The Facebook Pixel demystified - who, what, why and how!
Creating all the magic behind successful Facebook and Instagram Ads is the almighty Facebook Pixel.
Who
Who needs the Facebook pixel is fairly simple…
Anyone who is running Facebook & Instagram Ads
Anyone who may run Facebook & Instagram Ads in the future
You might not be ready to start with Ads at the moment, but getting the pixel on your website now will mean that it start to acquire data now, and all that lovely data will help as and when the time comes.
What
So what exactly is the pixel? It’s a nifty piece of *code that you create in your Facebook Events Manager, and when it’s added to your website it gathers information that your Facebook campaigns can then use to customise, scale and measure your ads. In a Nutshell…it’s Advertising wizardry!
*Don’t panic - yes it’s code but you don’t need to be a developer to install or understand the pixel!
Why
Why do you need the pixel? Facebook themselves describe the pixel as allowing you to ‘measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website’ we’ve broken this down into 3 key reasons to get it installed:
Measure Results - we love the stats and they are all thanks to pixel power! The pixel will measure Ad results and Track ROI and conversions. It’s crucial to understand the effect of every Ad that you set live and the pixel measures what happens when people see you Ad. How long they watch that video for, whether they add to and abandon cart or whether they sign up as a new lead. So many variables are measured that will help you to understand what’s working and what’s not.
Customise ads - making sure that your ads are shown to the right people. The pixel will help you find new customers or enable retargeting people who have already visited a certain page or taken a certain action, warming the audience up and moving them towards conversion. Retargeted customers are 70 x more likely to buy from you and they spend an average of 5 times more than the average customer - so retargeting is advertising magic! 🎩 Want to target the people who added something to their basket and got distracted - you’ll need a pixel!
Sell more - as well as the retargeting capabilities, the pixel information will also enable you to optimise your campaign to reach people who are more likely to take the action that you want e.g. Purchase or sign up.
How
Every advertising account has just one pixel, made up of the base code and the standard event code.
The base code will sit on all pages of your website and will never change - it’s this element that identifies your account and collects data from the pages that it is connected to.
The standard event code tracks events which are predefined by Facebook, at the moment there are 17 of these including things like ‘add to cart’ ‘complete registration’ and ‘subscribe.’ Get these set up and you’re on your way to retargeting bliss! 🤓
You can create and name the pixel within your events manager account, and then install it either via an integration tool, by sending the code to your developer or by manually inserting it into your website header. The Events manager and event set up tool wizard takes you through the process gently step by step. (remember you don’t need to be a developer to nail this one!)
Get the base code on every page of your event and then use Standard events to map the customer journey and measure and report on aspects of that journey that really matter to you. The connected pixel will then help with that retargeting advertising magic, increasing conversions and improving the ROI ✨
Note: You’ll need a GDPR compliant privacy policy and cookies statement on your website.
In a Nutshell…
Hopefully these few minutes have demystified things a little. The power of Facebook/Instagram Advertising is in the granular targeting you can achieve, and the magic comes with retargeting - to achieve both effectively you’ll need the Facebook Pixel.
Whether you’re planning to advertise immediately, or are thinking ahead, we’d recommend getting your website pixelled as soon as you can - the more data it collects for you, the better!
Nutshell manage paid social media advertising for businesses of varying size, in multiple sectors. We’re more than happy to make your life easier and help you take your social campaigns to the next level and beyond!