One things I’ve said over and over is if you can’t track what’s working with your marketing you should not be spending money on that traffic source.
It’s very common for me to see small businesses have some kind of tracking setup inside AdWords but very often on Facebook I see zero tracking setup.
I also see most small business owners making what I believe to be major mistakes with their marketing plans for Facebook or lack of a plan.
In this week’s hangout we will not be covering the major mistakes people make on Facebook but rather how to setup tracking as it’s the first step to marketing successfully on Facebook.
In the next week or so I’ll be going more into some of the pitfalls with Facebook marketing.
Before I begin the guide let me talk about why Facebook is so powerful. The real advantage to Facebook over many other traffic sources is the platforms ability to target demographics and interests. While you may not be able to find out user intent like you can with AdWords Search you are able to better target people who like very specific things. I can target Males for instance between 54-64 who are fans of metal detectors or who have interest in metal detecting. This is REALLY powerful stuff as I can customize my message and offer and speak directly to the audience I want to target.
For Small businesses this can be a big win when done right. With local businesses who have clearly defined the audience they want to go after, you can build up your reputation and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. It’s a great way to get known and have people remember you if you are consistent about delivering valuable content and you keep re-targeting the same audience.
Re-marketing can be very powerful as well and having the ability to re-market to those who have visited your website only ads to the value of Facebook.
This guide will cover Facebook and what is currently going on with the new Facebook pixel.
This Guide Will Cover
- Old Facebook Pixel
- New Facebook Pixel
- Events
- Custom Audiences
- Business Manager Account
Like with Google Tags, Facebook just has 1 pixel that can do just about everything for you. The move to the new format is something Google has been doing for a while as well as Bing ads. The process and flow is almost identical in many ways.
The Old Facebook System
You formerly had 2 separate pixels that you used.
- Conversion Pixel (Dozens of different pixels for every offer you had which means a lot of pixel codes )
- Audience Pixel ( Your custom audience )
The New Facebook System
- One Pixel to Rule them all
This is called a universal pixel.
So with this 1 pixel you are tracking Conversions and can create custom audiences. It’s just one piece of code placed on all your sites without the need for dozens of different pixel codes and changes.
Inside this pixel you are able to currently track 9 Standard Events. I’ll get to these in a bit.
If you have ever used Google Tags, this is the same thing that Google Tags does.
Setting Up Your Pixel
Go into Ads Manager inside Facebook and Select Tools then Pixels from the menu.
Ads Manager https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager/accounts/
Now select the Create a Pixel Button
Now you will be asked to name your Facebook Pixel then select CREATE PIXEL
On the next screen you will be given your new Universal Pixel ID
Write this number down and save it.
Select Install Pixel to view your pixel code. This will look something like the below
<!– Facebook Pixel Code –>
<script>
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1695204957471755’);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);</script>
<noscript><img height=”1″ width=”1″ style=”display:none”
src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1695204957471755&ev=PageView&noscript=1″
/></noscript>
<!– End Facebook Pixel Code –>
As mentioned before. You will use the same pixel on EVERY page that you want to track an event on.
FaceBook Events
Facebook has 9 events you can currently track using the universal pixel. See https://www.facebook.com/business/help/402791146561655 . I do expect this to change over time and new events added in.
| Website action | Description | Standard event code |
| View content | Track key page views (ex: product page, landing page, article) | fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’); |
| Search | Track searches on your website (ex: product searches) | fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’); |
| Add to cart | Track when items are added to a shopping cart (ex: click, landing page on Add to Cart button) | fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’); |
| Add to wishlist | Track when items are added to a wishlist (ex: click, landing page on Add to Wishlist button) | fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToWishlist’); |
| Initiate checkout | Track when people enter the checkout flow (ex: click, landing page on checkout button) | fbq(‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’); |
| Add payment info | Track when payment information is added in the checkout flow (ex: click, landing page on billing info) | fbq(‘track’, ‘AddPaymentInfo’); |
| Make purchase | Track purchases or checkout flow completions (ex: Landing on “Thank You” or confirmation page) | fbq(‘track’, ‘Purchase’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’}); |
| Lead | Track when someone expresses interest in your offering (ex: form submission, sign up for trial, landing on pricing page) | fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’); |
| Complete registration | Track when a registration form is completed (ex: complete subscription, sign up for a service) | fbq(‘track’, ‘CompleteRegistration’); |
Many of these kinds of events can be duplicates of each other. For instance a Lead could technically also be “complete registration”. Don’t get too caught up on the terminology and differences.
To Create an Event you go to the Facebook Pixel section and then click the Create Conversion from the menu tab.
You have two Options
- Track Conversion With Standard Events as shown above
- Track Custom Conversions
Option 1 – Track Conversion With Standard Events
To setup tracking we modify part of the pixel to include the “Standard Event Code” for that specific page. This is shown on the right hand side of the above.
In our example code above for our pixel you can go to the middle section where we see:
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1695204957471755’);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
</script>
The part that interests us is ” fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);” This is the basic Standard default event code. We can add to this code to include whatever it is we want tracked on that page.
When someone visits a page we want to track we would add in
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
so our code would look like
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
With “fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);” in place we can now track people who have viewed our content.
We can continue to add and take away from this as needed. Let’s say the person viewed the content page and now went to the checkout page. Our code may now look like
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’);
Now they checked out and on the confirmation page I would have
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Purchase’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’});
With the value being injected and manually or dynamically inserted. You will notice I removed the “ViewContent” and “initiateChecckout” event codes as they were already recorded and really don’t play a role.
For your website you now simply adjust the code as needed on your website to track the variable you want to track.
Option 2 – Track Custom Conversions
With this option you do not need to modify the FB pixel code in anyway. It’s automatic. This is the same way AdWords does their tracking conversions. It’s a great way to put one code on your site and then setup your funnels and conversions. The downside is you are currently limited to 20 custom conversion pixels and you are currently unable to delete these custom conversions. I personally believe this will change and you will be able to ad more and delete the ones you no longer use but I have no knowledge of Facebook working on this. It just seems like common sense that they are working to expand your options here as they are limited.
We can see from the image above that I just need to select 2 things. 1 would be the RULE. My options here are URL Contains or URL Equals. URL Equals means it must be that exact url.
In most cases you will be using URL contains. With this option you can just put in part of the urls page to have it counted as that kind of event.
If I was pushing ads for a car mechanic then I could put in the brakes landing page in this section. I would select URL Contains and put in part of the brake repair url. With the code in place then someone who visits this page will be counted into my view content as a conversion.
The category option allows me to select any of the 9 Events currently available inside Facebook. For each event I want to track I would need to create another custom pixel. However I still only need to use the universal pixel code on my website and do not have to make any changes to that code. This makes things really easy for people who are not tech savvy as they can just place their code once on their website in the footer or header and they don’t have to touch any more code.
Here are the 9 events again that you can track
| View content | Track key page views (ex: product page, landing page, article) |
| Search | Track searches on your website (ex: product searches) |
| Add to cart | Track when items are added to a shopping cart (ex: click, landing page on Add to Cart button) |
| Add to wishlist | Track when items are added to a wishlist (ex: click, landing page on Add to Wishlist button) |
| Initiate checkout | Track when people enter the checkout flow (ex: click, landing page on checkout button) |
| Add payment info | Track when payment information is added in the checkout flow (ex: click, landing page on billing info) |
| Make purchase | Track purchases or checkout flow completions (ex: Landing on “Thank You” or confirmation page) |
| Lead | Track when someone expresses interest in your offering (ex: form submission, sign up for trial, landing on pricing page) |
| Complete registration | Track when a registration form is completed (ex: complete subscription, sign up for a service) |
It’s worth mentioning again that you can only have 20 of these custom events so you need to plan things out. I have a kind of work around at the bottom that allows you to easily re-use the same custom conversion pixel over and over.
Create Custom Audiences
Being Able to create an audience can be very powerful. You can target people who
- Visit Your Website
- Visit a Specific Web Page
- Visit Specific Pages But not Others
- People Who haven’t Visited in a Certain Amount of Time
This really isn’t all that different from creating a Event Conversion with using “View Content”. This works very similar to AdWords and if you are using AdWords to drive traffic to your website you can also include the Facebook pixel on your page as well to re-market to those same people on Facebook.
Another major benefit is being able to re-target those who have already clicked your facebook ads.
I’ll talk more about the major benefits and how best to use these custom audiences in the next few hangouts so be sure to subscribe to learn how I recommend putting this information to use.
Back on track to creating custom audiences on Facebook.
To do this go to the Facebook Pixel Tab and select Create Audience from the Menu.
If I wanted to track people who visit my site marketingplaybook.co I would select Visit a Specific Web page and then put in marketingplaybook.co as the URL. Then name the audience and as long as my pixel code was on my website everyone who visits would be added to this custom audience.
Now with the pixel in place I can remarket to my website visitors for 30 days. The max duration currently is 180 days.
Lookalike Audiences
It’s important to quickly talk about lookalike audiences. This is one of the main tools I use to really go after new leads based upon those who have converted on my website or those who seem highly interested in my content. You can create a lookalike audience based on any EVENT or any custom audience you create. These are people who Facebook thinks closely match those already on your list. They will search through thousands of different data points and see what people have in common and then go out and find others who have those common data points. This works similar to have SimilarToo Audiences work on GDN.
In the past Facebook allowed you to create lookalike audiences that where on your email ist, phone number list, facebook user id list. Now you can create look alike audiences based upon website visitors, conversion pixel and facebook fans.
For me personally I LOVE to target lookalike audiences based upon conversions. If I am building an opt-in list I will track all those who convert and once I get over 100 conversions I can create a lookalike audience based on the top 1% of people in my location. This will put my offer in front of highly interested people.
I also create lookalike audiences based upon website visitors but for many people this option varies. Those who visit your website may not be highly targeted. A better way to do this is just create a lookalike audience based upon those who have clicked an ad to get to your website. With this method you have a little more control of people who are going on the list and they should be a more engaged audience.
Retargeting AKA Remarketing
With Your Custom Audience(s) setup and in place you can now start to remarket to those who visited specific pages of your website or those who performed specific actions on your website.
with Facebook you can do things now like Dynamic Product Ads which is remarketing to people who have visited specific product pages or categories and have Facebook automatically retarget those people and send them back to the product page when they click the ad. I won’t go in-depth on this as Jon Loomer has a great guide covering this at – http://www.jonloomer.com/2015/02/23/facebook-dynamic-product-ads/
The biggest advantage here is being able to get back in front of those people who have already visited your website either organically or from a Facebook ad or AdWords ad.
In next weeks hangout I will cover more in-depth examples or how small businesses can take full advantage of Facebook and talk more about remarketing
Create a Business Manager Account
Creating a business manager account is easy and ads a layer of segmentation to your campaigns. You can for instance create multiple new accounts inside the Business Manager if you want to run many Tee-spring ads and separate each account out by the niche. This is a nice and easy way to do things.
This also allows you to create more custom audiences as you are limited to how many custom audiences you can currently create. With this method you could have all your nurses campaigns inside 1 account and use the exact same custom audience for all of them.
Another benefit is being able to add employees or outsourcing some work and not giving people full access to all your accounts. You can limit what access they have to different accounts.
Step 1. Go to https://business.facebook.com/ and select the Create Account Button. You must already be logged in via a personal account.
Step 2. Choose Your business Name.
Step 3. Enter in your details such as your e-mail address and name.
To setup new accounts select business Manager and then click the green button that says “add New” then select Account”
I do not see any documentation on the number of accounts a Business Manager can create. I’m sure with Facebook that there is a limit somewhere in place currently.
Extra Thoughts
Because of the limit on the amount of Custom Conversions you can have it’s not a bad idea to kind of think out how you can reuse certain elements if you are not using events.. For instance if I was re-marketing to people who clicked my Facebook link I’d probably use a similar phrase inside my URL.
An example of this would be if I was a mechanic and sending people to my oil change page. I could technically use that same audience to target other similar services on my other pages. If I were to do this then all the pages I wanted to place this custom conversion pixel on should have a section of the url that is the same.
Such As
www.marketingplaybook.co/oil-change-1956
www.marketingplaybook.co/ac-charge-1956
www.marketingplaybook.co/brake-inspection-1956
In the above urls I have added in “1956” This is a unique name that I’m using on the url for these pages and when I create my custom pixel I can use this to fire the custom audience pixel by including it in the section “Urls Contains” when setting up the custom acquiescence pixel.
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