“How can I maximize the Facebook Pixel to increase the effectiveness of my advertising campaigns?” As any digital marketer is perfectly aware, social media ads are some of the most powerful tools at your disposal for increasing awareness, generating leads, and boosting sales numbers. With almost a third of the entire world’s population on Facebook, businesses in any industry can reach their market through the world’s most extensive social media network. To take advantage of Facebook ads, you must know how to leverage the Facebook pixel to your advantage.

To put it simply, this is an analytics tool to help you track and monitor the actions people take when they interact with your ads. This code tracks 17 standard events, including:
Add Payment Info
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
Complete Registration
Contact
Customize Product
Donate
Find Location
Initiate checkout
Lead
Purchase
Schedule
Search
Start Trial
Submit Application
Subscribe
View Content
To install it, all you need to do is copy-paste a unique piece of code onto your target webpage or add it into your tag manager. Although the concept itself is simple enough to understand, maximizing its potential is where businesses face a real challenge. Estes Media, we’ve worked with the Facebook pixel since the 2015 inception of the all-encompassing pixel. Here is what you need to know about utilizing the 2021 incarnation of the Facebook pixel.

One of the most powerful ways to use the Facebook pixel is remarketing, also known as pixel retargeting. Firstly, the pixel captures information about the visitors to your website via initial broad reach ads. This data can then be used to serve the users who have shown a previous interest in your business. Build a custom audience via the Facebook Business Manager. Focus on targeting users who have either spent at least 45 seconds on your landing page or users who have performed an action like clicking onto other pages of your website or adding a product to their shopping carts. This method of targeting ensures your audience consists entirely of people who have interacted with your brand previously.

Your Facebook pixel can yield important data about the browsing behaviors of your target audience. Begin with basic ads targeting a wide market. Once the pixel begins to gather data on what customers do after they click the ad, their behavioral data can be used to deliver more targeted ads. For example, if you run a clothing store, you may build a custom audience and target separate, relevant ads to the people who clicked on men’s fashion or women’s accessories. This helps to create relevancy and increases the likelihood of meeting your target audience’s needs. We advise our clients that it does take an initial investment to gather this data, but once you have a healthy selection of data, expect to see higher conversion rates with subsequent, better-targeted ads.

You may be asking, “But after my initial ads, won’t I eventually run out of people to target with my ads?” This is where Facebook Lookalike Audiences come in. Lookalike Audiences use data extracted from custom audiences to target users who display similar behaviors in similar demographics. Perhaps a user has clicked on the ad of one of your competitors? Maybe they have liked a similar page to yours? These are the people who can be accessed via Lookalike Audiences. Lookalike Audiences enable you to create new audiences with potentially high conversion rates. For example, if you use the Facebook pixel to create custom audiences consisting exclusively of customers who made a purchase, you can then create a Lookalike Audience based on your converted leads. Over time, this strategy should increase your advertising ROI.

Device-based targeting has been a redundant feature for most of the Facebook pixel’s history. Apple’s iOS 14 update has made advertisers think about this data yielded via the pixel. The new iOS 14 update placed strict limits on the number of conversion events the pixel is allowed to track. With 30-35% of Facebook users accessing the platform via iOS devices, it’s possible to avoid these new limits entirely by excluding iOS users via the pixel. Targeting based on devices has become a relatively new area of interest for businesses and digital marketers. With businesses relying on gathering restriction-free quantities of data, actively avoiding iOS users could actually increase Facebook advertising ROI.

The Facebook pixel has Advanced Matching features that enable the social media network to match website traffic with their corresponding Facebook profiles. At Estes Media, we’ve found great value in turning on this function and sending hashed data to Facebook. The social media giant will then link the data you send them with Facebook audience data. It’s easy to match customer data with information from Facebook. You can use any or all of the following information:
Name
Email
Gender
Location
Phone number
Date of birth
External ID

What are the benefits of taking advantage of this pixel functionality? It’s all about information. By collaborating with Facebook in this way, you get more detailed insights for both your ads and site metrics. This can aid in optimizing your future ad campaigns and reaching more people. The Facebook pixel is a huge part of the reason why businesses have attained such success with paid ads on the platform. It’s also partly why Twitter and LinkedIn ads have never been as effective for businesses. Harvest the full potential of your Facebook pixel, and you will be able to better optimize your ads, reach new audiences, and increase conversions. Ready to take full advantage of the Facebook pixel? If you’re ready to take your Facebook advertising efforts to the next level, call Estes Media today!