When we first meet with new clients at Karizma Marketing, one of the most common complaints we hear from business owners is how much they spend on Facebook Ads for very little return and asking if I have any special Facebook Pixel Hacks that I use, to get the results we see with our clients.

Facebook marketing can be hard to master, however, there is a magic ingredient that holds the key to greater success – The Facebook Pixel.

What is a Facebook Pixel?

The Facebook Pixel is a helpful tool for marketing analytics. It is:

When a potential client clicks on your Facebook ad, they are taken to your website. If the Facebook pixel is installed on your website, it will document and track their actions, providing information on customer behavior back to Facebook for future audience targeting. In this article, I share 6 hot Facebook Pixel hacks you possibly never knew about that may just transform your Facebook ad results from bombing to bom-chica-wah-wah!

A Facebook Ad Experts 6 Hot Facebook Pixel Hacks

Facebook Pixel Hack #1 : Pixel Seasoning

Did you know you can “season” your pixel? And no, I don’t mean the seasoning you use in your dinner recipe. I mean you can season it with data. You can literally train a pixel by adding it to your website so that it can start collecting data on your website user’s behaviors. Later, you can transfer it to another website, maybe for another business, you want to start. Placing a “seasoned pixel” on your new website will help give it an edge, allowing it to take off almost immediately. This is a relatively new and “out of the box” marketing hack that expert marketers can use for clients who intend to scale multiple businesses that have similar audiences. This is a better option than using the same pixel as the first website, since that will lead to target audience sharing between both businesses, making it a messy task to sort out in analytics later on.

Facebook Pixel Hack #2 : Creation of High-Quality Audiences

From the data provided by the Facebook pixel, you can filter and segment your audiences, separating those of higher potential to make a sale from the others. Website visitors who made a past purchase, recently visited, spent a good amount of time on your website, or added some items to their carts are examples of high-quality audiences. The purpose of Facebook ads is conversions, and you can optimize your ads when you can identify audiences that offer you the best chance of converting into purchases.

Facebook Pixel Hack #3 : Funnel Optimization

As has already been mentioned, the Facebook pixel records data of website visitor behavior throughout your sales funnel. You can see how many people clicked on your ad, how many website visits led to a purchase or how many visitors put items in their carts from your product pages, but never ended up purchasing. A critical look at this data usually reveals leaks in your sales funnel, which you can then fix. Without the pixel reporting data back to Facebook, it would be difficult to pinpoint the exact part of the funnel where the dropoff in conversions is. Having the pixel data allows you to optimize your ads, website, and funnel, ultimately leading to more profitable marketing.

Facebook Pixel Hack #4 : Building Interest-Based Audiences

Pixel-generated data helps you create and leverage both look-alike and interest-based audiences. This means that your products can be marketed to customers of other businesses that offer the same products as you. Creating audiences from pixel-based data can help you capitalize on the exposure that this cross-marketing gives. This means your products will be marketed to more than just your own custom audiences. The pixel allows you to reach relevant “top of funnel” audiences, helping you scale your business to new customers.  While interest-based audiences are based on websites people visit, social pages they follow, and similar, lookalike audiences are built off of your custom audiences, such as your website visitors, purchasers, and email list.

Facebook Pixel Hack #5:  Time-Based Audiences

A little-known hack I always use with my Facebook pixel audiences is testing different lengths of time with lookalike audiences. Think about it… The turnover and refreshment rate of a 1,000 person audience every day is much greater than the percentage of new audience turnover every day on a 6,000 person audience. Let me explain. Let’s say you get 1,000 purchasers per month that your Facebook pixel is tracking. If you use that audience to create a 30-day purchaser lookalike audience, Facebook will dynamically change the audience daily. This means 3.3% of the audience will be changed out daily to a new audience, allowing your lookalike audiences to freshen much quicker. Now, let’s say you use a 6-month purchase audience as your seed audience to create a lookalike from. That means Facebook will only change out 0.5% of your audience each day, making for a much more stagnant audience. There is no right or wrong here. It is simply about testing. You may find your 6-month purchase audience is a much better seed audience than your 30-day purchase audience, however, because it is often overlooked to test different time lengths when creating lookalike audiences, I like to test it as a higher-level media buying strategy to see if it makes a difference in my lookalike audiences performing over a greater period of time.

Facebook Pixel Hack #6 : Making Inferences and Smart Marketing Decisions

The Facebook pixel affords you a guide for making inferences based on customer behaviors. For instance, if a lot of website visitors are putting items in their carts but not completing their purchases, there might be an issue with the price or shipping costs.This will help guide you on which area to test tweaking to see if you are able to increase your website conversion rate. The Facebook pixel data will also help you determine which ads and offers are converting the best and which need to be changed or optimized.

In Closing

The Facebook pixel is a great tool for marketers to help track and make sense of user behavior off of Facebook. Knowing how to translate and read the data the pixel generates is very important and can make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful marketing campaign.