There’s a lot that goes into a Facebook ad. One of which being a Pixel that you place on your website. It’s a technical part of running ads that many think they can skip. So the question remains. Do you actually need a pixel to run Facebook ads? Technically, no.
Facebook allows you to run quite extensive campaigns without requiring the Facebook pixel. But most marketers may have more to gain from a pixel than they think.
Let’s consider how Facebook marketing works. You create an ad with a specific purpose in mind, be it getting more page likes, link clicks, or even purchases. You run your campaigns on Facebook, using their audience base and trying to convince them to convert.
If your idea to convert is to like your page, then you can easily see if the ads paid off in the end. Facebook is able to track every single move done on their platform and provide advertisers with essential data they can use to optimize their ads.
But what if the conversion doesn’t take place on Facebook’s site, and happens on your landing page instead? Facebook, on its own, can tell you what the user did up until they click on the link, but once they reach your landing page that’s it. Facebook cannot continue to track those users.
But if you install the Facebook pixel, the platform can continue to track data from those users’ behaviors and give you a better overall view of their journey to converting, or identify why they didn’t.
Benefits of a Facebook Pixel
The Facebook Pixel is a piece of code you get from your Ads Manager and copy-paste to your website. With it, you can set up different events to track on particular web pages you’re interested in and improve your marketing strategy for the future to get even better results with your Facebook Ads.
If your goal is to get people to leave Facebook and land on another page, where they need to perform a certain action, then having the pixel installed could be very beneficial.
Here are some of the main benefits of installing the Facebook pixel.
Getting to Know Your Audience
The Facebook pixel tracks user activity on your site. This is an incredible advantage because you can gain a lot of insights into your current and potential audience.
You can:
• Understand how cross-device promotion influences conversions
• Optimize ad delivery
• Create custom audiences from website visitors
• See how people use your websites
Knowing all these aspects of your audience is essential to increasing your conversion rates.
Use Retargeting
Do you have a lot of people who click on the add to cart button, but don’t finish their purchase? Well, through the data collected with the Facebook pixel, you can reach those people again through your ads and remind them they have some items in their cart, or continue to send advertisements of that product sitting in the cart.
Some users may go through different stages of the funnel, and just when they’re about to convert something happens and takes them away. But through remarketing, you can get in contact with these users and bring them back to your site.
Remarketing has some of the best conversion rates of any form of targeting out there because you’re dealing with users who’ve visited your site and have gone through most of the actions you wanted them to. Oftentimes, it just takes another ad for them to go back and finish their purchase.
Create Special Offers
While the Facebook pixel tracks users’ activities, you can then retarget those users with additional ads. This is not retargeting per se because they are users who’ve technically converted.
But say you have a lot of users who’ve bought a particular product, and you also have a complementary product they may be interested in. If the Facebook pixel tracks the purchases of that product, you can then target these buyers with an ad for that complementary product, and maybe even provide a discount or a special offer to sweeten the deal. This helps move one-time buyers to loyal customers.
You can also create custom conversions and tell the pixel to track very specific types of conversion. Maybe you don’t want all people who’ve bought a particular product – maybe you just want those who’ve bought at least two items of it. You can tell Facebook to track that specific event and use it to create a custom audience based on that criteria.
Create Lookalike Audiences
You can create lookalike audiences based on the one you form through the pixel data. Facebook can take a custom audience from the Pixel and target users who are similar in behavior, interests, and demographics but have never visited your site before.
Lookalike audiences are one of the best strategies you can adopt to increase your reach and get new potential customers on your site.
Optimize for Conversions
Without the tracking pixel, Facebook ads can only be optimized for link clicks, which may not be your goal. That can lead to higher campaign costs because Facebook is not targeting the right audience for you, meaning that segment of your target audience most likely to perform the action you want.
If you need help optimizing your own Facebook ads, or want to get started on your Facebook advertising journey, you can always reach out to us for a free consultation.