The Facebook Pixel: How to Use Events Manager and Analytics
The Facebook Pixel is a great tool to use if you’re running ads through Facebook or on any Facebook platform. In our first Pixel blog post, we discussed the basics of a FB Pixel: how to install it and how to use it effectively. Now, we will focus on the ins and outs of the Pixel and how to usit it to it’s full potential it as a marketing professional once it’s installed onyour website. Two Facebook business features that you should use alongside the FB Pixel are Events Manager and Analytics. This post will focus heavily on how to use each.
With the installation of a Pixel, as an advertiser or marketer, you can track the data and usage on your website from different users across a variety of platforms and you’re able to dive deep into the analytics portion of your data. Once the Pixel is installed on the website, it will activate in Events Manager where you may then manually set up Events on your website to track. By default, Facebook recognizes certain events, like page visits, contacts, and leads. But, if you have multiple contact buttons on your page or specific usage you’d like to track, that’s where Events come into play.
Events Manager makes it very easy to further set up Events on the Pixel-activated website. Using the Facebook Event Setup Tool, you can easily set up and track recent events on the site.
When you select “Track New Button” the website will have highlighted buttons suggesting where to set up Events.
Once a highlighted area is selected, the Set Up Event bar pops up and a drop-down menu lets you select how to categorize the Event(i.e. leads, purchases, contacting, viewing content, scheduling, subscribing, etc.)
Once Events are set up, the Facebook Pixel will track traffic on the website. Event data can be accessed on FB Events Manager, but for more specific analytics related to all website and Event traffic, Facebook Analytics is the tool to use.
Analytics goes hand-in-hand with Events Manager. Since Events Manager is where the Pixel information and general data lives, Analytics is where the data is broken down into specifics, such as top traffic sources, new users, user location, highest activity hours on your site, top viewed pages and more. There are three sections to Analytics, Growth, Engagement and People metrics. Even further, those metrics are broken down into exact user amounts. The screenshots below are examples of the FB Analytics dashboard.
As mentioned above, we can open each section of the Analytics dashboard into its own separate report for specific tracking purposes. At the top, user activity and traffic sources are shown.
Growth Metrics
- Active Users within the last 24 hours: tracks the new visitors to your site within the last 24 hours. Median session length and the number of sessions per user also shown.
- User Activity: a full report of all monthly, weekly, and daily website visitors. Broken down by median session length, the number of sessions, age & gender. This is a key metric in understanding the total amount of website visits you’re receiving.
- Top Traffic Sources: a breakdown of all page views by traffic source, including: self-referral, social networks, direct, search engines, and referrals. This is a key metric in understanding where users are coming from to get to your website.
- Top New User Traffic Source: a breakdown of new page views by traffic source, including: self-referral, social networks, direct, search engines, and referrals (new meaning users who have never visited your site before)
- Top New User Locations: a full report of where new users visiting your site are located. Can be broken down by country, state, city. Widespread reports + single URL reports available.
- New Users: full report of new user activity, broken down by age and gender.
Engagement Metrics
- Active Users by Hour: a full weekly, monthly, daily, or hourly report of when users are most active on your website. Session metrics are broken down by what type of device the user was viewing from, length, age & gender, and most popular times.
- Top Web Pages: a breakdown of how each URL from your site is performing. With multiple pages on a website, this report is an especially great breakdown of metrics to utilize and focus on.
People Metrics
- Gender & Age: full reports of viewers by age group and gender.
Why You Should Utilize the FB Pixel
The FB Pixel offers many benefits in viewing analytics and taking a deeper look at the user's viewing your website and engaging with your content. Not only is that a substantial reason the Pixel should be installed on a website, but because the Pixel gathers data to be used in efforts to attract new customers and build your brand awareness.
Pixel data can also generate Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences. We can then use these audiences in targeted advertising and post boosting delivery.
A Custom Audience takes into consideration the users visiting your website and engaging with your content. This audience will populate a group of already-engaged users and you can retarget those users to build their brand loyalty and offer specific promotions to them.
A Lookalike Audience is populated from the Custom Audience. The Lookalike audience will take into consideration those that are in the already-made Custom Audience and populate an audience that is similar to those users. This Lookalike audience can match between 1–10% of the population and will contain users who have similarities to those in the Custom Audience, such as interests, likes, searches, location, gender, behaviors, etc.
Using Custom and Lookalike Audiences is a way to attract new viewers and customers based on those who have already interacted with your site or build brand loyalty to existing customers and engagers.
With many significant benefits, the FB Pixel is one tool that is fully recommended to all website hosts, business owners, and more.
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