Facebook Conversion Tracking for Smart Marketers!

*** Note: conversion tracking is changing so when it’s rolled out I’ll update this…

When you run ads on Facebook driving people to your website are you tracking conversions?

In other words, are you investing money on Facebook or wasting it!

Guilty as charged – I have set up ads before on Facebook and not implemented conversion tracking.

But…

After the ads are finished you don’t feel great do you!!!

So here’s an easy to follow guide on what it’s all about and how you set it up.

What Tools are available for setting up ads on Facebook?

When you set up ads on Facebook you can use the Facebook ads tool or use the more advanced tool called the Power Editor.

You can also use a whole range of other Facebook ad tools developed by other companies.

In this article we’ll focus on the functionality available through standard ads manager within Facebook for Facebook ads conversion tracking.

How does Facebook track conversions on your website?

When you set up your ad Facebook will give you a piece of code to put onto the pages you want to track.

This is known as a conversion tracking pixel (or sometimes call conversion pixel)

When you run an ad on Facebook and send people to a page on your website Facebook is able to track that a visitor landed on the page.

Imagine if the page you sent a person contained details of a product to buy.

Your visitor clicks on the ‘buy’ button to buy the product and are brought to a thank you page.

You’d have your conversion tracking pixel on the thank you page.

When someone lands on the page you know a conversion has happened.  Time to crack open the bottle of champagne!

There are many different scenarios you may want to use for conversion tracking.

For example…

a). Track people that visited the checkout but didn’t purchase.  You might have a conversion tracking pixel on the checkout page and the thank you page.  This means you can track conversions but also advertise to people that left the checkout page without buying.

b). You could track email subscribers.  No sale has occurred but it’s an ’email conversion’ you want to track as opposed to a sales conversion.

Useful?

……..Read on!

How do you set up Facebook conversion pixels?

Here’s the process for setting up a tracking pixel:

setup…

But….

…I know you like step by step instructions!

Step 1: Go to the Facebook ads manager and select the conversion tracking option.

Selest this option

 

Step 2: Select the option to create a new pixel.  Specify the name of the pixel and what you want to track.

Enter details of the pixel

 

Type of action you want to measure:  There are multiple options here, for example, checkouts or add to cart.  If you want to track multiple stages of a purchase process (e.g. add to cart, buy, up grade) then you need to pick a different category for each part of the process.

This is to ensure that when you view reports you can easily find the relevant section.

Pixel name:  This is what you’ll see in the summary of your tracking pixels so pick a good descriptive name so it’s easier to manage going forward.

Step 3: Now you’ll be given a piece of code (that you don’t have to understand!) that you copy to the relevant page on your website.

The code will look something like this:

<!– Facebook Conversion Code for Social Media Course Sales –>
<script>(function() {
var _fbq = window._fbq || (window._fbq = []);
if (!_fbq.loaded) {
var fbds = document.createElement(‘script’);
fbds.async = true;
fbds.src = ‘//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbds.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(fbds, s);
_fbq.loaded = true;
}
})();
window._fbq = window._fbq || [];
window._fbq.push([‘track’, ‘6026223351867853’, {‘value’:’0.00′,’currency’:’EUR’}]);
</script>
<noscript><img height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”” style=”display:none” src=”http://ift.tt/1WWOCBy; /></noscript>

I have highlighted ‘value’ and currency in bold.

If you want to assign a value to a conversion you can enter it in here.  This means that in your reports you can look at the money you spent on Facebook ads and the money you made from the ads!

Step 4:  Create your ad

Now you create your ad and you specify which tracking pixel you want to use for the ad.

How do you target people that that didn’t buy?

That’s a very good question!!!

If you want to target people that didn’t buy you use the ‘website custom audience’ feature instead of the tracking pixels.

Website custom audience is another piece of code you add to your website, but…

…this time you add it to every page of your website.

When you set up your ad you can target people that visited one page and didn’t visit another i.e.

They went to the checkout page but didn’t go to the thank you page!

 

Is there anything else you need to know about conversion tracking?

Yes… how about this….

1.  Advertising to look a like audiences.

Now that Facebook is tracking people visiting these pages you can target ‘look alike audiences’.  Facebook will select a people that have similar interests and buying patterns so you can target them.

When you are viewing the list of conversion tracking pixels you have set up, select the option for look a like audiences:

Target a similar audience

 

2.  Optimizing for conversions

You can combine your conversion tracking with ad bidding for conversions.

When you have set up conversion tracking you can select the bidding option ‘Bid for website conversions’ and Facebook will show your ads to people more likely to convert.

Because Facebook is tracking every conversion it will begin to understand the type of people buying so it will target more of a similar type.

3.  Customizing Reports

You may want to run some customized reports based on your ads.  When you select the reports option on Facebook select the ‘website conversions’ section.

Select the Website conversion report

 

Also make sure to ‘edit columns’ so you can customize your report to add in the more relevant information.

Summary

Facebook conversion tracking might appear a little techie but this is a techie thing you really need to get familiar with!!

If you’re running ads to sell your products and service but you’re not using conversion tracking you’re wasting your time!

Are you going to set this up?

…or

Have you set this already?  Has it been useful.

The post Facebook Conversion Tracking for Smart Marketers! appeared first on RazorSocial and was written by Ian Cleary

from RazorSocial http://ift.tt/1WWOCBC