads manager. Also, you can use the additional bidding methods and set up campaigns that focus on getting you more on-website or in-app conversions.

Benefits of using Facebook Pixel

Track Conversions.

Monitor how people interact with your website after viewing your Facebook ads. You can track customers across devices, demographics, age, sex, etc. It helps you refine your advertising campaign and get more out of it. 

Remarket.

Pixel helps you to show the ads again to the people who have visited your website. You can even choose to select the ads of some specific products to a specific customer. It may be the products they abandoned or the ones that they added to their wishlist. Pixel gives you the power to manipulate both, your ads and your customers.

Create Lookalike Audiences.

Pixel tracks the people visiting your website across the devices, demographics, age, etc. Based on this data, Facebook can create a lookalike audience that has similar likes as the people visiting your website. This helps you increase your potential customer base. 

Run Effective Ads.

In the vast world of Facebook, it is essential to make sure your ads are being shown to the right kind of people. Pixel not only helps you increase the quality of your ads, it makes them more effective by targeting the people who see them. It makes sure that the ads are shown to the people who are likely to take an action. This helps you to make the most of your advertising budget.

Measure the Performance of your Ads.

At last, it helps you to understand how successful your ad actually is. By analyzing the data generated by Pixel, you can see exactly what happened as a result of your ad. 

Now that you know what Facebook Pixel is and how it’ll benefit your advertising campaign, it’s time to learn how to set it up.

Setting up your Facebook Pixel:

There are three basic steps involved to set up your Facebook Pixel:

• Create a Pixel
• Install the Pixel code to your website
• Test the Pixel

There are just a couple of prerequisites. First, you should own a website for your business, and then you should be able to edit the code of your website. It’s okay if you don’t have any ads running on Facebook yet. You can still set up your Pixel to gather the preliminary data and plan ahead.

Create a Pixel

• There are two ways to get to Pixel. From the Business Manager Settings in Facebook, click Pixels under the People and Assets. Or, in the Facebook Ads Manager, click on the hamburger (≡) and choose Pixels under the Measure and Reports tab.
• If you already have a Pixel installed or created, you will be redirected to the Events Manager page. If you don’t have any Pixel, Facebook will prompt you to create one. There, click on Create a Pixel.
• When you click, a pop-up window will appear asking you to give a name to your Pixel. Technically, you can give any name to your Pixel. But it’s a good practice to name it after your business. Always keep in mind that you only get one Pixel per ad account. So be judicious while naming it. 
• Once done, check the box next to the Terms and Conditions and click Next. Your Pixel is ready to be used.

Install the Pixel code to your website

There are three ways to install the Pixel code into your website.

• Use an integration or tag manager
• Manually install the code yourself
• Email instructions to a developer

Use an integration or tag manager

You can use this option if you use a tag manager tool or an e-commerce platform that offers Facebook integration. When you click on the option, a list of Facebook website partners will be displayed. If you host your website on any of those platforms, then you can quickly install your code by following the instructions shown. If not, you can always manually install the code yourself.

Manually install the code yourself

In this option, you have to Copy the entire Pixel code and Paste it in your website. 

There are two type of codes that you have to install.

• The Pixel base code is to be copied into the header section (between the <head> and </head>) of each and every page of your website.
• While the Event code is to be copied in the base code, above the </script> tag. It goes only on the selected pages that you wish to track.
• Remember, the base code remains the same for all the pages, but the event code will change based on the type of event you track. We’ll get to the different events that you can track in a while.

Email instructions to a developer

If you don’t have the necessary permission to edit your website code or if it is run by an individual developer, you can click on this option. Facebook will then email the Pixel installation instructions to your developer. This should be a pretty easy task for them.  

Test the Pixel

• Download the Facebook Pixel extension from Google Chrome.
• Visit the page where you installed the Pixel.
• If the extension finds a Pixel, the </> icon will turn blue and a pop-up will indicate how many Pixels it locates. It will also tell you whether your Pixel is working properly or not. If not, it will indicate the error information with the required corrections.
• Some common errors are No Pixel found, Pixel did not load, not a standard event, Pixel activated multiple times, invalid Pixel id, etc. 

Set up Events

In the case of manual installation, you will be needed to set up the events. Events are the activities that your Pixel is supposed to track. 

There are nine standard events predefined by Facebook:

• View content: Someone lands on your page
• Search: Someone uses the search option on your website
• Add to cart: Someone adds products to their cart on your website
• Add to wishlist: Someone adds products to your wishlist
• Initiate checkout: Someone starts the process of checkout
• Add payment info: Someone adds the payment information on your website
• Make purchase: Someone makes a purchase on your website
• Lead: Someone identifies themselves as leads or signs up for free trials
• Complete registration: Someone completes the registration process on your website

It is easy to set up the standard events in your Pixel:

• Go to Pixels and click on Set up Pixel.
• Click Manually install the code yourself.
• Click continue and then click Install Events
• Toggle the icon next to the event you would like to track.
• You can either track the events on page load or track them on an inline action.
• Select the appropriate option and add the Event parameters.
• Once done, copy the event code into your website. The code for the events on page load is to be copied to the header of your page, while that for the inline actions is to be copied between the <script> tags next to the action you wish to track.

Other than the standard events, you can also create the custom events. You can either create one from scratch, or just modify the standard event to perform a specific task. The code for the custom events is to be added the same way as the standard events.

Understand your Pixel

Creating and setting up your Facebook Pixel is just half the task. It is equally important to understand the data that your Pixel sends. You can view all the data that your Pixel sends in the Pixel Events Manager.

There are six main sections of this page:

• Time frame. It is displayed in the top right corner of the page. By default, Facebook displays the data of past 7 days. You can manually adjust the time to view tracking data of other days.
• Toolbar. This is right below your Pixel name. Here, you can create an ad campaign or create custom audiences based on the Pixel data. Under the edit tab, you can edit the Pixel name, view the Pixel code or share your Pixel.
• Traffic data. Below the toolbar is the graph the traffic recorded on your website for the selected time frame.
• Pixel details. To the right of traffic data is displayed the basic information about your Pixel.
• Custom audiences. Below the Pixel details you can view all the custom audiences generated based on your Pixel data.
• Data filters. Towards the bottom of the page is the table of data filters. You can toggle the buttons there to break down your data by Events, URLs, Domains, or Devices.

Once you have all the data in your hands, it’s up to you on how you decide to use it.

Conclusion

Whether you use Facebook ads or plan to use them in the future, Facebook Pixel is an essential tool that you should have. In the vast world of Facebook, it helps you to track the correct audience. And if you used correctly, it will ensure that you make the most out of your social media advertising budget.