Why is the Facebook pixel important?
According to Sensis Social media Report 79% of Australian businesses are already making significant use of Facebook to tap into visitors to boost their prospects. It’s been a rule for some time now that you should have a Facebook presence to complement your main website. For some, their Facebook presence may be working better than their website, but in many cases Facebook marketing is largely an untapped area of opportunity particularly in the area of e-commerce.
According to Forbes social media – particularly Facebook – is now competing head-to-head with search engines for the largest share of referral traffic on the web. And Fortune reports that Facebook has taken over from Google as a traffic source for news. So when it comes to revising your to-do list, make sure that there is a spot for the Facebook pixel.
What is the Facebook pixel?
The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions and behaviour of your site’s visitors. Pixels are common across most advertising platforms and are used to drop cookies that will track visitors on your website so you can advertise to them later. This is called re-targeting. Once you advertise to past website visitors, pixels can also be used to track users behaviour when they’re back on your website. This helps you measure the effectiveness of your ads.
The Pixel works like Google Analytics and is implemented by inserting a tag into the head of each of your website’s pages. In its basic form, the Facebook pixel gives you the ability to track nine ‘standard events’.
- View content: key page views
- Search: searches made by users on your website
- Add to cart: when items are added to a user’s shopping cart
- Add to wishlist: when items are added to a wishlist
- Initiate checkout: when people enter the checkout
- Add payment info: when payment info is added during the checkout process
- Make purchase: when the purchase process is completed
- Lead: when someone submits a form, signs up, lands on a pricing page, etc.
- Complete Registration: when a registration form is completed
Advanced users who know how to code software may want to plunge into creating custom events or add additional parameters to standard events. Custom events give you the flexibility to create specific, tailored events for your website while creating additional parameters is easier to use.
Why Should You Use the Facebook pixel?
Given the competition in the market place, you would be missing out if you are not deploying the Facebook pixel.
Using the Facebook pixel allows you to better target your audience and is therefore more cost effective. The Pixel lets you measure and track the entire conversion process so you can understand your client’s behaviour. It’s valuable data which should be used to optimise and put in place improvements.
To get the most out of the Facebook pixel, familiarise yourself with Facebook’s implementation guide, or contact a professional to get you started.
