The Facebook Pixel: what is it and why do I need one? 

Have you heard on the grapevine that Facebook Advertising is the bee’s knees? Or maybe you’ve been scrolling through your Facebook feed and you saw an advert for those jeans you’ve literally just viewed online? It might also be worth taking a look at your competiton to see what they are doing too.

We won’t mince our words, Facebook advertising is an amazingly powerful tool. But you probably knew that already, that’s why you’re here! You want to be able to pull off the same Jedi Mind Tricks as other businesses do on social media. Here’s where the Facebook Pixel can help. 

What is a Facebook Pixel?

A Facebook Pixel is the key to unlocking the full potential of Facebook Advertising. Without one, you’re only doing half the job you could be.

 

It’s a nifty piece of code that a developer can add to your website. Facebook also allows for a quick set up on connected platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify and WordPress. Once installed, the pixel code uses the magic of cookies to anonymously track what users do. By the way, when you click ‘accept cookies’ this is the type of thing you’re signing up for! 

 

Once you’ve got a Facebook Pixel linked to your web pages, you can get started on making the witchcraft and wizardry happen (without any cheesy 'abracadabras’). 

How does the Facebook Pixel work?

A Facebook Pixel needs a little time to work its magic. When the pixel is installed for the first time, it will start to track website visits or app activity by default. You can also set up tracking for form sign-ups, products added to a shopping cart, completed purchases, viewed content and more.  

Personally, we like to run a standard traffic ad campaign to allow the pixel to obtain as much data as possible about website visitors first - the more the better. Since Facebook tries to get as many website visits as possible for you during a traffic campaign, it’s the quickest way for us to gain data and let Facebook learn. The initial data not only gives us insight about what's happening, it unlocks the advanced features of Facebook Ads. Level up! 

Custom Audiences

Now that there’s some data to work with, you can begin to create custom audiences. This is the key to remarketing campaigns - the magic that Facebook is known for. These are audiences that can be based on anything the pixel is set up to track... Want to upsell? Target people who made a purchase. Want to move people further down the marketing funnel? Target website visitors!

These types of targeted ads are only possible with the pixel installed (and someone with the know-how to make it happen, of course!). 

Remarketing with Facebook Catalogues

Take your remarketing efforts to spooky levels when you link it with a Facebook catalogue! If your business is e-commerce, you can link product pages to a Facebook or Instagram catalogue. Facebook will save the imported catalogue information as assets and automatically display a range of catalogue items to customers who have viewed products previously. Remember those jeans you viewed earlier? They’re back again!

Expand your audience

Installing the Facebook Pixel allows you to set up lookalike audiences to reach an audience of people with similarities to your existing customers and visitors. This can be done with the pixel data or any pre-existing custom audiences. You can even add a layer of extra targeting on top of your lookalike audience to refine it even more.

Level Up Your Advertising 

With a Facebook Pixel, you’re not just paying to have your social media posts seen by more people. You are delivering a complex yet powerful campaign to a targeted audience. You may not even want to use custom audiences or lookalike audiences, but at the very least, the pixel provides insightful data about user behavior coming from Facebook. So whether you create ads or not, we’d recommend putting it to work!

 

Are you interested in getting set up with a Facebook Pixel and making it work for you? Get in touch with PS and we can chat about the wonders of Facebook Ads over a coffee.