Most business owners I interact with want to increase their sales revenue. And yet, more often than not, they don’t have a Facebook pixel installed on their website.
According to this live pixel tracker, only an estimated 500,000 websites have a Facebook pixel installed (as of July 9). That’s 1.7% of the 27.9 MILLION businesses in the United States!
This is due to a multitude of factors.
First, many business owners are still advertising the old fashioned way and have yet to tap into the power of digital marketing.
Second, they’re unaware of the competitive advantage that a website pixel can give them in the marketplace, even if they’re not paying for advertising.
Third, they’re advertising but don’t understand how much more effective their efforts could be if they simply leveraged data that is readily available to them.
If you’re like most business owners, you’ve recently noticed a dramatic shift to online advertising. This is because historically trusted advertising sources have stopped working. Everyone above 8 years old has a phone in their hand these days.
Digital marketing spending in the United States from 2014 to 2019, by segment (in billion U.S. dollars)
Most owners who have relied heavily on print advertising in the past have switched to digital because of the enhanced ability to reach their ideal market, instantly measure direct response and easily double, triple or quadruple down on what brings them the most revenue with the least amount of effort.
Last year, Alignable published the results of a network-wide survey that revealed the biggest challenge for approximately 35% of business owners is getting enough leads. Another 15% said it was trying to do so with a modest marketing budget.
This means the majority of all dollars spent on traditional advertising each month has little or no contribution to overall profits.
But despite these marketing setbacks, some businesses are earning more profits while spending less on marketing. They are doing so by leveraging the power of Facebook's pixel, even if they’re not advertising exclusively on Facebook or Instagram (which is a Facebook owned ad platform).
No matter your budget, where you’re advertising or how many leads you’re acquiring, having a Facebook pixel installed on your website will give you a powerful, low-cost way to advertise to potential leads who are otherwise falling through unknown cracks.
I’ll tell how to do it in this post.
Imagine the business advantage of knowing who was visiting your website. What if you also knew what services they were interested in before you even had a conversation? What if you could tell who could be a potential buyer by knowing how long they stayed on a web page?
That information would make it much easier to make an offer to that person, wouldn’t it? Now you can do that on autopilot. Literally, while you sleep or manage your business you can make money.
That’s what happens every single day. In fact, this simple, automated strategy helped Kelly Brassil, RN register more than 200 nurses to a first year nursing research conference in April.
And Kelly isn’t the only one deploying this strategy. Did you know that every day, thousands of people are searching for services like yours.
Have a gym? 91,000 people are searching for your business every day.
Are you a financial adviser? Nearly 18,000 people are searching for you every day.
According to a recent survey, automation generates 2X the number of leads than those using blast email software and are perceived by their peers to be 2X as effective at communicating.
Don’t let the techy “automation” word mislead or intimidate you. It’s actually very simple to install a Facebook pixel.
Here’s how you can set up a simple Facebook and Instagram remarketing campaign for your business.
#1. Get your free pixel.
I could reinvent the wheel here, but Facebook actually does a great job of walking you through the steps for creating your pixel. You can find step-by-step instructions here.
#2. Install it on your website.
Again, Facebook covers this in detail here. But if your website is built on Wordpress, I recommend downloading and installing the Pixel Caffeine plugin. This plugin is super easy to use and will let you start building custom audiences from within your dashboard.
#3. Set up custom audiences.
Now that you have your pixel installed, you can start building your audiences. Each business will be different, but here are a few "real world" examples of what kind of audiences you can create and advertise to:
Create “category” audiences for your blog or website and then re-target these visitors with lead generation or direct sale campaigns.
Example: Let’s say you’re selling dog toys. You have a vibrant blog that attracts a lot of visitors each month. One way to monetize the blog is to create and deliver an ad for a specific toy that someone just read about.
If you're a bookkeeper, you could write a blog that outlines the 10 things a small business owner should do before filing their taxes, then advertise a done-for-you tax filing service.
Create audiences of people that viewed specific products and dynamically target them with specific incentives or coupons for exactly the products they viewed
Example: Let’s say you own a residential painting company. You’d probably have service pages that include interior painting, exterior painting, ceiling popcorn removal, cabinet refinishing, door refinishing, etc.
You could create your best offers in each category and deliver an ad targeting people who spent more than 30 seconds visiting one of those pages.
So, if your desired user behavior is to get more interior painting customers to request a quote, you might deliver an ad to website visitors who spent more than 30 seconds on your interior painting page. (Just make sure your offer will incentivize them to take action. It needs to be valuable.)
You could repeat this process for every category, blog type, page, etc.
Create audiences of those that submit particular forms, click on certain buttons, or take certain actions while navigating or searching your website.
If someone opts in to your email list, you might advertise a book or other information products.
If a website visitor opts in for a coupon, you could upsell them on another product or service in a related category.
Create product catalog with only products in specific categories with a discounted price.
Have you ever shopped on Amazon only to leave and see a Facebook or Instagram ad of that exact product later that day? You can do the same thing. All you need to do is set up a custom audience of people who viewed product X, then target people who viewed product X with an ad that promotes a limited time discount on product X.
What you can do with a pixel is incredibly powerful! But only 1.7% of businesses are executing this strategy!
If you get stuck, just google "Facebook Pixel" you will find many videos to help you setup and get the most out of your Pixel marketing.