Facebook Pixel Strategies to Help You Run More Targeted Ads

You might’ve heard something about the Facebook pixel and its potential to grow your sales through better advertising. Maybe you even tried installing one yourself once upon a time. Whether you’re pixel-ready or riding the fence, we want to arm you with the knowledge to understand how your Facebook pixel works — and four strategies you can use to make it work harder.

But first and foremost… what is it?

What is a Facebook pixel?

The Facebook pixel is a tiny piece of internet sorcery that gets installed on your website to track and record visitors and their behavior — shoppers who were interested in a certain product, shoppers who left your website without making a purchase, you name it. Your pixel then allows you to use that data to create audiences who can be targeted with Facebook ads.

But your advertising won’t just be limited to shoppers who’ve already visited your store. If one person is interested in your products, you’ll want to find 10 more shoppers just like them. Your pixel makes that possible by creating what’s called "lookalikes" — audiences of Facebook users who are similar to your existing customers.

If you advertise on Facebook (or think you might one day), you’ll want to get your Facebook pixel installed as soon as you can. You may not need it now, but when the time comes, the data your pixel has collected will be invaluable to your advertising.

As a Facebook integrated partner, Ecwid is integrated with the Facebook pixel, making install not only easy but also free to all Ecwid merchants. No coding or development experience required — just a couple of clicks is all it takes to install your pixel in your online store.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for the fun stuff — learning how to use it. So here are four actionable strategies you can use right now to better target your advertising using your Facebook pixel.

Strategy 1: Retargeting and Abandoned Cart Recovery

This one’s a no-brainer strategy. Let’s say you’ve set up your store and you have some good traffic coming in, but sales are a little slow. It might be frustrating, but it’s not fatal — especially if you can get things moving with some well-targeted Facebook ads.

Retargeting is a type of campaign that tracks and serves ads to the specific customers who’ve visited your store. There are plenty of great reasons to run retargeting campaigns, but one of the best reasons is cost-per-sale. It’s almost always cheaper to close sales with shoppers who are already familiar with your brand. And more sales for less money sounds like a good deal to us.

Retargeting is even more important if you’re paying a third party (Google, Bing, Facebook, etc.) to drive traffic to your site. You’ll want to recover as much of that cost as possible through converted sales to ensure a profitable online store.

Abandoned cart ads are a special type of retargeting campaign used to target shoppers who’ve visited your store and added products to their carts but didn’t finish the checkout process. Your pixel records the exact products a shopper left in their cart and reminds them about those products using shopper-specific Facebook ads.

The best part about retargeting ads is that they can be fully automated without any extra fees or management thanks to our integration with ROI Hunter in your Control Panel. But if you don’t want the easy button, we’ll still show you how to manage the campaigns yourself as well.

What you need for retargeting:

• The Facebook pixel — to track store visitors and pages they browse.
• Facebook product catalog — to advertise your products on Facebook.

How to launch a retargeting campaign to your store visitors:

1. Create your Facebook Business page for your Facebook Ad account.
2. Connect your Ecwid Store to Facebook.
3. Export your Ecwid product catalog to Facebook. Follow these instructions if you have a Venture or higher-tier plan and want to do this automatically. Or do it manually. After that’s done, you’ll see your catalog in Catalog manager:
   
   
4. Install the Facebook pixel. In just a couple of clicks, your pixel will start tracking your website visitors. (Note: It could take up to 20 minutes for your pixel to activate before it begins tracking.)
5. Go to your Ad Manager → Pixels and check your pixel’s status. The green light means it’s active. You’ll see a graph of the triggered events:
   
   
6. Associate your pixel with your Facebook product catalog in the Catalog Manager (you can also do this while creating an ad).
7. Create your ads. You can start creating ads as soon as you’ve installed the pixel. Click on Create Ad:
   
   
   
   Or go to your Facebook Business page and click on Create Ad:
   
   
8. Choose Catalog sales as your marketing objective:
   
   
9. Сreate an advertising campaign.

While following the instructions for creating an ad, you need to pay close attention to the block Audience to use the pixel:

• Make sure you click Associate Pixel or App With your Catalog:

• Then identify your target audience by selecting the option "Retarget products to people who visited your website or app." The pixel will help with that.

This is what your ad will look like:

To make your ads even more effective, create a discount coupon and add it to your ad copy.

Strategy 2: Get More Repeat Customers

Loyal customers are the backbone of your business. Because they already know and trust your brand enough to transact with you, they’ll be much easier to sell to in the future. So it’s crucial you invest in keeping them active.

Increasing your base of loyal and regularly transacting customers is important, especially if you sell seasonal products, your sales have dropped, or your budget is low. To leverage this group with your pixel, create an audience of people who’ve made a purchase recently and target them with a new collection.

First, follow steps 1-6 from Strategy 1. Then create an audience and target them with your new ad.

To create an audience of your existing customers:

1. Go to your Audiences.
2. Click on Create a Custom Audience:

3. Choose Website Traffic:
   
   
4. Choose your pixel and select the event Purchase. Specify the time frame (from 30 to 180 days). You can target your ads at people who have bought a certain product, e.g. shoes. However, when you’re first starting out, it might be easier to target a broader audience.

5. When you finish creating your audience, follow these instructions to create an ad. During ad set creation, select the audience you just created to reach them with your new ads:

Strategy 3: Strengthen Your Brand Following

People who are already interacting with your business on your website would also make great Facebook followers. You’ll need them to build a strong social media presence, which is important for brand recognition. Beyond that, people who already like your products will be more interested in your news and new collections, which means more sales for you (woot woot).

Use a Custom Audience of your website visitors or a customer list to promote your Facebook Page with ads. Just make sure you exclude people who’ve already liked your Page to avoid serving ads to existing Facebook fans.

To build a strong social media presence, make a video about your products and advertise it to your site’s visitors. People look at videos five times longer than static Facebook content. It helps to feature your product in action while you deliver your message. Check out this Sephora video ad that compels you to subscribe as you watch.

Note: You should use a supported file format and make sure your video meets Facebook video requirements to deliver your ad successfully.

To create a video ad:

1. Follow these instructions.
2. To use your pixel, pay attention to the block Audience: choose Create New and click Custom Audience.

3. Select Website Traffic:

4. Choose All Website Visitors, set the time frame, and give your audience a name. Click Create Audience:

5. Choose "Create an ad using the audience":

Then continue creating your video ad.

This is what your video ad will look like:

Strategy 4: Create Lookalike Audiences

If you’re ready to expand your business, Facebook can help you find people similar to your existing customers. Using your existing ads, you can target "Lookalike" audiences, who are similar to the shoppers who’ve shown interest in or purchased your products. This highly targeted pixel strategy can help you narrow your market and use your ad dollars even more effectively.

To create a Lookalike Audience:

1. Go to your Audiences.
2. Click Create a Lookalike Audience:

3. Choose your pixel as a source:

4. Choose the country/countries where you’d like to find a similar set of people. Use the slider to choose your desired audience. Then click Create Audience:

Note: It can take anywhere from 6 to 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be created.

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Now that you’ve learned how to use Facebook pixel audiences, you’re ready to get the most out of your Facebook ads. For more advice on promotion, check out our blog. And don’t forget about the Ecwid Help Center if you need help building and advertising your store. Happy selling!