Familiarise Yourself With Facebook Pixel

Knowing the ins and outs of Facebook advertising is both a challenge and an adventure. It introduces a ton of new things that will also tickle your creative mind. To continue the journey, you’ll have to use your familiarity with Ads Manager in this chapter.

You’ll also get acquainted with the Facebook pixel.

What Exactly Is The Facebook Pixel?

A piece of code that you install on your website, the Facebook pixel works like cookies and tracks the actions of your audience. By analysing these actions, it can let you know how to reach the right people using Facebook ads.

For instance, you place the pixel on the header of your website. Then a user does something on your website like complete a purchase. The pixel is triggered and reports this action. Because this user has shown interest in your service, you can target them again through future Facebook ads.

Who Is Facebook Pixel For?

As you’ve read prior, it is a tracking tool that you can create to make the most out of Facebook advertising. Certainly, you’ve also read that it is for businesses that have their own website.

It will be of utmost importance to people who need to measure, optimise, and build audiences for their advertising campaigns.

Measure. It tracks information such as the device your customers use to make a purchase. By measuring cross-device conversions — Are they on mobile when they browse? Do they switch to desktop when they’re ready to buy? — it helps you create device-specific ads to influence conversions.

Optimise. It puts your ads in front of people that matter to your business. Optimised ads mean optimised ad spend.

Build. Have you ever looked for a product online and seen a Facebook ad for that product after leaving the website? It is an example of what is collectively called dynamic ads. These are personalised Facebook ads, and you will know more about them later.

On top of these, you will be able to dig into actionable data including how people are using your website.

If these four things are important to you and you have a website, proceed. The Facebook pixel is indeed one of the tools that you must deploy right away.

Before You Begin

Before you set up the Facebook pixel, you should learn about events. When a user takes action on your website, Facebook logs it as an ‘event’. By placing the appropriate code on your website, you will be able to track conversions, optimise for conversions, and build audiences.

There are two categories of events according to Facebook: standard and custom.

There are nine standard events, each of which already has an assigned code you can copy and paste:

Source: Facebook

Meanwhile, custom events fall outside the standard actions covered in the table above. Also called custom conversion events, they employ specific URLs or URL keywords. You also need to give Facebook details of the conversion event, so it will be able to track it correctly.

To do this, go to Ads Manager. Expand the menu and click on Custom conversions

Click the Create Custom Conversion button.

The main difference with custom conversion events is that you can set new rules for them. Alternately, you can build on standard events by adding parameters. You can make any of these happen in the window shown below.

Go through each field. You can create your custom event by choosing Custom events > Other from the first drop-down menu. Again, you can set your own rules. But skip that part for now to avoid confusion.

Move on to assigning a name to your custom event. Next, click Add a description and briefly describe the action on your website you want Facebook to track. For instance, you are offering Autumn/Winter Collection sets. You want to know which items are included in the sets that your customers are purchasing. You can write the description as shown below. Then, click on Purchase as the Category and assign a value.

Note: After clicking Create, you will receive a remark from Facebook with regard to your event. Ignore this for now. This activity was inserted to introduce you to events.

Setting Up The Facebook Pixel

Notice that after creating a custom event, you are now on Events Manager. Click on Data sources. Wait for the list to load. You will then find the Facebook pixel on top of the list. Click the Get Started button.

Or, you can click on Events Manager to expand the menu and go to the Pixels tab. Click Create a Pixel to get started.

Give your pixel a name. Then, click Create.

Select which setup method is right for you. If you’re using any of the following platforms, you will just have to click on your host name to continue: 3dcart, BigCommerce, Eventbrite, Google Tag Manager, Magento, OpenCart, Presta Shop, Segment, Shopify, Squarespace, Storeden, Wix, WooCommerce, and WordPress.

If you wish to manually install the code yourself, click on that option and Facebook will walk you through the steps.

Lastly, you can choose to entrust the installation process to a developer.

Use An Integration Or Tag Manager

If you opted to use an integration or tag manager, say, for WordPress, you must then follow a series of instructions that will pop up on the page. In this case, you will be asked to download the Facebook pixel extension and install it as a WordPress plugin.

Just click on the Continue button, follow the instructions, and proceed until you accomplish the final step.

Manually Install the Code Yourself

Just like with the first option, you will be given instructions on how to install your pixel code. Make sure you know how to locate the header template in your content management system (CMS) or web platform.

It is here that you will also be able to copy-paste events. For example, you want to track purchases made on your website. Turn on the button for Purchase, add/skip adding event parameters, and then copy the event code snippet.

Email Instructions to A Developer

If you have an in-house or trusted developer, you can instead email the instructions to them.

Those are the three ways you can install the Facebook pixel on your website. Are you finished working on your chosen method? Don’t go just yet. You still need to install the Facebook Pixel Helper on Google Chrome.

Before You Go: Install the Facebook Pixel Helper

The Facebook Pixel Helper is a troubleshooting tool that will let you know if your pixel is working correctly. Yes, you should use the Chrome web browser specifically for this.

Go to the Chrome Web Store. You can type chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions. Search for the Pixel Helper. Click + Add to Chrome and then confirm that you’re adding the extension.

You will get a notification that the extension has been added. It will also be labeled as such on the Chrome Web Store results page.

Next, go to your website. Then click on the Pixel Header icon in the address bar. If the tool finds a pixel on your website and detects no error, you can start creating Facebook ads with your pixel.

Did you encounter an error? Do not fret. Facebook has accumulated data from other people’s experiences and most likely included the fixes here.

Plus, you have more reasons to be glad as you’re finally moving forward to creating your first-ever campaign. See you in the next chapter!