Facebook’s Conversion API – what marketers need to know

Accurately tracking and improving campaign performance is at the top of every marketer’s wish list. Every ‘event’ that happens online can be gold dust for marketers. The greater the visibility you have of the data needed to track conversion events, optimise ads and re-target users, the stronger the position you are in as a marketer.

When it comes to customers' engagement with your online channels, the ability to not only see but measure interactions like site clicks, downloads, and pageviews is enough to get marketers rubbing their hands with glee.

After all, for marketers, gathering as much data as possible from as many touchpoints as possible is the name of the game. So, in autumn 2021, when Facebook partnered up with Amazon and launched the Conversion API Gateway, it was a very exciting day for Facebook advertisers.

This partnership has unleashed a lot more opportunities for marketers to measure and optimise their online channels. There are, however, some aspects of Facebook’s data toolkit that every marketer needs to consider…

Getting data on the customer journey

When talking Facebook and data, you’re likely to come across two key models – the Conversion API Gateway and the Facebook Pixel, but what’s the difference? In simple terms:

• The Facebook Conversions API gives you insight into the entire customer journey on your website pages; web conversions (like sales or signups), post-conversion events (like approvals for a loan) and page visits. It gives advertisers the ability to create a direct connection between your data and Facebook.

• The Facebook Pixel helps you to see how users are engaging with your website pages after viewing your Facebook ads.

By combining both models, marketers can gain a lot of insights into customers behaviour. But, issues around data privacy are very much a hot topic right now, and they could give marketers a few headaches in the near future.

The main challenge with the Facebook pixel is that it’s essentially a third-party cookie and the whole marketing space has been shaken up with news that the third-party cookie is facing its final days. Even with Facebook's data suite, businesses looking to support optimising, governing and protecting client’s data will still need to consider working with an integration partner to drive data securely into the Facebook Conversion API.

The best solution to this problem is connecting 1st-party data directly to the Facebook advertising platform. Yes, Facebook is a powerful tool for conversion data, but it means that all eyes are on what’s happening online. It’s vital to understand that not every conversion happens in Facebook’s digital sphere, and, without the full online and offline picture, marketers will always suffer from a lack of visibility on their conversion data.

Marketers must commit to bridging this gap between online and offline customer interactions, Interactions that take place offline, such as on a phone call, cannot be processed using Conversions API Gateway. And yet, the telephone call is still (and will continue to be) a key form of communication for customers.

So, what can you do if your customer interacts with your Facebook ad but then decides to pick up the phone and take their interaction offline?

How to make the customers offline journey visible

While Facebook’s Conversion API Gateway offers you a wealth of data to improve your attribution analysis, if you’re unable to track those calls that come from your Facebook ads, you instantly lose visibility of the specific touchpoints that compelled the customer to call. And, as every marketer needs more granular first-party data, call tracking is a solution well worth investigating.

Our call tracking tool can give you an extra layer of insight on the customer journey that you wouldn’t already have with Facebook’s Conversion API Gateway or the Facebook Pixel.

As an official Facebook Marketing Partner we can proudly say that our platform meets the high standards of performance and service expected by Facebook.

Implementing call tracking means you get an extra dose of first party data fed back into Facebook Ads, which can help you drive future campaigns to greater results based on real commercial performance. It provides a clear view of any advertising blind spots and can tell you the specific marketing activities, keywords and channels that motivated your customers to call you.

Connecting your offline and online conversions

If you’re a business that receives customer phone calls, you’ll need to use either Facebook’s Conversion API Gateway (or CAPI-G as it’s known) or a Partner integration with a platform that sends all relevant website event data. And, where phone calls are a success metric for your business, you’ll need to integrate a call analytics provider as well.

Thanks to our partnership with Facebook, marketers can send their data to Ads Manager efficiently and securely. We released our CAPI integration in 2021, so our customers can benefit from privacy and data efficiencies whilst ensuring high levels of offline conversion attribution. By bringing this data into your attribution report, you get greater visibility on what's leading to conversions along the customer journey so you can make even smarter bidding decisions.

“Since integrating Infinity with our Facebook Ads manager accounts, we have been able to attribute the successes of our campaigns much better, including qualified calls in reporting that were previously unavailable. ” – Nick Meynell | Digital Marketing Leader (Biddable Media), Pendragon

Enjoy the benefits of call tracking directly from Facebook (in minutes)

Facebook products are currently used by over 3 billion people across the globe, with 180+ million businesses using Facebook’s services to connect with them. Infinity is excited to bolster our offering to your business and help you connect your conversions to the calls that matter the most to you.

Infinity clients can now set this up in minutes. All you need to do is visit our Campus to see how to get set up and instantly gain greater insight into how to optimise your Facebook ads.

Key takeaways

So, what have we learned? Here are the key takeaways on Facebook Conversions API and how you can harness a wealth of insights using Infinity’s call intelligence suite to drive more conversions.

• Infinity’s integration with Facebook lets you understand the phone traffic driven by your Facebook activity.

• Adding call tracking to your tech stack shows you a complete picture of the events your activities drive, by automatically sending events into Facebook after each call.

• Using your call data, you can increase the ROI you see from Facebook advertising campaigns.

Ready to see the full impact of your Facebook activity? Every conversation matters. Start one with us today to find out how our partnership with Facebook can unlock a ton of enriched data to boost your advertising performance.