What is the Facebook pixel and how to use it

What is the Facebook pixel and how to use it

Kirsten Armleder| September 1, 2021

Facebook provides advertisers with many excellent tools for targeting audiences with laser precision; perhaps the most useful of them all is the Facebook pixel.

What is it? In Facebook’s own words, the “Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.”

Clear as mud? Let us explain.

How it works

Basically, the Facebook pixel is a piece of code you install on your website that links online behaviour to a Facebook user’s profile.

So, for example, let’s say you own a sporting goods store. Someone visits your website looking at hockey gear. The next time they check their Facebook (or Instagram) it’s your ads they will see in their news feeds. Depending on how your campaign is set up, your ads will also be shown to them in other areas of the platform, such as marketplace, messenger, groups and stories, as well as third-party sites.

The Facebook pixel is an excellent and highly effective way to remarket or remind people about your offerings and nudge them back towards contacting you or making a purchase.

Advertisers can use the pixel to create campaigns targeting all visitors to your website, only the people who’ve visited a specific page(s) or those who’ve performed an action, such as signing up for a newsletter or putting an item in their cart but not completing the transaction.

What’s more, you can use the Facebook pixel to target new people who are most likely to be interested in your offerings because they are similar to your existing customers.

Why are pixels valuable?

The Facebook pixel makes your marketing more potent and helps utilize your budget more effectivity. And Facebook isn’t the only social media advertising platform that offers a pixel.

Twitter and LinkedIn both have a similar tool that can be set up on your website to track behaviour and create hyper-specific and highly effective advertising campaigns that work to bring you more leads and sales.

For more information about setting up the Facebook pixel, see this article.

Have questions? Use the green button on the right-hand corner of your screen to reach out to us!