Since social media’s inception, measuring its effectiveness in marketing has been a topic hotter than the Carolina Reaper. However, over time, social platforms have evolved and are becoming more sophisticated. Brands aren’t going to accept “reach” as a quality metric anymore and Facebook has taken notice. Enter the Facebook Pixel. It’s a simple piece of code you can integrate onto your website. The Pixel provides powerful audience insights and allows you to target highly specific traits and behaviors. But it gets even better… the Facebook Pixel can measure a directly attributable return on investment.

Tar-get more, guess less

The dawn of the Facebook Pixel brought forth the opportunity to reach 89 percent accuracy on targeted ads. It also has allowed advertisers to harness the power of detailed audience insights like what days of the week and times of the day your audience is most active on social media, demographic information like age and gender, what device they typically use when browsing the web, how long they stay on your website, and more.

And if you thought the Pixel couldn’t get any smarter, we’ll raise you one more. Data gathered by the Pixel lays the foundation for creating Custom Audiences for ad campaigns. Using these powerful audiences, you can directly target those who have visited your website, experienced a specific user journey on your website (hint: abandon cart), and even create a completely new audience called a Lookalike Audience that looks and behaves similarly to the army of brand loyalists you already know and love.

What was previously a lackluster cruise operation with virtually no brand awareness is now one of Pensacola’s top tourist attractions. During our first month running ads on Facebook and Instagram, the Pixel tracked more than 300 online ticket purchases with social ads as the point of origination. When factoring in profit generated by ticket purchases, less advertising dollars spent, the resulting return on investment was over 360 percent.

Measuring campaign success with precision

This ROI is a conservative calculation, because there will always be some degree of lost attribution. For example, a person may see the ad three or four times, wait a few weeks, and when the opportunity arises to make a purchase decision, they go directly to the website or ticket counter to purchase because strong brand awareness has been established. Even with this possibility of lost attribution, the Facebook Pixel allows us to measure a specific minimum ROI – and when you’re generating one of such size and scale, marketing professionals can rest easy, knowing they’re able to justify their budgets to C-suite and board members.

Let’s get this Pixel party started

The Facebook Pixel is simple to install and provides bountiful insights to boot. Use it to its full potential, and watch your ad campaigns thrive like never before. Need help getting started? Email [email protected] to schedule a meeting with our social team.