A Facebook Pixel is a small snippet of code installed on a website, with the purpose to match website visitors with Facebook users. This allows businesses to utilize Facebook advertising to laser target specific audiences to promote its product or service.
So How Does This Work?
With the Facebook pixel installed on your website, you are able to rely on more than just basic demographic audiences for your Facebook advertising. The pixel allows you to build custom audiences that have visited a specific page on a site, added a product to an online cart, or took a specific action you want to track.
Why Would I Want to Do This?
Let’s say you are a dentist looking for new leads. You try out Facebook advertising and send an ad out to a basic demographic audience such as women in your city between the ages of 18-35. This is a pretty broad audience, and you have no idea if the people seeing your ad are in the market for a new dentist. However, you get some clicks to your website but no one contacts you.
Now let’s say you have a Facebook pixel, and you build an audience of people who have visited your website already. They already know who you are, which is a great start. They maybe just hadn’t seen any urgency yet to take action to book a consultation.
You now publish a Facebook ad that targets this new custom audience, and your ad contains a special offer for new patients–let’s say a free teeth whitening with a booked consultation. This ad contains a lead form to inquire about the special offer.
BOOM! You have given the right audience the right offer, and you are far more likely to obtain new leads this way.
Warming Up Leads Even Further
The above example is a simple retargeting tactic that addresses a warm audience, but it won’t appeal to everyone. Facebook advertising is robust, and offers a large variety of ad types, targeting options, and methods of communication.
Using a Facebook Pixel, you have the power to create a variety of custom audiences, essentially taking users on a journey to learn more about your business. This allows you to also get to know your audience better and learn what offers work for them and which ones don’t. Imagine being able to know your clients that well before they even buy from you.
Facebook offers a variety of ad types, as seen in the diagram below (taken from Facebook Ads Manager):
In each type of ad, audiences are targeted in a different way. In all cases, Facebook’s powerful algorithm determines which users should be delivered the ad based on the objective you select. For example, in Brand Awareness, Facebook will match your ad to the users that are most likely to be interested in your business based on their past activity.
If you choose Reach, your ad will be fed to as many people as possible to maximize your reach.
Cost Effective Marketing Strategy
Facebook advertising is still very affordable, and is a very cost efficient manner to reach your audience. For businesses just starting out, setting aside a monthly Facebook ad budget is a valuable marketing investment and offers great ROI along with a sales strategy.
Video Ad Case Study
As an example, some of you may know I am a painter as well as a marketer. I recently ran a video ad using a $1 a day ad spend for my custom commissioned art. I targeted a specific audience of interior designers and new home builders (for show home art).
My results over a one-month period are shown below:
With a total amount spent of nearly $37 (for the whole month) I earned nearly 800 views. Since this was an awareness ad, I didn’t expect any direct sales from this ad.
My next step is to build a custom audience of all the people who have watched this video. I will then deliver an ad to that audience that could A) contain a special offer to solicit direct sales, or B) if I feel I want to warm up this audience even more before asking for a sale, I will offer a free eBook download on how to choose art for your home. If I choose B, I expect to obtain fresh leads from the download.
From these leads I generate, I can now build yet another custom audience on both Facebook as well as an email drip campaign to obtain sales inquiries.
Conclusion
As you can see, the idea is to warm people to your business, ultimately building a relationship in which they will invest in your product or service, and/or refer your business to others. This manner of advertising is both cost effective and a great addition to any existing marketing strategy your business may have in place.
Questions?
I’m happy to answer any questions about Facebook advertising at no charge. Give me a shout today!
