What is Facebook Pixel, and Do I Need it?

Close up of Facebook home screen on Facebook on computer screen with cursor next to it

Digital marketing became the new norm since the pandemic started. It opened plenty of opportunities for various businesses to have a new way of gaining customers and improving sales. Now, almost every company in every industry invested in several online marketing services, such as SEO, PPCs, and paid channels.

But one of the most promising among the digital mediums today is social media marketing, particularly Facebook Ads. 

With over 2.8 billion active users, there’s no better way to reach your target audience and get your brand message in front of them than through Facebooks Ads. 

As confusing as it might be, you need to start learning about this social media marketing technique and the complementary tools that come with it, like Facebook Pixel. This tool can help you get the most out of the money you put into Facebook Ads.

If you want to increase your ROI, then you better start learning the basics about the Facebook Pixel. Here’s a detailed rundown on what it is and how it can help you with your business.

What Is Facebook Pixel?

Placing your business advertisements all over the web should not be the end of your marketing strategy. You should know what users do on your website after they clicked your ads so that you can gauge how effective your ad is.

What pages did your audience view? Did they make a purchase? What platform do most of your users come from? The answer to all of these is in the Facebook Pixel.

Facebook Pixel refers to an analytic tool that tracks users and the actions they do on your website. Pixel is a piece of code/javascript from Facebook that you need to place into your website to monitor user actions and measure how effective your ad campaigns are. 

Some of the events it tracks on your website include:

  • When a user adds an item to their shopping cart or their wishlist.
  • When a user makes a purchase
  • The pages a user viewed.
  • A user’s scroll depth and time on page and more.

Facebook Pixel collects all these important data points that will help you measure your ads’ effectiveness–from monitoring conversions to optimizing your advertisements.

Facebook Pixel works once someone does something on your website. It will fire up and trigger the cookies to track user activities as they interact with your site. The actions tracked and received by the Pixel will be displayed on your Facebook Pixel page Events Manager.

You can find Facebook Pixels in the Facebook Ads Manager on the Assets column. Once you have created a pixel, you can copy the pixel base code into your website’s header.

Why Do You Need Facebook Pixel?

There’s no point in placing ads all over social media sites if you have no way of knowing how they perform. Even if you don’t have Facebook Ads, you still need to know what people do on your website so you can better their experience and your campaigns, right? That’s where Facebook Pixel comes in.

Here are some of the reasons why you need to set-up these little trackers on your website now.

 1. Know Your Audience and Retarget Them

One of the advantages of excellent online marketing services is you will be able to see the people who accessed your site and what they did while they were on it.

Further, you can find out valuable information about the audience who visited your site so you can better your campaigns. This includes the percentage of people in a relationship, their age, gender, lifestyle, education level, job titles, household income, and spending habits.

What’s more exciting is you can show targeted ads to the people who already visited your site. You can create it via the “Custom Audiences” in Pixel and target these people with relevant ads when using Facebook, Instagram, and other networks.

For example, on your website, a user added something to their shopping cart and then abandoned it. Facebook Pixels will then target this user and show ads about the product they left in their shopping cart.

 2. Find New Customers

Besides knowing your loyal visitors, Pixel can also help you find new customers who have a high chance of being interested in what your business offers. 

Pixels will look for audiences with the same web or app activity as that of your most valuable existing consumer. If they “look-alike,” then Pixels will bring ads in their way. This makes your paid ads more worth it as they will be targeted towards people who actually have an interest in your business. 

Woman looking down at smartphone on Facebook

 3. Track Conversion

Facebook Pixel allows you to track how many actions are happening as people interact with your ads across different networks (e.g., Facebook and Instagram). 

You can even see what device a customer used when they converted. Did they see your ads on their laptop but decided to click them on their phones? Or is it the other way around?

This lets you know the best way to reach your target audience and where to strategically place your ads for better conversion. Further, you can use it as a guide for other online marketing services you plan to use in the future.

 4. Optimize Your Ads

Since Facebook Pixels show you the different metrics and analytics of your advertisement’s performance, you can now optimize your Facebook ads to yield better conversion. 

For instance, it can optimize an ad for your audience based on their value and purchase activities. Pixels can target consumers with high-value spending habits online who are more likely to click and buy from your business.

 5. Drive More Sales

Lastly, Facebook Pixels helps you drive more sales. All of the above-mentioned Pixel events help you guide your target audience to do a desirable action: purchasing or availing what your business offers. 

Its specificity and personalized approach are what make it one of the best tools in online marketing services. There’s nothing more targeted than the detailed insights you get when a user interacts with your advertisement. 

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About the Author: Salt Rank