Facebook Pixels: a new gold mine to boost your conversions?

Dariane Bergeron, SEA Consultant at Better & Stronger reveals her secrets on how she leveraged Facebook pixels on Toutes Les Poitrines’ collection ads...

The pixels Dariane encounters today have nothing to do with photography. To make things perfectly clear, we are discussing Facebook pixels, which are snippets of code that helps her understanding her client’s audience. In this interview, she agreed to answer all our questions about this precious tool so that you can understand its concrete interest and start using it on your own! Why should you use pixels? Why is it important to be careful about their implementation? How could they help you save a lot of time? Want to know more? This interview should answer most of your questions... 

Dariane is part of our ads squad. She joined Better & Stronger in 2019 and is in charge of some of our biggest clients (Timberland, Aoste, Cochonou). She masters both Google Ads and social media ads to perfection and is always eager to learn new tips to make the most of her campaigns!  When she doesn’t work, she spends most of her time sculpting or painting. She is the Leonardo da Vinci of our agency!

And today, she’s here to talk about her Facebook Ads strategy for the brand Toutes Les Poitrines. It is a woman underwear reseller specialized in upmarket bras for every body shape. 

Better & Stronger - Dariane, Pixels surfaced on Facebook in 2019. How do you define “pixels” and why are they interesting for your ads campaigns?

Dariane Bergeron - “A pixel behaves like a wire. It is a snippet of code that is set up on the client website. To make things clear: when your prospects click on your Facebook advertisement, they are automatically redirected to your website. And it is where the pixel steps in. Its purpose is to track the pages they’ve visited, the time they’ve spent on each, and the products that have interested them the most. More precisely, a pixel is a link between a Facebook advertisement and your website. It helps you personalize your ads according to your website visitor’s preferences. This is what a pixel code looks like:

Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-pixel/implementation 

You can find on this picture the pixel’s ID. It seems complicated, but don’t worry we don't deal with coding daily. Coding is only necessary to implement the pixel. Once implemented, every change occurs on your Facebook Business page, which is a lot easier to understand. 

[Editor’s note] Facebook for developers offers more complete documentation on pixels. If you want to learn more about how to implement pixels on your website, read the Implementation section.

Thus, it becomes really interesting to launch remarketing campaigns since you know exactly the products that interest your prospects the most. Also, note that those campaigns will show higher conversion since the advertisement is well personalized. ”

B&S - As part of your project with your client Toutes Les Poitrines, you chose to use collection ads in a specific context: the summer sales. Can you tell us more about this format? Why did you choose pixels? How did pixels help you implement your promotional strategy?

Dariane - “Among all the ads campaigns I set up, the collection ads format is undoubtedly the one that helps me convert the most. Here’s a short example of one collection I created for this campaign: 

As you can see, at the top of the collection format, there is a short video that catches people’s attention while they scroll through their Facebook feed. It is followed by some of your website products that are “the most interesting” for the viewer. The selection is based on articles he/she has shown an interest in or the articles that he/she left on his shopping basket before leaving the website. 

Thus, the selection of products that appears on the user’s ad is completely dependent on what he likes. Chances are, two people won’t have the exact same advertisement. If a visitor is only interested in blue swimsuits, there will be collection ads full of blue swimsuits on his Facebook feed. The same goes for yellow bras, etc… This is a super adaptative format. 

I launched this campaign during the summer sales period and as you can imagine, businesses expect sellings to grow on this occurrence. It is one of the reasons that pushed me to implement pixels as I know that I would be able to obtain the impactful results they were seeking.”

B&S - What is the added value of this format for your ads campaign?

Dariane - “Collection ads are highly personalizable and super easy to implement. Once the pixel is well installed on your website, it allows you to display your flow of products on collection ads. 
And why is it interesting for our clients? Because it makes all of us save a lot of time. They do not have to ask for a developer or load products one by one on their collection ads, everything can be done from the Facebook Business Manager platform in just a few minutes.

While a developer will modify the website, which can be both complicated and time-consuming, pixels' implementation will be faster and easier to modify if you need to. In the end, you will probably need help to implement them at first if you have never done it before but in the long run, it is worth it as every modification you need to make will help you increase your conversion rate.

The only trouble I have is that I can be limited in the options on ad personalization. For instance, if I want to add a “-50% layer”, I have to call for someone qualified in coding so that it can be displayed automatically whenever there is a promotion on a specific product.

In the end, it allows you to create Facebook advertising campaigns that show a great ROAS (return on ad spend) in a short amount of time, without much help. It is like an all-inclusive solution that helps you track user’s behavior so that you can remarket your products. 

You can also use pixels for your acquisition campaigns but this wasn’t my objective with this client.”

B&S - How did you proceed to implement Pixels on Toutes Les Poitrines ads campaigns? Do you have any advice for those who would like to start with it?

Dariane - “The process is not very complicated to understand. In the beginning, a pixel has to be set up on your website. Make sure that they are well implemented. If you set them up wrongly, chances are it won’t give you the tracking quality you are waiting for. 

Once the pixel is installed, you have to decide on the settings. Basically, it means that you have to choose which information needs to be tracked. For instance, for Toutes Les Poitrines’ website, I chose to track both visitors who will leave their shopping basket full without buying and the pages on which people spend more time. 

Then, from the Facebook Business Manager Platform, the information tracked comes back. For example, you can see that a certain client is interested in a specific category of items. Thanks to this information, collection ads will adapt to his preferences. Nothing more.”

B&S - Have you seen any positive impact of pixels' implementation on Toutes Les Poitrines’ ads campaigns yet? If so, what are the results in terms of ROAS and CPA?

Dariane - “The impact is clearly positive, but because it is a remarketing campaign that I’m launching, the figures I can give should be taken with a pinch of salt: the ROAS for this campaign is 10.88.

This means that for 1€ spent, Toutes Les Poitrines earned 10.88€ (minus the 1€ spent = 9.88€). As you can see, the ROAS is really interesting! If you want to have a general idea of this specific campaign, the CPA was 5.20€. ”

B&S - Thank you Dariane for giving a better overview of pixels' implementation and their impact on your Facebook ads campaigns. We would be glad to invite you again so that you can talk about your other tracking tools! 

Thanks to Dariane’s expertise, we are able to picture the use of pixels on remarketing campaigns. Those snippets of code help her launch effective campaigns that show interesting personalization options, a great ROAS and undeniable results. Next time, Virginie, another SEA Consultant, will change course and give us her interesting tips on CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), another solution to make the best of your marketing campaigns... To be continued!