Facebook Traffic: An Introduction to The Facebook Lookalike Audiences and the Facebook Pixel for Affiliate Marketers
My team and I have been heavy Facebook affiliate marketers for the better part of 5 years.
Facebook has been touted the crème de la crème of internet traffic for about the last 10 years and has created thousands of 6 figure super affiliate and many millionaires.
It can be frustrating at times as the algorithms change and terms of service adjust, but even with account shut downs and credit cards issues, we always come back to the “gravy train” of traffic.
I remember when we could run Student Loan Pay Per call before the change of ‘terms of service’ in early 2017 and we had some days of nearly $10K in profit…
Most normal people think that Facebook advertising is complicated and the word “pixel” scares most newbies and non-techie people.
The fact of the matter is that “pixel” is a simple piece of code you can copy and paste to your site or landing page, and in some cases integrate with 3rd party platforms like Eventbrite.
What is actually super complicated is the back-end algorithms and technology that makes it work…
We are talking about machine learning and artificial intelligence that’s next level and insanely efficient.
Facebook has done an amazing job making the platform easier over the years and improving features so that the average business owner can log on and generate traffic and become internet marketer themselves.
Let’s Talk About How the Pixel Works:
In my early days of affiliate marketing I was using mobile traffic source like Exoclick and Pop Ads and for the most party the targeting was dismal.
You would be able to target by country, devices, and maybe which site your ads were appearing on, and this was about as good as it was.
Along came Facebook and with the whole behavior, interest, and targeted demographics…
And you can even target people that are likely to make a purchase!
This is Facebook Pixel at its finest.
Step #1 Facebook Pixel Set up in The Ad Manager
Inside your asset library you will find your Pixel
I blurred out my specific identifiers, this is the “base code”
Step #2 Add the “Event Code”
This is where you actually want to record the action people are doing.
In my Halloween example when people buy a ticket that would be a “make purchase” event.
I also have a pixel set up for when people are just landing on the web site and they are “Viewing Content” website action view content.
I think you get the picture here – Facebook is basically tracking the actions of every single user on your site
They are doing the heavy lifting of figuring out what your viewer, buyers, etc are doing and you don’t have to guess about your audience these days, the Facebook Algorithm does it all for you.
This is a Marketer’s Dream!!
Don’t let the technical stuff get in the way, here is a step by step on how to install it.
If you are selling tickets and want to install and purchase pixel on Eventbrite here is a step by step.
Here is the pixels trouble shooting section from Facebook, if you are having issues.
So how can you profit from the FB Pixel, let me show you how:
Let’s talk about a sample campaign
- 100,000 people see your Facebook ad
- 2,000 people click your ad and land on your advertorial
- 30 people have make a purchase
- 5 go on to buy the upsell as well
With Pixel properly installed,
- Now you can retarget to anyone of those groups
- Or you can make a new audience just like the ones that have purchased aka a custom LookALike audience
For the Purpose of this post we will be talking about #2 if you want to learn about retargeting I wrote an entire separate post on that.
This Method has been crushing for us with affiliate offers.
Many a times we ask our affiliate networks for a “Buyers List”, people that have actually purchased the product in the past, then we upload into Facebook to create a lookalike audience.
Facebook Lookalike Audience:
“A lookalike audience is a targeting audience based on a custom audience. Examples of custom audiences include people on your email list, website visitors, and Facebook users who engage with your video or Facebook page.”
A good rule of thumb is, you need about 1000 hits on your pixel’s event code to gather enough data for the machine learning to kick in.
We call this “buying data” or “seasoning the pixel”
Expert tip:
Say you run a campaign in the AU(Australia) you can make a lookalike audience in other countries using that same data.
This is How Lookalike Audiences and The Facebook Pixel Work
So let’s take the example above and the pixel tracked 2000 people that landed on my Halloween site.
Facebook’s machine AI will analyze the and find 100s of 1000s more, maybe even millions!
Nobody knows exactly how this Algorithm works but we can assume that the interests are taken into consideration…
The Pixel for example, might find people have interests like:
- Sports cars
- Night clubs
- Music festivals
- Chicago, IL
(This is just me making up an example)
The combo of interest is Facebook’s “special sauce” that really only maybe the coders that wrote algo know the truth of how is all works.
It would be great if Facebook gave us everyone’s email so we could market to them, but the Marketers would ruin that…
Each person on Facebook has a unique ID, and Facebook will gather all the unique user Ids in your ads manager to track and make your Facebook Pixel Lookalike Audiences.
When you create your Lookalike audience the combinations that Facebook comes up with is something you could have never come up with in your head.
Facebook is so advanced and but interest is only part of the Facebook pie.
How Does Marc Zukerberg and crew know so much about us
“The thing that we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.”
Facebook’s main targeting categories
- Interest
- Demographics
- Behaviors
Let me discuss each in detail
Demographics and Interests
The users generally report the demographics right to Facebook when they sign up and become a Facebook user.
This is done by you, “reporting” your or filling out your personal information or clicking certain boxes etc. when you are adding your information.
Everything you put down, work, education, books, sports, movies, etc all of it, including things you click on, like etc, it all goes into a database.
The average Joe user on Facebook jumps on his mobile phone to see what his friends and family are up to and may check his messenger.
In the background Facebook logs his every move and since he really has no idea that he is being tracked he is just liking and enjoying his experience while Facebook is profiling him the entire time.
This Example shows 269 million people like nightclubs and have shown interest.
Behaviors
Now this is where the fun starts!
Did you know Facebook actually used to purchase data form outside groups or 3rd parties on consumer behaviors??
Just about everything you do with your credit cards, rewards programs, at retail stores and online stores is tracked, and you guessed it right. Facebook used to buy that information.
There are companies that specialize in data collection from consumers and if you would like to know more here are the companies that they get it from in the U.S.:
Here are the Links in here
United States
A few of those might sound familiar, like the credit reporting ones.
Facebook knows your income level and credit score, might be helpful in determining if you are a buyer or not??
Facebook User reported data and purchased third-party data make up behaviors
It’s like a math equation User Behavior = 3rd party data + user reported demographics and interests.
Here is what purchased data used to look like when you were creating an ad, a source will be listed.
Now this came about in April 2017 after Zuck went in front of Congress and you no longer see “sources” like the image above.
“Last month, Facebook said it was ending an ad program that allowed marketers to pair information about a user’s offline activities with their Facebook profile. This program, called “Partner Categories,” used data gathered from other companies like Acxiom (ACXM), Experian and Oracle Data Cloud (ORCL).
“These categories allow you to further refine your targeting based on information compiled by these partners, such as offline demographic and behavioral information like homeownership or purchase history,” Facebook explained when it introduced the program in 2013.
The program will wind down over the next six months, Facebook said, explaining that the step would “help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.” –CBS News
My guess is there is still some 3rd party data being brought into the mix.
How are Lookalike Audiences built by Facebook?
When you use interest and the 3rd party data together, the algorithm will run differently and Facebook will pass the cost of the 3rd party data into the ad click cost.
Let me give an example:
When you target just interests, this is what you get:
I want Facebook users that like Fords, Ford mustangs, and Ford Trucks.
You can add in interests and demographics to hone in on it even more.
With interests and Behaviors together the algo will find:
We can potentially find people that like fords, ford mustangs, and ford trucks and people likely to purchase a new car, with a credit score above a certain number.
Note: somehow Facebook will know that person is likely to buy a new car, don’t ask me how.
Why is this important for Affiliate Marketers
Let’s say you are running a Click Bank Offer like the Fat Decimater by Wesley Virgin and your pixel fires when a purchase is made, after enough purchases are made the pixel has the necessary data, that’s when the Facebook Algorithm can get to work.
You can run an ad to the Lookalike Audience and those people are far more likely to buy and the people that see your ad will likely be more receptive and happy to see your content.
(This is important because if we are getting sales we will spend more $$ with Facebook)
Facebook made your ad relevant to your audience. Here is some information on relevance scores
The Pixel has made us millions
You can see how powerful the pixel is.
This is why I have 4 media buyers and I’m running mainly on Facebook, they are constantly improving the platform and making it better for advertisers.
The have strict rules and account shut downs are super annoying.
But the traffic is 2nd to none and still reasonably priced to make money as an affiliate.
So in conclusion we just deal with it.
Are you interested in more Facebook Content??
Is the pixel working for you??
