In social media’s ever-changing landscape of trends, features, and rollouts, businesses need every advantage they can get. But when you’re constantly bombarded with the latest and greatest, it’s hard to know what tools will be the most effective for your business. 

Enter the Facebook pixel, a social media tracking tool and the hospitality industry’s digital best friend. Using a pixel allows you to retarget online audiences, track revenue, and garner invaluable insights into your target market’s planning and booking habits.

But before we get into all the benefits the Facebook pixel can provide, let’s take a look at what it is and how you can use it.

What is the Facebook pixel?

The pixel is a piece of code hooked up to Facebook Ads Manager that is placed on the backend of a website to track website visits, sales conversions, and other analytics based on your paid advertising efforts. When someone visits the website and takes an action—such as booking a room—that conversion triggers the pixel, which then reports that action in Ads Manager.

How it works

Upon a user’s arrival at your website, the pixel drops a cookie into the user’s browser that then tracks their internet behavior. This allows you to “follow them around” with custom advertising and remarketing.

Bonus: The more conversions that happen on your website, the better Facebook’s algorithm gets at delivering your ads to people who are more likely to take those desired actions.

How to use it

To implement the Facebook pixel, the BCV team first sets up the “base code”, the main piece of code that will be dropped into the entire website. After the base code is established, other snippets of code, called “event codes,” are implemented onto specific landing pages. Event codes track certain “events,” or actions, such as “Add to Cart” (when a user adds a hotel room to their cart) or “Purchase Event” (when a user completes an online booking). After the codes are packaged up, we send them off to the client or web team to be implemented.

Another important component is dynamic tracking, which is a feature that tracks how much is spent when booking. Adding dynamic tracking means that the BCV team will be able to pull in the website’s revenue through Facebook Business Manager. (For example, it could track 5 conversions at $10,000 in revenue.)

Once the pixel is launched, you’re set to go on tracking! The pixel will start pulling data right away. To gain concrete, actionable insights, we recommend using the pixel for a few months or over several campaigns.

Why it’s significant

Using Facebook pixels is the best way to track and attribute revenue to social advertising efforts. It’s how we can show the true value of social, as it can track 28 days post-view and post-click (most hotel click tags only track for an average 3-10 days).

The pixel also allows you to retarget a highly qualified and valuable audience who have already shown interest in your property by visiting the website. Users don’t have to necessarily click or engage with an ad, but instead just have to be logged into their Facebook account and navigate to the corresponding property website in order to be included in Facebook’s Remarketing Audiences feature.

The benefits of the pixel

• Shows confirmed revenue: Adding dynamic tracking will allow you to track confirmed revenue.
• Collects data and analytics: The pixel collects useful insight, such as room bookings details—how much revenue one particular booking generates, what room types or packages are generating the most revenue, what offers are being used, etc.
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• Helps in remarketing: Because the pixel lets you track a user’s habits, you can follow them from website to website with targeted ads.

Area of concern: downsides?

There are no downsides to using the pixel: our team does not charge any incremental fee to place the pixel, it doesn’t slow your website down and, because it works separately from a property’s social pages, it won’t affect engagement or visibility on Facebook or Instagram.

The bottom line

Using a Facebook pixel will allow you to better track your audience, see where they’re coming from, and gain insights from their online habits. From there you can tailor ads to follow them around, customize future offers, and leverage your marketing strategy to increase revenue. With all the benefits and none of the disadvantages, there’s no reason not to incorporate the Facebook pixel into your social marketing strategy.