facebook advertising for business owners

Facebook Pixel installation tips | image by Unsplash

What is the Facebook Pixel Code?

Facebook pixel is a Facebook-generated tracking code that has to be installed on your website if you use Facebook to market your business.

You can have a website without a Facebook pixel code but you can’t use the pixel code without a website.

The Facebook ad tracking code is free. You get it from your Facebook ads account with the click of a button. It is unique to your business page.

Why Install the Facebook pixel tracking code?

It is an essential tool if Facebook advertising is part of your sales strategy whether you are selling a product or a service:

Benefits of using the Facebook Pixel Tracking Code

  1. Helps you identify your targeted audience for conversion. These are people who may have engaged, clicked your link or visited your sales and landing pages as a direct result of your online and offline activities. You can track those with the help of your Facebook pixel code.
  2. Get high ROI for relevant ads. This is true for a well-documented and well-planned advertising campaign. With the Facebook pixel code, you can monitor the ads that are performing well and turn off the ones that are under-performing by tracking your Facebook ad success metric.
  3. With #2 taken care of, you save your money for something better by not wasting it on Facebook ads that are not giving you the success that you want.

Setting up the Facebook Pixel code for remarketing | Step-by-Step Guide

BEFORE You Install the Facebook Tracking Pixel

  • Can you access the business website? If not, then wait until you have a way to get access to your website.
  • Are you in front of your computer, not mobile device? You need to be in front of your computer for a seamless installation of the Facebook tracking code.
  • Do you understand basic web coding/language? You can use a plugin for this if you are a WordPress user. If not, your other option is this: send it to your web developer for installation.

DURING the Installation of the Facebook Pixel Code

facebook marketing pixel

Facebook Advertising tools

  1. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager “Dashboard.” The shortcut for that is this: https://www.facebook.com/adsmanager/.
  2. Click, “All tools.”
  3. Under “Measure and report,” select “Pixels” in Events Manager.
  4. Click set up pixel – you will have three choices:
    • a) Use an Integration or Tag Manager – connect your e-commerce, website platform or tag management partner account to Facebook and access the advertising and measurement benefits of the Facebook pixel.
    • Manually install the code yourself. Choose this if you have a basic understanding of the HTML code or you have a plugin, for WordPress website users.
    • Email instructions to a developer. Choose this if you do not wish to install the pixel code for fear “breaking it.”
  5. Assuming you chose the second option above which is the manual installation copy the entire pixel code. It should look like this: Facebook pixel code
  6. Paste the code to your website header. Just follow the directions provided by Facebook. It is the same place where your website developer will install it.

AFTER Installing the Facebook Pixel Code

  1. Test if your pixel code installed correctly using the Facebook Pixel code extension for Chrome.Facebook Pixel remarketing tracking code

    Image by: Facebook Pixel helper

  2. Plan your ad. Determine beforehand your key performance indicator (KPI). It is the Facebook advertising success metric that you will measure to determine how well an ad is going. It can be CTR (click-through rate), CPE (cost per engagement), clicks to your website, purchases, sign-ups. Your KPI will help decide the type of ad that your company is going to run.
  3. Start monitoring ROI of your Facebook ads for remarketing.
  4. Document what you are doing for reference and for benchmarking.

Types of Facebook audience for remarketing

Once your Facebook pixel code is installed correctly, you can retarget people who have interacted with your business in some form, or way. They may be people who have viewed your video, visited your landing page, set up a schedule with you and more!

These people may be your existing customers and potential customers. With their recent interactions with your business, they are the warm audience that are more likely to convert. They are the best ones to retarget for higher conversion rate.

Here are types of warm Facebook audience that you can remarket to that are available at your fingertips once that Facebook tracking code starts firing up data:

  • Engagement
  • Website Traffic
  • Customer File
  • Offline Activity
  • App activity

This is just a quick look at the custom audiences you can create on Facebook. An in-depth look at each of these belong a future blog.

Facebook custom audience | Image by Facebook

Conclusion

The Facebook tracking pixel is a valuable tool for business owners and start-up companies – big or small. It provides your marketing team a more precise data in terms of conversion rates; and set up custom audiences based on site traffic for remarketing.

These are magnificent, exceptionally valuable benefits, who doesn‘t want it?