You’ve probably heard of Facebook Pixel – the conversion tracking pixel to track off-site conversions of your Facebook campaigns. But why do you need it?
And is the setup process as complicated as it looks? Does it involve writing lines and lines of code? Do you need to hire a team of developers? No, no aaand… no!
This guide will explain why you should use Facebook conversion tracking, how to make it work, and most importantly – how to get started in 10 minutes!
And to add a cherry on top, we’ll introduce you to our new WordPress plugin, Pixel Caffeine, a “magic trick” that helps you to easily track conversions and create Custom Audiences.
Ready to get better Facebook ad results? Let’s roll!
What is Facebook Conversion Tracking?
Facebook Conversion Tracking helps advertisers to see the ROI of their Facebook campaigns by tracking the visitors of a website.
To set up Facebook conversion tracking, you’ll need the Facebook Pixel – a particular pixel that you set up and place on all key pages of your website. This way, Facebook will be able to monitor what actions a visitor takes on your website.
The main benefits of Facebook conversion tracking include:
1. Knowing your ad campaign results
With efficient tracking process set in place, you’ll know exactly when a Facebook campaign results in conversions and sales. In addition to tracking your ads’ click-through rate and cost-per-click, you can also keep your eye on Facebook ad metrics such as conversion rate and cost-per-conversion.
2. Better ad optimization
Facebook can optimize your ads to be delivered to people who are most likely to convert, leading to more conversions at lower costs. Using the Optimized-for-Conversions ad delivery method is Facebook’s suggested bidding method.
3. Custom Audiences
With custom conversions, you can track and optimize for more specific actions, and use this information to create Facebook Custom Audiences for remarketing campaigns. Did you know that Custom Audiences tend to return better results than Facebook Saved Audiences?
Let’s have a closer look at each of these three advantages and see how you can benefit from them!
How to track results with Facebook conversion tracking
The first and foremost reason why you need to install the Facebook Pixel on your website is accurate campaign tracking.
You won’t be able to monitor lead conversions and sales that resulted from your Facebook campaigns unless you have the Pixel set up — and while CTR and CPC are important metrics, it’s the final conversions you’re interested in.
To check your ad campaign’s conversions, log into the Facebook Ads Manager and select an ad campaign. In the Columns menu, you can choose between multiple ad reports that will show your ads’ performance.
If you’re interested in tracking specific ad metrics, you can customize the report’s columns as you wish.
If it’s website conversions you’re interested in, select the option “Website Conversions” from the left-side menu.
As you can see, there are many custom website conversions that you can track. Facebook has nine Standard Events that can be easily set up with just a small edit in the Facebook Pixel code.
Tracking website conversions is important for several reasons:
You’ll know what’s the real ROI of your ad campaigns
You can A/B test multiple ad elements and see which one results in most conversions
You can create remarketing audiences based on website conversions
How to use custom conversions for lower ad costs
This might come as a surprise, but your Facebook ad cost depends mainly on the bidding methods you use.
Here in AdEspresso, we ran an experiment with multiple Facebook bidding options and discovered that when optimizing the ad delivery for conversions, both the cost-per-click and cost-per-like (our ad goal) were the lowest.
This is also what Facebook recommends. When setting up a new ad campaign and choosing an ad delivery optimization method other than Conversions, Facebook will give you a warning:
If your goal is to get the maximum number of website conversions at the lowest cost, you’ll need to optimize campaigns for Conversions. To be able to do that, you’ve got to have the Facebook Pixel installed. Or, as you’ll soon learn, you can also do it by using the Pixel Caffeine WordPress plugin.
How to create Facebook Custom Audiences of website visitors?
No matter how awesome your ad design or compelling your ad copy – if it’s seen by the wrong audience, none of it matters.
With Facebook Custom Audiences, you can create new audiences of people who have visited your website, engaged with your app, or given you their email addresses.
If your goal is to retarget people who have visited your landing pages or been part of another marketing campaign, then select “Website Traffic” from the menu.
Next, you can choose between multiple options:
Target everyone who visited your domain
Target people who visited specific web pages
Target people who visited specific web pages but not others
Target people who haven’t visited your website for a certain amount of time
Other custom combinations
You can also exclude Custom Audiences from your ad campaigns for razor-sharp audience targeting.
Here are 5 Facebook remarketing campaign ideas that you can run with Facebook Custom Audiences:
1. Retarget all past website visitors
Create a Custom Audience of all your website visitors and target them with a Facebook offer that reminds them of your brand. It will keep your offer in the top of their mind, and once the time’s right, they’ll make a purchase.
For example, MailChimp’s Facebook ad could remind their past website visitors of all the newest awesome features:
2. Retarget people who visited specific landing pages
Not all landing page visitors convert on their first visit to your website. It would make sense to send them additional messages and offers via a remarketing campaign. Moreover, these people are interested in in a particular product or use case, so you’ll know which ads and messaged to use.
For example, Scoro’s remarketing ad targeted people who had previously visited their Project Management Software landing page:
3. Share your blog articles with past readers
People who have read your blog posts in the past are much more likely to engage with your Facebook Page posts. When boosting a blog post on Facebook, create a Custom Audience of your current readers.
For example, Ahrefs could be sharing their blog articles with people who have already visited their blog:
4. Retarget past purchasers
According to research by Adobe, in the US, 41% of overall revenue comes from repeat customers. Once somebody has bought from your brand, they are much more likely to buy again. Set up a custom conversion and create a Facebook Custom based on past purchase behavior.
Another good idea is to upsell. For example, if someone bought a Pokemon toy, you could upsell those customers on other merchandise like Target did:
5. Retarget free trial and freemium users
If you’re in the software business, you’ll often have to nurture trial and freemium users to become paying customers. Create a Custom Audience of all your free trial users and exclude the ones who have already converted to paying customers. It’s all possible with Facebook conversion tracking.
For example, promote helpful guides or webinars with your product, so that people can understand its benefits more easily. Here’s how Litmus has done it:
Now that you’re familiar with all the brilliant opportunities that Facebook conversion tracking presents, let’s see how you can get started and use it on your WordPress site.
How to get started with the Facebook Pixel?
Here’s a question we hear a lot: How can I install the Facebook Pixel to my website?
In fact, we’ve seen so many marketers struggle with this task that we created Pixel Caffeine – a WordPress plugin that makes the installation process 10x easier.
With Pixel Caffeine, you can get the Facebook pixel site-wide without typing a line of code. That’s awesome, right?
Did we mention it’s a free tool?
You can install the Facebook Pixel to your WordPress site in a few clicks. After that’s done, you can start creating Facebook Custom Audiences to create highly targeted Facebook ad campaigns.
Moreover, you can integrate Pixel Caffeine with Facebook Dynamic Ads and WooCommerce to automatically track visitors based on what they viewed on your website (product name, product category and product tags). Imagine all the dynamic retargeting options on Facebook and Instagram!
How to install the Pixel Caffeine plugin?
Getting started with Pixel Caffeine takes only a few minutes.
Log it to your WordPress account and select “Plugins” from the admin panel. Click on “Add New.”
Search for “Pixel Caffeine” and click “Install.”
After that, activate the plugin, connect your Facebook account, enable tracking options and you’re ready to go.
How to use the Pixel Caffeine plugin?
The most important reason to install Pixel Caffeine is the super fast Custom Audience creating process.
Simply go to your Pixel Caffeine plugin, and set up new Facebook Custom Audiences based on website visitors’ actions on your site.
You can also use the Pixel to track custom conversions based on clicks, pages visits or interaction with CSS Selectors to monitor your Facebook ad campaigns’ performance.
This is the easiest way to create super advanced Custom Audiences directly within WordPress.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better… You can also pass to Facebook advanced events and data like tags, categories and custom fields of the post being visited.
All the Custom Audiences, custom conversions, and tags you create with Pixel Caffeine plugin will be automatically synced with your Facebook advertising account.
And Now Go Get Started!
Now that you’ve mastered the science of Facebook Custom Audiences and you know the hottest Facebook ads secret (AKA Pixel Caffeine) go ahead and create some new awesome marketing campaigns!
After you’ve taken Pixel Caffeine for a test drive, let us know what you think in the Comments below!