How to Use the Facebook Tracking Pixel to Increase Conversions

The Facebook Tracking Pixel is a tool you can use to track conversions and customer actions to build optimized ad campaigns that lead to better conversions. The tool comes in the form of a snippet of JavaScript code you can run through your site to track actions users take.

Although anyone with a website can use the Facebook Pixel, the tool is most effective when used by ecommerce businesses as it allows them to analyze their return on investment with regard to Facebook ads. This works by tracking whether or not customers click on products, add products to their carts, or actually purchase products. Businesses can even build custom audiences based on who’s doing what.

This means they can deliver different types of ads targeted toward the different groups of people they find in their results. This can lead to better conversions by sending one set of ads to interested customers and another set of ads to customers who have already made purchases.

Now that you know what it is, let’s see how we can use the Facebook Tracking Pixel to increase conversions on websites.

How to Create a Facebook Tracking Pixel

Although they require adding code to your site, Facebook Pixels are fairly straightforward to create. All you need to do is go to the Tools section in Ads Manager and create a Pixel.

Let’s get started.

How to Create a Facebook Pixel

Log into Facebook, and head to the Ads Manager section. Click Tools, and select Pixels. Facebook used to offer two types of pixels – a Conversion Pixel and a Custom Audience Pixel. The company has combined these pixels in recent months, which is why you’ll see the tabs “Facebook Pixel” and “Conversion Tracking Pixel (Old).”

You used to have to insert the code on every page you wanted to track with the old pixels. Now all you need to do is insert the code in your header or via the PixelYourSite plugin to track your entire site. This is meant to make things much simpler and more straightforward.

You can still use the old pixel, but it’ll be phased out by the end of the 2016 and is only there to help current users make the switch. So, it’s best to just ignore it at this time.

Anyway, moving on, click Create a Pixel. Name your Pixel, and create it. You can edit your Pixel’s name later on by clicking Action and selecting Edit Pixel. Head back to the Facebook Pixel home screen, and sit tight for a moment.

How to Add Pixel Code to WordPress

Look toward the right-hand side of the Facebook Pixel home screen. You should see details about your Pixel, including its ID. Copy this ID.

Install the PixelYourSite plugin, and activate it then go to the plugin’s settings page. Paste your Pixel’s ID in the Your Pixel ID box, and tick the Activate Plugin General Settings box. Click Save Settings once you’re done.

Click Actions while viewing the Facebook Pixel home screen, and select View Pixel Code. If you look below the code, you’ll find a table filled with various functions you can use to track additional events, such as tracking when the Add to Cart button is pressed on a page.

If your site is powered by WooCommerce, you can use this plugin to activate these functions for various events. Click the WooCommerce Setup tab while viewing the plugin’s settings page. Tick all of the boxes for the events you want to track, and click Save WooCommerce settings.

You can also use the PixelYourSite plugin to add these functions to specific pages. Let’s say we want to add the Add to Cart function to a specific product page but not all of them.

Select the On Post/Page Events tab while viewing the plugin’s settings. Enter the URL for the product page, and select the event you’d like to track, such as AddToCart. Adjust the product’s custom settings, such as its value and the name of its product page. Click Save Standard Event Setup Settings once you’re done.

You’ll notice there’s a textbox for each event. This is where you can add the code Facebook gives you. It’s fairly straightforward. All you need to do is go to Actions > View Pixel Code, and copy and paste the code into that text box. Copy and paste the code for the custom event you’d like to track, and paste it before the closing </script> tag.

How to Create a Custom Conversion

Custom conversions are what you’ll use to track activity happening on specific pages, such as the “Order Complete” success page your customers are taken to after they complete a purchase or even the “Thank You for Subscribing” success page you’ve set up for an email opt-in campaign.

Be careful about creating custom conversions. You can only create as many as 20 Custom Conversions at the time I’m writing this post, and they cannot be deleted. You also can’t edit Custom Conversions to make matters worse, so be mindful when creating them.

Click Create Conversion from your Pixel’s home screen, and select Track Custom Conversions. Let’s say we have a custom success page for one of our products with the URL slug /course-order-complete. Type that slug into the Rule box, and select Purchase as a category since we’re tracking completed purchases for our course.

Give your Custom Conversion a name, and enter the price of your product in the Conversion Value box. This will help you track your ROIs when you use this conversion in ad campaigns. Click Create once you’re done.

Now you can click Tools and select Custom Conversions to view the amount of traffic your course’s success page receives.

How to Create Custom Audiences

Let’s start off by creating an audience that tracks all of the visits our site has received in the last 30 days. Go to your Facebook Pixel’s home screen, and click Create Audience.

Leave the default option for Website Traffic selected, and enter your site’s domain. Type the number of days you’d like to track. The tool allows you to go up to 180 days. Give your audience a name, and click Create Audience. Custom Audiences have limited editing privileges, but you can delete them at least.

The other options for Website Traffic are where things get interesting. Let’s say you or your client has a website dedicated to fly fishing, and you have an ebook on how to fly fish in the state of Montana. You’d select People Who Visit Specific Web Pages as your option for Website Traffic and enter “montana” as a URL keyword.

This tracks anyone who visits a page on your site that contains the “montana” keyword in the URL. What this does is allow you to create ads specifically targeted toward those interested in fly fishing in Montana.

You can use the People Who Visit Specific Web Pages but Not Others option to track people who were interested enough in your product or opt-in incentive to fall on your landing page but did not complete a purchase.

Enter the full URL for the landing page of your product/email opt-in incentive in the Include URL box, and enter the full URL for your success page in the Exclude URL box. Now you have a separate audience for folks that need a little more convincing.

The final option is People Who Haven’t Visited in a Certain Amount of Time. These folks were interested in your site at one point but have stayed away for various reasons. This audience gives you the chance to create an ad campaign that renews past visitors’ interest in you.

How to Use Custom Conversions and Audiences to Create Ads

So far, we’ve created a Custom Conversion that tracks how many hits our success page receives. We also have a few different audiences based on the different behaviors of our site’s visitors. Now we can use these tools to create targeted ads and ads that give us far more metrics than typical Facebook ads.

Let’s start by creating an ad for our product. This can also be used with an email opt-in incentive. Go to your Facebook Pixel’s home screen, and click Create Ad. Make sure Increase Conversions on Your Website is selected, and enter your product/opt-in incentive’s landing page in the URL to Promote box.

Select the Custom Conversion you created for your product’s success page, and click Set Audience & Budget. Let’s say our product is a course on how to fly fish in Montana. We can select the Montana audience we created to deliver this ad specifically to those interested in fly fishing in Montana

This will, in theory, increase your conversions for this product by advertising it directly to those interested in its topic. Plus, since we added a Conversion Value, we’ll get to see a metric that compares how many people purchased the product vs how much we spent on our ad campaign.

The rest of the ad creation process is the same as any old Facebook ad.

How to Use Facebook Pixels to Track the Sales Process

The general sales process leads a customer through these pages: Landing Page > Sales Page > Success Page. A customer falls on your landing page via a Facebook ad, becomes intrigued enough to click through to your sales page and is convinced enough to make a purchase where they’ll land on your success page.

You can track this sales process with Facebook Pixels. Create Custom Conversions for your landing, sales, and success pages, and make sure you enter a Conversion Value for your success page. Tracking all of these pages allows you to see how many people make it from your landing page to your success page, giving you an idea of how well-designed your landing and sales pages are.

You should also create different audiences based on this sale process. Create an audience for folks who visited your landing page but did not visit your sales page, and create another audience for folks who visited your sales page but did not visit your success page. Create still another audience for folks who visited your landing page and create a final audience for folks who visited your success page.

This tracking process gives you enough data to run the following ads:

• Initial ad for the product using the Success Page Custom Conversion to track your ROI.
• Ad featuring an exclusive offer meant to convince folks who only went as far as your landing page.
• Ad featuring an even better offer for folks who went through your landing page to your success page but did not complete a purchase.
• Future ads for folks interested in your product. This uses the Landing Page and Success Page Custom Audiences. This helps you promote similar products.

Final Thoughts

This post merely touches on the basics of Facebook Tracking Pixels. However, they are quite powerful and can increase your conversions by completely changing the way you run ad campaigns.

Take the time to explore the different custom functions you can add to your Pixel Code to see which ones would be most useful for your site. Similar to the sales process, these custom functions help you see how many people are visiting your site vs how many people are adding your products to their carts vs how many people are completing purchases, giving you an idea of where your site stands in terms of sales optimization.

There’s a lot to learn when it comes to Facebook Pixels and Facebook Ads, so we hope this post at least showed you how powerful this tool can be in terms of increasing conversions.

How have you used the Facebook Pixel, or how do you plan on using it? Let us know in the comments!

Article thumbnail image by Anikei / shutterstock.com