Out of all of the incredible tools Facebook has created for marketers, perhaps the most useful is Facebook Pixel.

The pixel allows you to monitor how successful your Facebook Ads actually were—giving you more accurate conversion stats—and create custom audiences based on site traffic.

These are huge, exceptionally valuable benefits.

Anyone running Facebook Ads should absolutely, without a doubt have the pixel installed.

In this post, we’re going to go over everything you need to know about the Facebook Pixel, including what you can do with it, how to install it, and tools that can make the process a little easier!

And if you want to take the next step, we’ll also give you an exclusive chance to learn How to master the Facebook Pixel like a pro for FREE!

9 Reasons Why You Need the Facebook Pixel

Simply put if you’re sending traffic to your website the Facebook pixel is the difference between success and failure.

The Facebook pixel gives you powerful audience building and tracking options plus a few more perks including:

1. Track the number of conversions e.g. newsletter signups or purchases, the cost per conversion (CPA) and the conversion rate (CVR).
2. Revenue reporting: most e-commerce carts can pass the actual order value back to Facebook. This allows you to measure return on ad spend (ROAS) which is often more important than the cost per sale.
3. Analyze your sales funnel. For example, at AdEspresso we might analyze Leads > Trials > Purchases as our customer journey. In e-commerce you would look at the number of products viewed and compare to the number of add to carts, the number of checkouts initiated and the number of purchases. If the conversion rate is lower than expected at any stage that’s where you can focus your efforts when refining the sales funnel.
4. Build website custom audiences (WCAs) of all website visitors for retargeting.
5. Create audiences of people that have taken the desired action (leads, purchases etc) to exclude from retargeting. This saves you money and stops leads and customers from getting annoyed by seeing ads asking them to take an action that they’ve already performed.
6. Create lookalike audiences in seconds, these are groups of people with very similar characteristics to the seed audience the pixel creates. These pixel based lookalikes will dynamically update over time so they will always be relevant when using them in cold traffic campaigns.
7. You can optimize for conversions. A recent AdEspresso $1,000 experiment showed that optimizing for link clicks cost 3.4 times more per conversion than when optimizing for conversions. Simply put the pixel allows you to get the same results for $1,000 that you’d get by spending $3,400 on ads when not using the pixel.
8. Dynamic product ads can be created, allowing you to retarget recent website visitors with the exact products they viewed.
9. The pixel is completely free!

via GIPHY

Keep in mind that the pixel can’t work retrospectively, it can only create audiences and track conversions going forward once it has been installed. Therefore even if you don’t need pixel tracking yet, install it as soon as possible.

The website custom audiences are valid for up to 180 days so if you install the pixel now it could still be helping your Facebook advertising six months down the line.

How to Create Your Facebook Pixel

Each pixel has its own unique 15 digit ID, which you’ll install on every page you want to track on your site.

There’s two way to generate your unique code: Through Ads manager and through Business Manager.

Method 1: Through the Ads Manager

Click on the drop-down menu in the top left corner once you’ve navigated to the Ads Manager, and click on “All Tools” at the very bottom of the options.

Then select “Pixels.”

This is what you’ll see when you land on the pixel page:

When you hit “Create a Pixel,” all you’ll have to do is name the pixel in order to create it.

Method 2: Through your Business Manager

Within Business Manager navigate to the pixel section on the left-hand menu and create a new pixel.

Just as with the ads manager option, give your pixel a name.

You can create up to 100 pixels, but only if you have Business Manager.

Finally, you’ll want to assign the pixel to certain ad accounts so that it can be used in your ad campaigns.

Once you’ve done either of these methods, you just have to decide how you want to install it.

Which brings us to our next section…

How to Install the Facebook Pixel

When you create your pixel and once it’s time to set it up, Facebook will automatically present you with several different ways to install your pixel.

For this guide, we’re going to show you:

• how to install the tracking pixel manually,
• the simpler way to do it with AdEspresso’s own Pixel Caffeine,
• and how to easily install the pixel on Shopify stores.

If you’ve found us because you’re actively searching for how to install the pixel, read through this post in its entirety before starting to add it to your website.

We’re also going to show you how to install specific events into the code, so wait to read that before clicking away and starting the installation process!

Traditional Manual Installation

Manual installation is the traditional and most common way to install Facebook’s tracking pixel. When you’re on the Pixel page in the Ads Manager, you’ll see the option to “Finish Setting Up Pixel” if it’s not installed yet. Click this.

When you see this, you’ll be shown three different options. Go ahead and choose “Install Manually”.

On the next screen, you’ll see an enormous box of text code in step 2.

That’s your pixel. Copy it.

You’ll install it into the header of every individual page on your site that you want to track.

When you click to your site get behind the scenes and, go to each page’s code.

You’ll then install the pixel in the header:

Installing the Facebook Pixel in Shopify

Have a Shopify store you want to install the tracking pixel on? This is actually pretty easy.

First, find your pixel ID.

This can be found on the main Pixel Page, under the pixel’s name.

Copy the pixel ID, and then head to your Shopify Store.

Once there, navigate to Preferences, located towards the very bottom of “Sales Channels”.

Once there, scroll down until you see “Facebook Pixel.”

All you have to do now is paste the pixel ID that you’ve already copied from Facebook right into this box:

Aaaaand you’re set!

How to Add Events to Your Facebook Pixel

After installing the Facebook pixel, you’ll want to add “events” to it in order to determine what you’re actually tracking.

You would, for example, place an extra snippet of code to the end of the pixel when someone adds an item to their cart.

The event options that you have available now include:

• Add to basket
• Add payment info
• Add to wishlist
• Complete registration
• Contact
• Customize product
• Donate
• Find location
• Initiate checkout
• Lead
• Purchase
• Schedule
• Search
• Start trial
• Submit application
• Subscribe
• View content

And Now, Become a Facebook Pixel Master

Did you know that there’s a range of tools to help you check that your pixels are set up correctly including Facebook Pixel Helper and the Pixel section in Business Manager?

Do you have advanced matching turned on for your pixel? It’s turned off by default so most advertisers aren’t using it… but you can activate it in under 60 seconds.

Advanced matching allows Facebook to take user-submitted data from your website (such as email addresses and phone numbers) to give more accurate matches and larger custom audiences for retargeting.

Did you know that anyone can grab your pixel ID and install it anywhere?

A few days ago we discovered the AdEspresso Facebook pixel had been installed on a website for people looking for “clubs, bars, sex” in Tokyo. That means we were retargeting people not interested in our product and wasting our money. A simple, quick audit of our Pixel fixed the problem.

This could be happening to your business too, right now. But do you know how to stop this?

With Facebook advertising starting to be around for a few years it’s important to audit your assets every so often.
Pixel auditing should be part of your routine Business Manager auditing. Every time I take on a new client I generally find old employees still with admin access, old pixels on their website and all sorts of junk that need tidying up.

For example, maybe you had your pixel on a client website and no longer have access to that website, as you can’t remove the pixel you can block it instead.
Especially when starting out businesses and particularly agencies don’t always follow best practice and so you might end up with pixels in the wrong places a few years down the line.

What else would you like to know about the Facebook Pixel?

Ask your question to our Facebook Ad expert during the How to Master the Facebook Pixel like a Pro webinar!

Our Head of Education, Paul Fairbrother, has covered in depth all the options available that help you set up, debug and then utilize the Facebook pixel in your marketing.

Are you a Pixel rookie? Click the image above and register now. Paul has simplified the whole installation/monitoring process so that you can be up and running in minutes!

If you already have your pixel installed, in the webinar we’ll be covering some powerful advanced strategies for you too. Simply click here (or on the image) and register.

Conclusion

Why did digital advertising spend overtake TV advertising in 2019? It’s largely down to pixels, including the Facebook pixel which can be used for:

• tracking how many leads, registrations, and sales you got from your ads
• knowing how much revenue those sales generated
• creating audiences for retargeting campaigns
• generating Lookalike audiences in seconds
• getting Facebook to optimize for conversions instead of just traffic or reach
• running Dynamic Product Ads

If you want to be able to accurately monitor your campaigns’ ROI and utilize website visitor retargeting (and you should absolutely want to do both), you don’t have much choice: you need to install the Facebook Pixel a must-use tool for all Facebook marketers.

At face value, the pixel looks complex, and Facebook doesn’t make using their pixel easy. But now you’re all set, with the info in this blog and the priceless tricks you’ll learn during our webinar How to master the Facebook Pixel like a pro.

What do you think? How much do you benefit from Facebook’s tracking pixel? Have you tried out Pixel Caffeine? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!