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Matthew DiRoberto, December 5 2018

The top 5 reasons you should set up a Facebook pixel

Its interesting to me that people think they are advertising on Facebook and that their agency is doing a great job of it but they haven't even set up a Facebook pixel on their website (you can check by downloading a chrome extension called facebook pixel helper).  IF YOU WANT TO GET THE MOST OUT OF DIGITAL ADVERTISING, YOU NEED TO SET UP YOUR PIXEL PROPERLY.  Sorry for the rant but I'm trying to illustrate the importance of it.  There are plenty of places that will tell you how to set up your pixel etc so I won't bore you with those details.  What I'd like to do is give you my top 5 reasons why you should set up a Facebook pixel.   

1.)  Retargeting on Facebook -  There are plenty of ways to use Facebook as a marketer.  If you have a Facebook page you can post a video, picture or a blog.  If you post without paying to promote it you will only have a small percentage of people that actually see it, kind of useless since Facebook changed the rules a while back.  Today having a large Facebook audience means something very different than it did 5 years ago.  Today in my opinion it offers credibility and that's about it.  Before, it was credibility and a very powerful free marketing medium as when you posted something pretty much everyone who followed the page saw it, or at least it felt like it.  Now you have to pay for reaching any type of worthwhile audience on Facebook.  But not all is lost, in my mind it is one of the most powerful and cheapest ways to advertise today and you should be using it.  But don't use it without the pixel set up properly and firing because if you have it set up you can RETARGET!  What does that mean?  It means that anyone who comes to your website and then goes to Facebook can be served up an ad from you on the Facebook platform.  This is very powerful because you can target people with additional messaging after they have already shown interest by visiting your website or viewing your video or any other event that you create.  Some examples of types of creative that you might want to use can vary but you need to think of it as a relationship.  Think about Facebook as how you would like to date someone.  I'll describe in terms of what Facebook is to the advertiser.  It is analogous to you going to your favorite bar in the city.  Hear me out.  The Bar =Facebook.  People that go to the Bar/Facebook are not necessarily looking for anything in particular.  They are just going there to see friends, chat and hangout.  But all of a sudden you're hanging out and someone/content catches your eye.  You decide to take a longer look at it.  This is like the hot girl/guy walking by or a picture or video that has you slightly interested.  This first contact with the person needs to be informational.  Just like the first time you serve up an ad on Facebook.  If you try to move too fast with the person at the bar, like asking them to date before you even talk, you will probably not succeed.  If you show an ad to cold traffic on Facebook and try to convert them into a sale the first time seeing the ad, you will probably not have success.  Capiche?  Facebook is a passive medium for advertisers.  People don't go there to buy socks.  But show them a video about comfy socks and they start to change their mind.  You can follow these folks strategically through retargeting.  Serve them up 1,2,3 ads about the different features of socks, why people love them etc and you can move them further down the funnel to create a sale.

2.)  Custom Audiences-  This is where the rubber meets the road.  I love custom audiences.  There are so many roads to go down with custom audiences.  If you have an email database this is a great place to start.  You can take that email database and upload it to facebook to create a custom audience off of that.  Once it is loaded you can create a look alike audience based off of all your past customers.  That means that Facebook will analyze the traits of the people on your list and then find more people like that.  Brilliant!  and it works.   

3.)  Analytics-  It was only a matter of time before you saw an analytics dashboard from Facebook.  This in my mind has been created to directly compete with Google Analytics and thats a good thing.  It certainly is not as robust as Google Analytics but I imagine that new features will constantly be rolling out.  Also it gives you something to compare the numbers you are getting through Google Analytics vs. Facebook Analytics.  Below is a screen shot of some of the features.

4.)  Conversions-  This is one of the most important features as I see it because what are we spending all this time and money on if we are not getting our target customer to convert on what we want them to convert on.  With conversions you can track really whatever you would like too.  Typically you want to know if your ads are working.  If set up properly you can tell what the return on ad spend is for everything that you are doing from Facebook.   To do this you would go into your ads manager and pick the columns you want to see.  Here are some columns I use when trying to track my return on investment for myself and clients.  Look at the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)on this one ad.  Almost a 9:1 return on my investment.  This is why you want to track conversions.

5.)  Who cares about interests-  Recently Facebook deleted thousands of interests in the advertising platform and everyone was up in arms.  I say WHO CARES!  Why?  Because whats better than categories of interest?  Actually, interested people are.  What does this mean?  When you run ads in the ads manager you have the option to target consumers based on demographics, interests  and behaviors under detailed targeting.  See the picture below

With custom audiences that you've created you are able to hone in on people that are showing interest based off of prior actions like purchases the year before (upload your database), watching your videos 50% or more,  and adding to cart but never buying plus much more.  Targeting those people rather than someone who Facebook says is interested in socks is a much more targeted consumer for you.  You can only do that if the pixel is set up.

There a plenty of reasons to use the Facebook Pixel.  Try installing it and leveraging it's power.  Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at matt@getimmersive.com  Thank you


Written by

Matthew DiRoberto

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