the complete guide to facebook ads pixels cheat sheet€¦ · make sure you've added the...

RickMulready.com Updated March 2016

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TOFACEBOOK ADS PIXELS CHEAT SHEET

1Copyright 2016, rickmulready.com

The Facebook pixel is your base pixel code and it is used for 3 main functions:

1. Building Custom Audiences from your website for re-marketing. 2. Optimizing ads for conversions. 3. Tracking conversions and attributing them back to your ads.

You get ONE Facebook pixel per Facebook account. The pixel only needs to be placed once in your website’s template before the closing head tag as this will track

ALL the pages in your website.

WordPress theme plugins that are helpful for this:

Openhook if using Thesis or Headway Simple Hooks if you’re using Genesis

**If using tools like Leadpages (rickmulready.com/leadpages) or ClickFunnels, the pixel does need to be placed on each page you create.

Verifying The Facebook Pixel is Placed & Working Correctly

Once the pixel has been placed, you need to verify that it’s working.

Here are a couple tips to help make verifying the pixel easier:

After you’ve placed the conversion tracking pixel on a page, save and reload the page (if you’re using LeadPag-es, “publish” the page and make sure the page fully loads.)

Then, if you’re using Power Editor to set up your ads, simply refresh the browser tab you’re working in. This should change the pixel from “unverified” to “verified”.

Another trick, if you’re using Chrome, is to download the Facebook Pixel Helper extension. http://rickmul-ready.com/pixelhelper

The Pixel Helper is an awesome tool that helps you validate and troubleshoot your Facebook pixels. If you don’t have it yet, get it now, it’s a lifesaver.

Here’s what it will look like when using it:


Once Your Facebook Pixel is Placed

Start creating audiences! It’s these retargeting audiences that you’ll use when setting up your targeting for your ads.

Brainstorm a list of all the different types of audiences you might want to target your ads to. GET CREATIVE.

Here’s how I recommend you get started using custom audiences:

Target anyone who visits your website These people are warm leads, they’ve taken it upon themselves to visit your website. So they’re more inter-ested in your content than someone who doesn’t know you or your business.

People who visit a specific page on your site or landing page All opt-in pages and sales page All “thanks for opting in” or “thanks for buying” pages

That way you can target people who landing but didn’t opt-in/buy o This is great if you have a sales funnel. opt-in > low priced offer > next level upsell > next level offer TARGET PEOPLE WHO TAKE ONE STEP IN YOUR FUNNEL BUT NOT THE NEXT STEP.

People who visit a specific category on your website — say you’re a website all about mobile marketing and you have article specifically about marketing on Apple IOS devices. You can create a retargeting audience out of this iOS category so that you can then serve Facebook ads specifically to those people with iOS specific offers People who haven’t visited your website in a certain amount of time — good strategy to re-engage previous visitors

Test out different durations like 1 day, 7 days, 30 days 60 days. 180 days max.

Once Your Facebook Pixel is Placed

Step 1: In your Ads Manager, under Tools, select either Audiences or Pixels

Step 2: If you selected Audiences, Click the Create Audience button and select “Custom Audience”. Choose Website Traffic.

If you chose Pixels, then simply select Create Audience. Step 3: Create what kind of audience you want

Step 4: Choose the duration for how long you want to track people who visit your website or landing page. It defaults to 30 days and goes up to 180 days. That means that people who visit your tracked pages are kept in the Audience for a maximum of 30 days. After 30 days from their first visit they are removed from the Audience. You can adjust the retention window from a minimum of 1 day to a maximum of 180 days.

Step 5: Create your ad and choose the custom audience you want to target in the Targeting section.

Here’s a step-by-step video for how to set up your custom audiences: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDA2ux83Scg


Tracking Conversions With the Facebook Pixel

In order to track conversions with the Facebook pixel, we now need to add a small snippet of code (that Facebook provides us) to the base Facebook pixel. Facebook calls these small snippet of code things "Standard Events”.

If you’re measuring leads, conversions, registrations or checkouts, the Facebook pixel WITH THE STANDARD EVENT CODE should be placed on the page that a person lands on after your landing page.

This is often the “thank you for opting-in” page.

Standard Events

As I mentioned, in order to track conversions now, you’ll need to add a snippet of code to the Facebook pixel on the specific pages where you want to track the conversion. This is what Facebook is calling a Standard Event.

Currently, there are 9 Standard Events that you can use. Here they are:

Here's an example of the Facebook pixel which also includes a Standard Event code:

So what you do is simply select what kind of event you want to track from the above chart, copy the corresponding Standard Event code from the chart, and paste it into your Facebook pixel ON THE PAGE THAT SIGNIFIES A CONVERSION.

For example, if I am sending people from my Facebook ads to a webinar registration page, I would copy the "Complete Registration" event code from the chart -- fbq('track', 'CompleteRegistration'); -- and add it to my Facebook pixel code on the webinar registration thank you page.

As you can see in the above image, you want to paste the standard event code right after the " fbq('track', PageView'); " and before the " </script> ".


Seeing Your Conversion Results in Ads Manager

Once you've added the Standard Event code to your Facebook pixel and your ads are running, you need to be able to monitor the results, right?

In Ads Manager, open up your campaign and go to the "Columns: Performance" dropdown menu on the right side of the screen.

You'll then want to select Customize Columns.

From there, simply choose "Websites" in the left column of the box that pops up and from the list of Website Actions, select which action you are tracking.


Setting A Value for Your Conversions

Notice in the Standard Events chart above, the “make purchase” event has an area for you to add the value of the product you're selling.

Say your product is $97. You can put that value in the Standard Event code and Facebook will track that for you.

Just edit the Standard pixel code to reflect the price of your product or service. Where you see the “0.00”, replace it with your value.

Pretty cool, right?

By entering a conversion value, you know exactly how much money you’re making versus how much your spend-ing on ads.

Here's how to see the return on your investment using Facebook's reporting:

1. First, click on Reports in the left column of your Ads Manager or View Report in your campaign.2. Click Customize Columns 3. Select Websites in the left column 4. Select the corresponding conversion value (will likely be Checkouts Conversion Value [conversion pixel])

“Website Conversions” As Your Objective

When the goal of your Facebook ads campaign is to generate leads, test using “website conversions” or “increase conversions on your website” (they mean the same thing) as your objective.

This tells Facebook to show your ads to as many people within your target audience who are most likely to convert on your landing page.

(Just make sure you’ve added the appropriate Standard Event code to the Facebook pixel on the necessary “thank you” page and that your pixel is verified.)

When you choose the "website conversions" objective, Facebook recently simplified the process of optimizing for a specific conversion and then tracking that conversion.

At the Ad Set level, simply choose the conversion that's most important to your campaign. This will usually be the initial conversion that you're trying to get (opt-in, webinar registration, coupon download, etc...)


Here's a screenshot of this section and what it looks like at the Ad Set level.

VIDEO: Here’s how to choose the pixel to optimize your ads for

Then, at the Ads level, you have your Tracking section. Facebook now automatically defaults to tracking the conversion pixel you chose earlier in the campaign set up.

You then have the option to choose additional conversions to track if you want (for example, the number of sales you're also getting from the campaign).

Here's what you'll see at the Ads level:

VIDEO: Here’s a step-by-step video for how to set up your custom audiences


Custom Conversions

Now, in addition to the new Facebook pixel, Facebook has ALSO introduced something called Custom Conver-sions.

Custom conversions allow you to optimize for and track actions without having to add any additional Standard Event code to your Facebook pixel base code. They also allow you to optimize for and track actions that are different from the 9 standard events that we just talked about.

When Might You Use a Custom Conversion Over a Standard Event?

When you don’t have access to your site’s code or when you need more than the 9 events that Facebook provides.

If you're tracking a page, like a visit to your homepage, where data quality isn’t really needed, you might consid-er using a custom conversion.

What’s the Difference Between Custom Conversions and Facebook Pixels?

You only have 20 custom conversions

You can’t edit or delete custom conversions

You can track conversion values with the Facebook pixel but you can’t do that with the custom conversions

The fact that we’re currently limited to 20 custom conversions and we can’t edit or delete custom conversions is ridiculous in my book and I think these are rules that Facebook will relax over time.

If you’re an e-commerce business or if you want to categorize different types of specific events, you’re definitely going to want to use standard events.

You can use both types of tracking to track the success of your sales funnel with regards to blog posts, opt-ins, add to carts, purchases, etc.


Powerful Strategy for Using Facebook Ads Pixels Today

Here’s a powerful strategy that’s working really well right now to generate qualified leads for your business:

1. Write a value-packed article on your website

2. Include a lead magnet opt-in that’s relevant to the content in your article

3. Make sure you've added the Facebook pixel with a Standard Event code on the thank you page for that opt-in

4. Set up a custom retargeting audience for people coming to your article

5. Set up a Facebook ads campaign that drives people to that article, while excluding your email list.

6. After running ads to your article for a little bit, set up a new Facebook ads campaign with the Objective “website conversions" (Make sure to exclude people who are already on your email list.)

7. Retarget people who visited your article with a value-packed offer they have to opt-in for. Since they've already consumed your content, they're "warming up" to you so they're more likely to convert and they're that much more of a qualified lead.

8. Your goal with this campaign is to get people on to your email list who didn’t opt- in when they previously visited your article page.

What To Do Now

If you are currently using the "old" custom audience pixel, you can simply swap out that old one with the "new" Facebook pixel. Facebook has assured me this doesn't mess up any of your existing audiences. I didn't believe them at first but I asked them like 4 times and they assured me that swapping out the old pixel with the new one wouldn't affect anything.

If you are currently using the "old" conversion tracking pixels and your campaigns are ending soon, cool, no need to change anything. If your campaigns are running late into the year, you're going to need to replace the conver-sion tracking pixel you're using with the new Facebook pixel and add the appropriate Standard Event code.

If you're not using any pixels right now, you're golden, you get to start using the new Facebook pixel from scratch.

Oh and here's another tip...

Whenever you create a new piece of content, whether it's a blog post, video, etc... create a custom retargeting audience for that page even if you don't plan to use it for your Facebook ads at that time. You never know when you might want to use that retargeting audience in your ads. That way it's populating all along when you're ready to use it. If you never use it, no sweat off your back.

the complete guide to facebook ads pixels cheat sheet€¦ · make sure you've added the...

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