That’s right. Facebook is everyone’s favorite big brother. Watching our every move. On a positive note, at least Facebook doesn’t fart in your face every time you walk by as my brother did to me.
That’s right folks. My brother is ten years older than I am, so I spent a majority of my childhood being significantly shorter than he was.
For his own pre-teen and teenager humor, he literally farted in my face EVERY SINGLE TIME he passed me. As I grew, he even mastered the Jump and Aim Fart, so the fun could extend a few more years.
It was always a proud moment for my parents.
The good news is that my brother is now in his 50’s, so he can only get about an inch of air time. I sure do hope his daughters allow me to pick his nursing home, though.
Facebook is a Cool Big Brother
If you haven’t already, you really need to load the Facebook Tracking Pixel on to your website. This will help you be able to target people who have visited your website when you go to create FB Ads.
What exactly is a Facebook Pixel? Here’s a peak. Basically it’s a bit of javascript code that sits on your website in between your header tags. Yours won’t have the grayed out areas. That’s where the unique code for your tracking rests.
Why Do You Want the Facebook Pixel
The only thing you need in order to obtain a Facebook Pixel is a Business Facebook Page. It doesn’t matter how many fans you have, so if you only have five fans and you rarely post on Facebook – no problem.
Trust me. You still want the pixel.
The Facebook pixel tracks your visitors movement on your website. That movement can then translate to fine tuning your ad campaigns based on their behavior.
Have you ever wondered how you might be checking out a car online, then the next thing you know, a picture and ad for that exact car is suddenly showing up on your newsfeed? The answer is the pixel.
Not too long ago, marketing needed to be done in a blanket manner. Pound the airwaves and hope that at least one golfer is listening to the radio or watching the tv at the right time. It was very hard to track and a pretty inefficient means of advertising.
The Facebook pixel allows you to target market exactly who wants your product or service. Is someone browsing your Lesson Page on your website? You could create an Ad for a complimentary lesson to show up in their newsfeed. Have a bride who is poking around your pricing page online? Create an Ad where she is offered a free Wedding Planner to download. The possibilities of use with the Facebook pixel are endless!
It turns your marketing into spending money on Your Perfect Golfer! It’s the exact person who wants to play golf at your golf course and has spent time on your website. Talk about advertising money well spent!
Where to Find Your Pixel
Pixels are offered in your Facebook Ads Manager. Don’t freak out. It looks a little intense when you find your way there, but there are tons of valuable information located at your finger tips. Open up your Ads Manager.
Once you’re there, you’re going to want to click in the top left hand corner and click on Pixel.
Next, you’ll follow the steps to grab your pixel. It provides the option to copy it or email it to your Web Designer.
Loading Your Facebook Pixel on Your Website
Obviously, the easiest way to make this happen is to have your web designer do it. It should take less than five minutes to complete. It’s a very simple task. Read on… I have a trick that you can use to make sure it was done in a timely and correct fashion.
If you have a WordPress website, there are a couple of free plugins that allow you to insert the pixel in the header. Sometimes themes have this ability and these plugins may not be necessary. You’ll have to see if you’re able to insert code into the header or if you’ll need these two free plugins.
Those two free plugins are: Insert Headers & Footers and the Facebook Conversion Pixel One assists with the pixel while the others allows you to insert code into the header and footer section of your WordPress site.
If you host your own website or use another service, then you’ll want to contact them or google the method for placing code in the header. I’ll try not to get too techy with you, but I’m going to explain what that means.
Behind the scenes of a website, there is a lot of code doing some heavy lifting. Before you even see the words on the web page, there is some code located in what is called the header. When you’re writing html, you always begin your coding with the word in a bracket, so the header starts with the word <head>. After that code, there is a bunch of information that is placed, so that the server knows how to display the page. Your font selection and color, background color and all of the other design elements are placed in this section, plus anything you need to tell a search engine like your keywords or meta tags. When you’re ready to close the header because all of the information has been placed, you close html code by using the / button. That means that the header is closed by typing </head>. The next code to appear is the <body> which is then followed with all of the lovely words you see here that make up the main body of your web page. When you’re done with the body, it’s closed with </body>.
Too much?
Sorry. I have a curious mind and I would have wanted to know that information. Weird fact about me. I actually taught myself coding about twenty years ago by using an old service called Netscape. I used to take apart websites to figure out how they were put together. You can’t really do that anymore, but it was fun back then and I learned tons of useless information that has now come in handy for this blog post.
Full circle!!
Now that you know how to post in the header, you’re going to want to post that javascript code that Facebook provided into the header of every page you want to track on your website. Bam! You’re tracking, baby.
Check Your Work
If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be nervous about inserting this pixel for fear you’re going to break the internet. Trust me. You’re not. If the internet can handle Kim Kardashian, then it can handle you doing a little web work.
Just get your hands dirty and get in there and do the work. You will absolutely love how dialed in your marketing can be when you have the pixel in place. For instance, you can set up an ad for people who visit your Lesson Page. That ad might be about lessons or information about upcoming clinics.
THEN… You can set up another ad for people who have been on your Lesson Confirmation Page which means they have already signed up! You can either give them information about an upcoming clinic or sell them a new set of clubs – whatever makes sense as an upgrade to already signing up for your lesson clinic. The possibilities are endless and it’s as though you are speaking directly to Your Perfect Golfer! Talk about not wasting anymore advertising dollars! Yes!
Where was I? Oh yes. Checking your work.
To check to make sure you’ve installed the Pixel correctly, you’re going to want to download the Chrome extension called Facebook Pixel Helper. Obviously, you’ll need to use the Chrome browser for this to work. Side note: if you don’t use the Chrome browser, you should. It’s the best and most secure.
See? There you can see that it was installed correctly. If you hover over the </> in the tool bar, you can see the popup that displays that your pixel is installed!
This will work on every website that uses a Facebook pixel. This is the exact thing that I used in order to confidently be able to tell you that less than 1% of all golf course websites have the Facebook pixel installed. I spent an entire day trying to find one and out of the 1,000’s of golf course websites I looked over, I found ONE golf course website with the pixel. Seriously! Are we behind the times or WHAT! Let’s get on it my golf course operator friends. Let’s take advantage of some fantastic technology.
There you have it! There’s the pixel. A wonderful brother who doesn’t have any gas problems! Score!!
If you haven’t already, you should consider signing up for my Masters Club. I go into even more detail about Facebook ads and how to set them up as well as provide you with Swipe files of my own ads that you can use because I like you. The Masters Club is like hitting the easy button for golf course marketing!
