Debunking Facebook Pixel Myths

What if we told you that there was a tool that would allow you to specifically target your company’s advertisements at the people who were most likely to be interested in your services or products using their personal information? Is it too good to be true, or does it kinda give you the willies? The fact that social media ads target their users’ interests and demographics is not news to most people, but the way that this is done is still a mystery to many. The secret to social media marketing success is the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel is a tool that extracts information about users in order to help businesses create better, more targeted marketing.

Despite the fact that the Facebook Pixel is likely making George Orwell roll over in his grave, it has incredible potential for connecting your company with its target audience. There are many misconceptions floating around about what the Facebook Pixel is and what it does. At FirstPage Marketing, we know the importance of having the right knowledge about how social media platforms and tools function for businesses in order to be able to use them properly, so we’ve taken some time to debunk some Facebook Pixel myths in order to clear things up.

Learn more about how to set up your business on Facebook.

Common Misconceptions about the Facebook Pixel

First and foremost, the Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool. It allows you to get a more accurate read on what kind of kind of audience is coming to your website in order to create more targeted marketing. It allows you to track a variety of types of events on your website, similarly to Google Analytics, and then use that data to form audiences and send out ads. Some misconceptions about the Facebook Pixel that many people hold include:

1. It is a Tool for Corporations to Spy on You

The subtitle of this article could easily have been “The Facebook Pixel: Just Creepy Enough.” Although the Facebook Pixel can be used by businesses to gather information about their audiences, this information comes in as metrics. It does not allow companies to look at your profile and assess you personally or watch your specific activity; all of that information is kept private by Facebook.

2. It Guarantees Results

There are rarely any guarantees when it comes to marketing endeavours. The Facebook Pixel is a proven method to get good, targeted advertisements in front of the right sets of eyes, but it does not guarantee a specific ROI. There are loads of great ways to optimize a company’s social media use, so make sure that you talk to a marketing expert to get started.

Read up on how to use social media effectively for your business.

3. It is a Website Visitor Counter

One of the most common myths about the Facebook Pixel is that it is a visitor counter for your website. Knowing these numbers is important, but this is the job of Google Analytics. The Facebook Pixel is used to gather information about people and connect them with the right advertising campaign to improve conversions.

Find out how you can see the world through your customers’ eyes.

4. It is a Picture that Links Your Website to Facebook

Despite its name, the Facebook Pixel has nothing to do with photography. It is actually completely invisible unless somebody is crawling your website’s code.

5. It Costs Money

The idea that the Facebook Pixel is expensive is also a myth, as it is actually free to use! The Facebook Pixel can be created for your website for free from Facebook and added to your website without paying any ongoing dues.

How can you drive traffic to your website with Google posts?

6. It Needs to Season to Work Well

Many people believe that the Facebook Pixel takes a long time to generate results. The truth is that it starts to generate results immediately. It can become more effective over time, because the sample audience that it uses to target other users gets bigger as more people come to your website; however, it can begin to generate results within weeks of installing it on your website, as long as there is traffic to work with.

7. It Drops Cookies

People often believe that the Facebook Pixel drops cookies on website visitors when, in reality, the Facebook Pixel only communicates with cookies that have already been dropped on a visitor’s browser. When you go to a social media platform, it drops cookies on your browser that other websites and tools can communicate with, and this is what the Facebook Pixel does.

Learn how to set up Facebook Business Manager.

8. It isn’t an Effective Tool for B2B Companies

People sometimes question the effectiveness of social media ads and the Facebook Pixel for companies focusing on getting the business of other companies. One of the things that people forget about when making this assumption about business to business marketing is that every company is made up of individuals, and those individuals will often share traits across specific industries. For this reason, the Facebook Pixel and the ads that it can be used to create are just as useful for B2B companies as they are for B2C companies.

If you have any other questions about social media marketing or you think we missed something while debunking Facebook Pixel myths, make sure you reach out to us and we can talk more about social media with you.

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