Feb’s Guest Blogger is Laura Moore – Facebook Ads Marketer
How the Facebook pixel works and why your business needs one
You’ve got your SEO in order, you’re nailing your social media marketing, your email list is growing but you’re not sure why you need a Facebook pixel.
The simple answer is because without it, you’re missing out on one of the best marketing tools available to you.
What is a Facebook Pixel?
The pixel is a piece of code which sits on your website to collect data from anyone who visits it.
Whenever someone lands on your website, while logged into Facebook they are feeding your pixel with valuable data, regardless of where they originated from.
The pixel code is specific to your business and you can create one pixel per ad account. So if you have multiple businesses, with multiple websites, you need a unique pixel for each one.
Pixels track the online activity of all your website visitors. This then allows Facebook to understand their likes, interests and behaviours and is the reason you will see adverts in your newsfeed related to your online behaviour.
Do you really need a Facebook pixel?
Yes! If you are using Facebook ads then the pixel is vital in your success. But even if you aren’t yet using Facebook ads, or boosted posts you should still install the pixel.
Here’s why:
- The pixel data means you can create custom audiences from your website visitors.
- You can therefore serve specific ads to specific people after they have seen specific content. For example, you can advertise to people who have added a product to their basket but have not completed the purchase. Thus reminding them to come back and buy from you.
- The pixel also allows you to create ‘look a like’ audiences. These allow you to find people with similar characteristics to the customers you are already working with.
- You can also use the data to optimise your advertising campaigns to allow Facebook to find the people who are likely to take a particular action on your website depending on which campaign objective you have chosen.
- Without the pixel you can’t accurately monitor how successful your Facebook Ads were.
Is a Facebook Pixel essential if you’re not using Facebook ads?
It isn’t essential, however, for the pixel to be at its most accurate, it requires a lot of data. So if you wait until you are thinking about using Facebook or Instagram ads before installing it, your ads will take longer to optimise while you ‘feed’ the pixel with data.
The best time to install the Facebook pixel was the day your website went live. The second best time is right now.
How do you install the Facebook pixel?
This will depend on how you created your website and whether you are using Shopify or any other similar 3rd parties.
Facebook guides you through creating and installing the pixel and standard events and you can simply send the code to your web developer once you have set it up in your Facebook ads manager.
Laura is a Facebook ads strategist, working with businesses to help them generate leads and increase sales with Facebook ads. If you are unsure of how to create or use the Facebook pixel, visit her website for useful tips laura-moore.co.uk