Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel

Smiley faces, thumbs-up, and hearts are nice, but do you know what potential customers want when they follow your Facebook ads to your website?

Thanks to the Facebook pixel, Facebook's free analytics code, you have the power to assess the usefulness of your advertising budget by understanding in detail how and when visitors interact with your site.

It's more important than ever to get the most out of your social media advertising dollars.

And, whether you're planning to spend that precious marketing money on Facebook advertising now or in the future, the Facebook pixel is an indispensable no-cost tool because it starts compiling data immediately, so you'll have it when you are ready to advertise.

According to Facebook For Business, the more conversions that occur on your site, the more tuned-in Facebook’s pixel gets at placing ads in front of potential customers most likely to take meaningful actions.
Facebook calls this "conversion optimization."

Put Facebook’s pixel to work for you

• Show advertisements to the right users
• Convert visitors into new customers
• Use automatic bidding to reach potential customers
• Assess the impact of your ads
• Improve your ROI with real metrics

How it works

1. Set up the Facebook pixel.
2. Facebook’s pixel notifies you whenever someone takes one of 17 actions, including putting products in a cart or subscribing to a newsletter
3. Facebook’s pixel records those activities
4. Go to "Events Manager" on your Facebook pixel page for data on what customers have done
5. Use those metrics to reach existing customers with Facebook ads in the future

What Facebook’s pixel tracks

While the "page view event'' is included in Facebook’s pixel base code to alert you when visitors land on one of your web pages where the code has been installed, there are 17 other standard events that are tracked.

1. Add payment info – The addition of customer payment information during a checkout process.
2. Add to cart – Addition of items to a shopping cart or basket.
3. Add to wish list – Addition of items to a wish list.
4. Complete registration – Submission of info by a customer in exchange for a service provided by your business.
5. Contact – Telephone, SMS, email, chat, or other types of communication between a customer and your business.
6. Customize product – Customization of products through a configuration tool or other application your business owns.
7. Donate – Donation of funds to your organization or cause.
8. Find a location – When a person finds one of your locations via the web with an intention to visit.
9. Initiate checkout – Start of a checkout process.
10. Lead – Submission of info by a customer with the understanding that they may be contacted.
11. Purchase – Completion of a purchase, usually signified by receiving order or purchase confirmation, or a transaction receipt.
12. Schedule – Booking of an appointment to visit one of your locations.
13. Search – Search performed on your website, app, or other property.
14. Start trial – Start of a free trial of product or service you offer.
15. Submit application – Submission of an application for a product, service, or program you offer.
16. Subscribe – Start of a paid subscription for a product or service you offer.
17. View content - Visit to a webpage you care about, such as a product or landing page. This feature tells you if someone visits a webpage's URL, but not what they do or see there.

Ultimately, Facebook’s pixel is just a few lines of code that you copy and paste into the header area of your site. All you need are a business website and access to update your site's code. Lucky for you, Facebook has an easy-to-use tutorial with step-by-step instructions here.