The Facebook Pixel: Why Your Business Needs it Now

Sending a rocket into outer space without a launchpad would be tricky. You could try, but your rocket probably wouldn’t get very far.

The same goes for running Facebook Ads without the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel helps make your Facebook Ads effective, just like a launchpad helps get your rocket off the ground. If you’re currently running ads on Facebook or plan to soon, the Facebook Pixel can help make your paid ads budget stretch further. It’s all about having the right tool for the job. And when it comes to Facebook Ads, the Facebook Pixel is the tool. 

At Galactic Fed, we know a thing or two about optimizing paid ads. In just 5 months, we helped one of the largest organic maple syrup producers in the US increase their revenue by 300% through Google and Facebook Ads.

Want to target the right audience, increase your sales, and measure your ROI with ease? Here’s everything you need to know about the Facebook Pixel.

What is the Facebook Pixel?

The Facebook Pixel is a clever code you embed on your website that matches visitors’ onsite behavior with Facebook user profiles. Once these few lines of code are embedded into the header section of your site, the Pixel can gain information about visitor behavior on your website to make your Facebook Ads more relevant to your users and, in turn, more effective.

The Pixel collects data that can help you easily track conversions from your Facebook Ads, optimize your ads, group your audience for future ads, and re-engage site visitors who took some sort of action on your site.

In the 5 years since Facebook launched the Pixel, it’s gone from different Pixels that monitor multiple conversions to a simple yet powerful singular Pixel that covers everything you want it to do.

Why your business needs the Facebook Pixel now

Even if you’re not currently running any ads on Facebook, it’s worth installing the Pixel yesterday. If you don’t have a time machine, today will do. The Pixel will start to collect valuable data about your buyer’s journey that you’ll have at your fingertips when you’re ready to begin your Facebook Ad campaigns.

In Galactic Fed’s expert opinion, the following 7 benefits take the Pixel from a ‘nice to have’ to ‘essential’ for the success of your paid social ads:

1. Intelligent conversion tracking

With the Facebook Pixel installed, you’ll be able to track multiple conversions like purchases, subscriptions, mailing list signups, and app downloads, straight from the Facebook platform. You can also monitor what device people use at different stages, giving you insight into your customer’s decision journey and how to tailor your paid social ads strategy to complement this.

1. Goes beyond link clicks

With the Pixel in place, you’ll be able to optimize your ads for conversions that more closely align with your business goals, from purchases to signups. Without the Pixel, you are only able to optimize conversions for clicks on specific links.

1. Groups your site visitors for future ads

The Facebook Pixel can track your website visitors’ activities, including: 

• Pages visited
• When they visited a page
• The length of time they spent on a page
• How far they scrolled down the page 
• Pages not visited 

You can use this data to create and target specific groups of people with future ads. Build custom groups of people based on pages they did or didn’t visit and when they visited, as far back as 6 months. Here are some common criteria:

• People who visited your site in the last 24 hours 
• People who visited your site in the previous 6 months but haven’t returned in the past month

• People who visited a specific landing page on your site

• Re-engages your website visitors

The Pixel allows you to re-engage people who visited your site at some point in time, but they didn’t entirely complete your conversion goal. There’s the ability to drill down to specific items someone put in their cart and abandoned or added to a wishlist, for example, and show them ads for the same or similar products.

1. Track Events that matter to you

Source: Facebook

The Facebook Pixel has 17 standard events ready to choose from and the ability to create your own custom events to help you monitor and track activity on your website. Here are the top 7 standard events and corresponding code. See all of the available events and how to embed the code for each on Facebook: 

Source: Facebook

1. Increase sales with a tailored bidding strategy

With unique insight into who visits your website, what devices they use, and what point in the customer decision journey you were able to engage them up to, you can optimize your bidding strategy for future ad campaigns. Reach more customers who are most likely to complete a conversion goal that matters to your business. 

1. Boost your ROI

The Facebook Pixel gives you granular data on which ads are performing well and how effective they are at driving visitor action to reach your business goals. Make adjustments and optimize your ads to accurately measure your ROI and stretch your paid ads budget further.

How does Facebook Pixel work?

Now that you understand the benefits the Pixel brings to your business, let’s explore the ‘how.’ There are 7 steps to using the Facebook Pixel:

1. Create a Pixel 
2. Install the Pixel code
3. Gain visitor data 
4. Research visitor behavior 
5. Build audience groups
6. Create bidding strategies 
7. Analyze events

1. Create a Pixel

Source: Facebook

Creating a Pixel is easy and can be done directly from your Facebook Events Manager. Name your Pixel, enter your website’s URL, click on the green ‘Create a Pixel’ button, and voila! You’ve created your very own Pixel. To take advantage of the Facebook Pixel, all you need are a website and the ability to update your website’s code. Facebook has some great step by step instructions for creating your first Pixel and how to embed the code.

2. Installing the Pixel

Galactic Fed recommends reaching out to your web developer if you’re not used to updating your website’s code to ensure it’s installed correctly. There’s also partner integrations available that eliminate the need to enter the new code, depending on what website you have:

3. Gain visitor data

Here’s where things get exciting! View valuable insight and data about your website visitors roll in, including where site traffic is coming from, what devices visitors are using, and key demographic information.

4. Research visitor behavior

This step is when you dive deeper into the actions people take when visiting your website. You can look in-depth at page views, time spent on specific pages, purchases, how far visitors scroll down on a particular page, and more.

5. Build audience groups

Armed with insightful data on your site visitors, you can now split your audience into custom groups and lookalike audiences to re-engage through new, dynamic ads.

6. Create a bidding strategy

You’ll want to develop a bidding strategy targeting a custom audience who are most likely to complete an action you care about, like purchases or subscription signups, to get the most out of your paid ads budget.

7. Analyze Events

Review your conversion events to fine-tune your digital marketing strategy based on the results.

The must-have Facebook Ads tool

We hope we’ve convinced you of the power of the Facebook Pixel. It really is the must-have analytics tool if you’re spending money on Facebook Ads or plan to in the near future. Intelligently track conversions, optimize your paid ads, and re-engage visitors to your website to better meet your business goals.

Reach out to Galactic Fed if you want help optimizing your paid ads; we’d love to help you track conversions, increase sales, and boost your Facebook Ads’ ROI using the Facebook Pixel.