Installing your Facebook Pixel on your site is a fundamental step to take if you are (or not yet) advertising on Facebook! Concretely, the Facebook Pixel is a small piece of code that, installed on all your pages on your site, will allow you to enjoy 100% of the power of Facebook advertising.
We’re going to go through the Facebook Pixel at length in this article! Today, I will explain:
- What is the Facebook Pixel and when to add it to your website
- How to install your Pixel on your site and verify that it works well
- How to check your Facebook Pixel with your domain name (essential to make conversion campaigns) and choose your 8 priority events due to Apple’s iOS 14
- How to create your similar audiences and retargeting audiences with the Facebook Pixel
- How to launch your conversion campaigns once your domain is verified
1. What is the Facebook Pixel and when to install it on your website
Imagine that on your way to work, during your subway ride, you take out your phone and decide to surf the Internet to find your next health ally.
You browse the site of several brands without buying.
In the afternoon, while you are at the office, you decide to take a short break of 5 minutes to go for a coffee, not to mention your phone.
By opening your Facebook news feed… surprise.. you come face to face with an advertisement from one of the brands you have viewed.
How is it done? Well, they used the Facebook Pixel to retarget you.
The Facebook Pixel will allow you to:
- collect your conversion statistics (I bet you’d like to know if someone is buying one of your products through the advertising you do)
- use similar audiences— that is, audiences based on your Pixel. For example, you might choose to use a people audience similar to users who have visited your site in the last 180 days.
- use retargeting audiences,such as people who have interacted with your business Facebook or Instagram account, or people who have visited your website.
- use dynamic advertising. These are ads based on your product catalog on Facebook. Facebook will offer in a personalized way, your products most adapted to each of its users.
When should you install your Facebook Pixel? The answer is rather simple… yesterday.
Whether or not you’re already advertising, I encourage you to install your Facebook Pixel as soon as possible.
What for? If you are already advertising, you will have understood that you do not benefit from all the possibilities offered by Facebook Ads.
If you don’t do ads yet,installing your Pixel quickly will allow you to collect data, which is desirable and will allow you not to start from 0 when you launch your first campaigns.
Imagine that you have a traffic of 100 people a day on your site.
If you install your Pixel on the same day you launch your campaigns, your retargeting audience will only consist of 100 people.
Whereas if you had planned the coup and installed it already 15 days ago when you finished reading this article, you already have 1500 people interested in your products to retarget.
2. How to install your Pixel on your site and verify that it works well
If you’re using an integration partner like Shopify, WordPress, and more, setting up your Facebook Pixel can be relatively simple and don’t require any coding expertise.
To install your Pixel, you will have to go to your Business Manager and to “Data Sources”.
In this tab, you will find all the Pixels you have created.
To create your first Pixel and install it on your site, you will have to click on “Connect a data source” (1), select “Web” (2) and then click on “Connect” (3).
Make sure you select “Facebook Pixel” (4), choose the name of your Pixel and enter the name of your domain.
Finally, choose your integration partner(WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.) (5) where your online store is set up and then follow your partner’s procedure.
Once your Pixel is installed… first of all, congratulations! You will see, you will not have wasted your time.
It’s great to have installed your Pixel on your site, now, before launching your campaigns, you will have to make sure that it works well!
To verify that your Pixel is working, there are two methods that I advise you to follow, one after the other.
Using the Meta Pixel Helper
This is a Chrome extension that allows you to quickly see if a Pixel is installed on your site. You can click here to install it.
Using the Meta Pixel Helper, you will be able to verify a click that your Pixel is installed.
Use your Business Manager event testing
The Facebook Pixel Helper will help you quickly see if your Pixel is installed, but it won’t tell you if it’s “well” installed.
Having an active Pixel is good. Having a Pixel that tracks all your events correctly (purchase, addition to cart, etc.), it’s better!
In your “Data Sources”tab, you will be able to click on “Test Events” and enter the URL of your website.
You can then test all the pages on your site and make sure that the Pixel enables the right tracking events.
3. How to check your Facebook Pixel with your domain name (essential to make sales or lead gen campaigns) and choose your 8 priority events due to Apple’s iOS 14
If you want to perform conversion campaigns, such as campaigns to sell, make cart additions, or collect leads, you’re forced to check your Pixel with your domain name.
This will allow Facebook to validate that this is indeed your site on which your Pixel is installed.
Even if you don’t do conversion campaigns, I recommend that you do so for two reasons:
- You should definitely verify your domain to set up your 8 priority conversion events following the launch of iOS 14
- This is one way to protect your data and pixel… because yes, your Facebook Pixel requires public domain and its ID is visible to anyone on the Internet. In this way, you avoid your Pixel being used by “hackers” of the web.
To check your Pixel, go to your Business Manager and the “Enterprise Settings” section (1).You will see in the tabs located on the left, the “Brand Safety”tab.
Click on it and then click on “Domains” (2).Your domain name will appear.
If not, add it via the top box and click “Add” (3).
Facebook will then give you a meta-beacon to insert on your site to allow it to check your domain.
Take note that there are 3 ways to do it, choose one (4) and follow the explanations of Facebook.
Once you’ve verified your Facebook Pixel with your domain, you’ll need to set up your 8 priority events.
Since 2021 and the launch of Apple’s Transparency Tracking App, only one event can be attributed to an Iphone user who does not wish to be tracked down on the web.
So you need to rank the events that are most important to you.
If you are an e-commerce, for example, we can assume that the number one priority will be to track down purchases, then additions to the cart, etc.
To categorize your events, go back to Business Manager, and then go to “Data Sources” (1). Then select your “Pixel” (2),then go to “Overview” (3) and “Aggregated Event Measurement Tool” (4). You will see a button for “Configure web events” (5).
Click on it, then click on “Manage events” (6) in the new page that appears.
Then you will be able to view the events with the highest priority (7) in your BM. You can configure up to eight (8). Don’t forget to validate (9) the ranking of your conversion events.
Beware, once done, you will not be able to change the configuration of your conversion events for 72 hours.
4. How to create your similar audiences and retargeting audiences with the Facebook Pixel
If you’ve gone to such great trouble installing your pixel, it’s good to use it to the fullest of its capabilities!
Installing your pixel will be used to create two types of new audiences.
Your retargeting audiences
Essential to any good strategy on Facebook, thanks to the Facebook Pixel you will be able to create your retargeting audiences such as, for example:
- Users who have been on your website in the last 30 days
- Users who have made one or more additions to the cart in the last 7 days
- Users who have made a purchase on your site in the last 6 months
To create your retargeting audiences, you must go to your Business Manager and the “Audiences”tab.
Let’s take the example that you want to retarget users who have been on your site in the last 30 days.
To do this, click on the button “Create an audience” (1), “Website” (2) then “Next” (3).
Select your active “Pixel” (4), the one installed on your site. Be careful to select the right one if you have more than one.
In the events, select “All website visitors” (5) and then enter the number of days, in this case for us: 30 (6).
Then enter the name of your audience, this is what you will see when you want to use the audience in your campaigns.
I therefore advise you to be simple and methodical in order to have easily identifiable audience names, for example: “Site 30j” (7). All you have to do is click on “Create an audience” (8).
Congratulations, you’ve just created your first hot audience (an audience that knows your brand and has been interacting with your content recently)!
Your similar audiences (Lookalike)
Similar audiences are audiences that will look like the data source that you’ll take to create it orthem.
Concretely, you could for example create an audience similar to internet users who have been on your website in the last 180 days.
How is that possible? Thanks to its huge database and your Facebook Pixel that tracks users on your site, Facebook records this data and can, following its analysis of your source used to create a similar audience, target the people who most resemble them (in terms of interests, etc.).
This is a very powerful tool! Here are some similar audience ideas:
- Similar hearing to people who bought a product in the last 90 days
- Similar audience to people who have visited your site in the last 30 days
- Audience similar to people who have interacted with your Facebook page in the last 365 days.
There are two ways to create similar audiences,taking your pixel or a custom audience as data sources.
To create a similar audience, it’s more or less the same process that you’ve already done for your retargeting audiences.
Go back to your Business Manager and in the “Audiences”tab.
To create your similar audience, click on “Create an audience” (1), then on “Similar audience” (2).
Make sure you have the right Pixel selected (3), the one installed on your site.
Choose an event that Facebook will base itself on for your similar audience. For example, you might choose to ask Facebook to take your customers (4) who spent the most on your website as the basis for your similar audience.
Next, you’ll need to choose the size of your audience. By selecting 1% (5), Facebook will target only the 1% of the population that have similarities to your buyers. 2% = 2% of the population and so on. All you have to do is create your audience (6).
You’ll find your audience in the recorded audiences when you launch your campaigns.
5. How to launch your sales or lead gen campaigns once your domain is verified
Have you installed your Pixel, verified your domain with Facebook, and created your retargeting audiences and the like? So you’re ready to launch your sales or lead gen campaigns.
As a reminder, the conversion goal is the last level of goal types with Facebook Ads.
Concretely, you ask Facebook to go and convert some of these users to your cause.
If you are an e-commerce, a dropshipper or even an infopreneur, this will most of the time be your primary objective with advertising.
To launch your conversion campaigns, you will have to go to your ad manager and then click on the “Create” button.
Next, select the “Sales” or “Leads” goal (1).
First step done, in your ad set (your audience), you’ll need to select the conversion event you want to track.
Most of the time, it will be the “Sales” event (2).
At the very bottom of your ad set, don’t forget to set your attribution setting to 7 days click and a day seen (3) to give you the best chance of harvesting data on your ads.
Finally, at the level of your advertising (your creative), Facebook will ask you to select your domain name (4) to track events on your website.
Well done, you’ve just launched your conversion campaign!
The Facebook Pixel: your best ally for your ads
If you’ve gone through the entire article, you now know that installing your Facebook Pixel is the first thing you should do when you go into Facebook advertising.
See the Facebook Pixel as your Booster Pack (analog to video games), it will unlock all the remaining levels. It only remains for me to tell you…
It’s up to you!