Being the resident marketing guy here at ASF affords me the opportunity to speak to print studios and artists on a regular basis.

I get to hear about how your businesses are operating and what you are struggling with most, and what areas you need the most help with right now.

For 9/10 of the folks I talk to, its traffic.

It’s getting your art and services in front of more eyeballs.

So how do you do that?

Well, there are a ton of ways to do so. Many of which we plan on blogging about here in the future.

For the purposes of this post, we are talking about Facebook Ads.

Facebook, in my opinion, represents one of the greatest opportunities of generating more targeted traffic to your art and services.

In a previous post I blogged about how to setup the re-marketing pixel on your website and how important it is to do so.

As part of our series on Facebook we are going to blog about how to advertise on Facebook, we are going to run case studies, and we are going to report back with real data on both how easy and how effective advertising on Facebook can be.

For today’s post we are sticking to getting the proper foundation in place.

Essential in that process is ensuring you have your tracking in place before you spend even a $ on any ads.

You need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads and know you are seeing the ROI.

To do that we are going to need to setup and install a conversion code on your website so we can track conversions.

Facebook conversion tracking explained.

Succinctly, you place a line of code on the checkout page of your website. When somebody sees your Facebook ads and then converts into a sale, that Facebook ad gets credit for the conversion.

This will give you the ability to effectively measure your ad spend and prove out if its working for you.

How to install the checkout conversion code on your Art Store Fronts Site.

These steps assume you already have your Facebook ads account setup, if you don’t you can learn how to do that in this post. Go do it and then comeback

1. Navigate to www.facebook.com/ads/manager/pixel/facebook_pixel and click on the button labeled Set Up Pixel.

   

2. Select the option labeled Copy And Paste The Code.

   

3. Under Install The Base Pixel Code, scroll down and copy the code in the box. Be sure not to change it. You may also click Next.

   

4. In a new tab, go to the back end of your Art Storefronts Website and in the Info & Settings section, find the tab labeled Scripts and paste the code into the Head box and click Save.

   

5. Return to Facebook and scroll down to the Event Code section and find the item labeled Purchase.

   

6. Copy the code in the box.

   

7. Return to your Art Storefronts back end and from the Scripts page, click the tab labeled Key Conversions Events.

   

8. Find the section labeled Success Pageand paste the code and then click Save.
9. 

Now you will have to wait till you get a sale. Facebook will tell you this until you have.

Recorded an online sale?

Ok come back and check Facebook and the pixel should read as active.

Its good. Now you are setup and ready to roll.

Time to start running some ads.

2016 UPDATE: THE NEW FACEBOOK PIXEL

In late 2015, Facebook announced a change to the pixel system that will replace existing conversion pixels with a single, more powerful pixel they’re calling the “Facebook Pixel.”

If you’re creating a Facebook Ad account for the first time you’ll be prompted to create your new Facebook Pixel. Just follow the steps as they appear:

1. Login to your Facebook Page and click “Manage Ads”

   

2. Select “Increase conversions on your website” as the goal, and click “Create a Pixel”

   

3. Name your Pixel

   

4. Click “Install,” or email it to yourself for later

   

5. Copy the Pixel code

• Insert it into your ASF site’s “head” code – Info and Setting → Scripts → Site Wide

  

You’ll notice at the bottom of the Facebook page that provides you with your Pixel code, there is a table with code to “Add Conversion Tracking.” These are how you add special functionality to your Facebook Pixel.

Simply insert it just before the closing “/script” bracket in your Facebook Pixel code (see below).

And here’s a closer look at those modifiers, that Facebook calls “Standard Events”

If you’re upgrading your existing conversion tracking pixels to the new Facebook Pixel then your path will look like this:

1. In the Ads Manager, navigate to the Pixel dashboard

   

   This is also the screen you’ll return to whenever you want to check in on your Pixel performance.

2. View your Pixel code

   

From here, you’ll pick up with step #5 above. Remember to remove the code from your old conversion tracking pixels as you insert the new code.