Why You Should Set Up a Conversion
API For Facebook Tracking
Facebook Conversion API is a powerful tool that helps you track user conversions and build better, more relevant campaigns. It is a step up from the Facebook Pixel – a piece of code that you paste into your website – that helps you track conversions and improve ad targeting.
While it is still useful, the Conversion API takes things a step further by allowing you to send conversion events directly from your server to Facebook. But wait, there’s more! As London’s leading conversion rate optimisation agency, we have put together all the basics we know about the Facebook Conversion API in this article. Let’s dive in!
What is the Facebook conversion API?
Facebook Conversion API is a new way to share data between Facebook and your business. It is a tool for sharing high-value, sensitive data more easily, reliably and securely. It is designed to give you more control over your analytics, by letting you send conversions from both your online and offline data, such as call centre data, website, or point-of-sale systems, back to Facebook.
For example, if you are an eCommerce business that tracks product purchases in an internal system, you can share that information with Facebook through this API so that you can create audiences based on people who have purchased products from your business or measure the impact of your ads on the products people purchase.
The API is intended for marketing teams that work directly with developers to manage their Facebook integration. So, it also supports more standard events, such as purchases or leads, which you can use to create audiences and measure the impact of your ads.
With Facebook conversion API, you can track three types of data:
- Website conversions
- Post-conversion activities
- Page visits
- Since you can integrate your CRM into the Facebook Conversions API, the data and reports generated in the system are much richer than those of Pixel, making insights that much more valuable.
5 reasons to start using Facebook Conversion API
To Reduce Your Cost Per Action
Simply put, Facebook Conversion API gives you access to in-depth data. You can get data about the users who take action on your site after clicking on your ad, learn more about these customers, and use this information for further targeting in future ads.
As a result, it can help reduce your cost per action (CPA) because when you have better data, you can improve ad targeting and prevent budget waste.
In addition, with the Facebook Conversion API, you can report conversions to Facebook. This can further reduce your cost per action by preventing non-conversions from being counted, improving ad targeting and helping you optimize for actions more relevant to your business goals.
For example, if a customer adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, you can use the Conversion API to prevent that action from counting as a conversion and use it to tighten your funnel.
To Get Complete Data Despite Ad Blockers
Facebook Conversion API works no matter what device your customers are using, even if they are using ad blockers or VPNs. This makes sure nothing gets between you and complete data and ensures there are fewer gaps in your data so that you can get a more accurate picture of how effective your ads are.
Because your data will come directly from Facebook servers, you don’t have to worry about the challenges that come with Pixel tracking — like when a visitor has cookies disabled or when a browser sends an incorrect HTTP referrer header. So, there’s a high level of accuracy and almost no room for error.
To Capture Lower-Funnel Activity
Facebook Conversion API’s greatest benefit is the flexibility it gives you in choosing which types of activities to send to Facebook. You can decide what makes sense for your business and be more granular about which activities are valuable for your marketing strategy.
For example, a hotel chain might want to track people who make room reservations by phone, whereas a restaurant would want to track people who order online.
Such a diverse level of data capturing is useful if you have a long funnel and want to record lower-funnel activity. Because let’s face it, not all conversion-related activities occur on your website. Some occur on apps, third-party payment tools, or even on customer service calls. And you can use the Facebook Conversion API to record all of those activities from all the different platforms.
To Validate User Data Against Their Facebook Profile
Valuable user data is only valuable if it can be used to form a strategy that will drive your marketing goals. The Facebook Conversion API takes the user data from your website and sends it directly to Facebook. It is then evaluated against the profile information of the logged-in Facebook users who visited your website.
This allows you to reduce erroneous data and ensure that you get verified data of those users who have used the same email address both on your site and on Facebook. As a result, the Facebook Conversion API enables you to:
- Send more accurate customer data from your site to your CRM and ERP tools.
- Validate customer identities and increase trust in your leads.
- Segment customers by age, gender or other demographics.
To Get Data Even After Cookies Are No Longer Around
Due to privacy concerns, people are gradually moving towards less invasive browsers and search engines that limit cookie usage. This has become a huge challenge for advertisers because this restriction leads to gaps in data and reports, making targeting less accurate.
Facebook Conversion API is designed to address these challenges and give businesses better insights into how people are using their properties. So, it will be the only way to get performance data when cookies become obsolete due to the changing privacy laws across the world.
Needless to say, not many businesses have started leveraging Facebook Conversion API. So, those that jump on the bandwagon early on are sure to enjoy some competitive edge in the market.
