If you've implemented a pixel, want to drive website sales and are getting more than 500 - but less than 10,000 - monthly pixel events, this is the right guide for you. It shows you how to start experimenting with conversion optimisation so you can find approaches that work for you before scaling up your campaigns.

If you don't yet have at least 500 monthly pixel events, read our introductory guide instead. If you have over 10,000 monthly pixel events, read our advanced guide.

The basics

Before starting to use conversion optimisation, make sure that you understand the terms and tools related to the technique.

What's a conversion?

A conversion is an action taken on your website. This can include anything from visiting a page to completing a purchase.

What does it mean to "optimise" for a conversion?

When creating an ad set, you have to make an optimisation event choice. This choice tells our delivery system what result to try to get for you. For example, some advertisers may want to optimise for link clicks while others may want to optimise for video views. One advantage of implementing a pixel is that you can tell the delivery system to optimise not just for link clicks to your website, but for an action taken on your website.

Understand your tools

Before you start optimising for conversions, you should familiarise yourself with:

• The types of conversion events available to you. You have to pick a specific conversion to optimise for – you can't just optimise for conversions in general. Picking the right one is critical (more information on this in the next section). Learn about the two conversion types: standard events and custom conversions.
• Conversion windows. In addition to selecting a conversion, you have to select a conversion window. A conversion window tells us which conversions to use for delivery optimisation (e.g. those that happen within one day of an impression or seven days of a click).
• Attribution windows. Attribution windows are the reporting system's equivalent of conversion windows. To understand the results of your conversion optimisation campaigns, make sure that you know how to customise your columns and select the attribution window that aligns with your conversion window. This is also crucial in making sure that you're getting about 50 of the conversion event you optimised for within your conversion window (more on this in the next section).

Start optimising for conversions

With an understanding of those terms and tools, begin running some conversion-optimised ad sets. We recommend continuing to run traffic and engagement ads as you do this so that you keep building up data and solidifying your target audience.

Note: Just selecting the Conversions marketing objective doesn't mean that your ad set's delivery will be optimised for conversions. You have to choose the specific conversion that you care about in the drop-down of the "Conversions" section of ad set creation, and then select Conversions in the drop-down of the "Optimisation for ad delivery" section.

Choose the right conversion to optimise for

When optimising for rarer results (e.g. conversions are rarer than engagement on your Page or link clicks to your website), bear in mind that we recommend getting about 50 optimisation events within your conversion window per week. These 50 have to be attributable to your ads. Conversions that don't result from someone seeing/clicking (depending on your conversion window) one of your ads or that happen outside the conversion window don't count towards the 50. For example, if you have a 1-day post-click conversion window for purchase conversions and someone clicks your ad and completes a purchase three days later, that doesn't count towards the 50.

To help you choose the right conversion, check your pixel events before you set up your ad set. We recommend optimizing for a conversion that occurs at least 100 times a month without running any ads. If your website doesn't get at least that many conversions without ads, it's very unlikely that we'll be able to find enough converters through ads for your ad set to be successful. If you're not seeing enough of any single pixel event, you may want to spend more time building up website traffic and a customer base.

Here are some ad set creation options that we recommend trying when starting to optimise through your pixel:

• Landing page views: This conversion drives higher quality traffic than link clicks do, as a landing page view only occurs when the page you want to send people to loads. (If someone clicks a link, but then closes down your page before it loads, that still counts as a link click).
• More common conversions: It may be tempting to jump right to optimising for purchases, assuming that's what you ultimately care about. However, purchases are the rarest type of conversion. Especially when you're just getting started using your pixel for conversion optimisation, we recommend choosing more common ones. For example, instead of optimising for purchases, optimise for adds-to-basket or page views. Both events are more likely to lead to a purchase than, say, someone engaging with a post on your Page, but may occur frequently enough that we can consistently get you that result (whereas purchases may not at first).
• Automatic placement: This allows us to find conversions across the Facebook family of apps and services. It can help increase the number of people you reach and also control costs.

Create the right target audience

Many of the same targeting strategies we recommend in our introductory guide still apply. We'd also recommend these strategies:

• Use website Custom Audiences. Once you've built up enough website traffic, you can create a Custom Audience made up of the people visiting your website. This is a great tool because you don't have to keep uploading new files – we'll keep your audience updated for you based on who visits your website.
• Use detailed targeting. Targeting people based on their interests, not just their demographic information, is generally more effective for conversion optimisation. You may also want to think about what traits your competitors may be targeting and either use them too (to compete) or avoid them (to find your own niche).

  We highly recommend using targeting expansion in conjunction with detailed targeting. It allows our system to show your ads to people who fall outside the criteria that you chose in detailed targeting if we think it'll help us get you more conversions. It allows you to try some specific interest-based targeting while reducing the risk of it negatively affecting performance if your choices would've otherwise been overly restrictive.
• Use cross-border targeting: If your products can be used or delivered globally, Facebook offers worldwide and regional targeting options. This can greatly expand the reach of your campaigns, opening them up to a range of new (and potentially better) results. You can tell us to deliver your ads all over the world, or tell us to deliver them in specific regions (e.g. Europe, Asia) or free trade areas (e.g. NAFTA).

Choose the right bid strategy

As you start transitioning into conversion optimisation, you may want to consider adjusting your bid strategy accordingly. The results that you're optimising for are getting closer to a true business outcome, which may mean that you're better able to assign a value to them. You can give our delivery system this value in the form of a target cost or a bid cap, which are part of the target cost and lowest cost bid strategies, respectively. This gives our delivery system valuable information that enables it to further refine the types of results that it pursues in alignment with your goals.

Using the lowest cost bid strategy without a bid cap is still an option, but some advertisers want to take more control over their performance as they start using these more advanced techniques.

If you choose to use a cost target or bid cap, you need to work out what amount to set. We can't tell you exactly what to set, but here are some factors to consider to help you work it out:

• A good starting point is what a conversion within your conversion window is worth to you – whether on average (cost target) or at most (bid cap). Try starting with this and raising it if performance is unsatisfactory.
• When figuring out how much a conversion is worth to you, consider lifetime value too. For example, if you get a new customer to buy something, that could lead to future purchases too. That value should be factored in.
• Bear in mind how each bid strategy and ad auctions work: A cost target tells our system to bid for results with an average cost as close to your target as possible. If you use a cost target, set the average amount you actually want to (or can afford to) pay. A bid cap sets a maximum amount that we'll bid for you, and bids are not the same as what a result costs. In fact, you may end up paying less than your bid in many cases. Given this, consider setting your bid cap at the maximum amount you'd be willing to pay for any given conversion.

Understand your results

In order to improve and maintain your results, you need to make sure that you're analysing them correctly. Read our guide to analysing the results of conversion optimisation campaigns.

Next steps

If you experiment with these strategies, you should be able to find which ones work for you and eventually get over 10,000 pixel events on your website each month. Once you do, read our advanced guide on how to scale up and refine your campaigns.

* Nguồn: Facebook