FB Conversion Pixel Going Away

0:00All right. So we are going to talk about how the Facebook conversion pixel is going to be going away. Did you hear about this? I did not hear about this. Okay, let me explain. So it makes a lot of sense because Google is talking about that whole cookie-less future, right? And we are going into a cookie-less future. And so a lot of people in the more specifically D2C space are saying, hey, the Facebook conversion pixel is going away. And I think that's interesting because, well, the Apple kind of OTT updates, right? And the app tracking transparency. And then you have the - Well, it's already happening.

0:32The reason Facebook ads aren't as effective as they used to be, once iOS released the privacy changes, a lot of the conversions aren't as trackable. So it's hard for Facebook to say, all right, show me more buyers that look just like these group of people, which helps them with targeting. And once iOS released those changes, it became harder for them. Google's making those changes in 2024 as well. I believe it's Q1 of 2024 that they're rolling it out. I could be off of my dates, but they've changed it a few times. Originally, it was supposed to be 2023, which is going to make their tracking not as effective.

1:05So let's talk about what people should do about this then. Yeah. So what you should end up doing is first, you should set up your own analytics and you should be using things like UTM variables. By using UTM variables, you can send users to specific pages and you can see what traffic sources are causing those conversions. For example, if you just send someone to your homepage, it's harder to track if that campaign did as well versus sending them to a very specific URL that makes it much more trackable. And you can do that for Facebook or Google or any channel for that matter. You saw Apple's taking the UTMs away.

1:43Apple's taking the UTMs away? Apple's taking the UTMs away. I thought that was only for App Store, no? No, just in general, because they're trying to remove more and more tracking. So it's who knows what percentage of the web uses Apple. I mean, we're both on Apple devices. Either way, even if you don't use UTM, it doesn't matter. You can actually set up your own custom URLs and send people directly to them from different channels and you will be able to track that. Yeah. I think just trying to track everything, it's becoming more difficult to do so. I think the X factor at the end of the day still is what we've been talking about really the last couple of months.

2:12It's you want to have your own first party data, right? So your email list, your SMS, right? Collecting as much information as you can, and you're going to have data on your customer base too. but also you want to have control of your creative too because that's what's going to stand out at the end of the day. So I believe we've talked about this. This is just like a piece of marketing getting harder. Sure, Facebook conversion pixels going away but it's no different than what we've been saying for the last couple of months. Plus on the internet, we survived many more years without UTMs and we were able to figure it out.

2:40It's not the biggest deal in the world. No joke. You can just set up specific landing pages with specific URLs that are designated only for certain traffic channels and you'll be able to track your conversions. But what Eric was saying is totally right. You need to have first-party data and you need to not just have first-party data, but you need to harness it. You need to create your own repository of saying, hey, here's user X and this is what they do. This is what they like. This is what they don't. Here are the marketing campaigns that I should be sending them to generate the most ROI. Here are the channels that are creating the best newsletter subscriptions from newsletters.

3:15Every time we do an email blast, here's a revenue generated. And then you can start looking at, just like I said with newsletters, you can look at every single channel and not just traffic channel, but is it, you know, a newsletter that's causing conversions? Once you already bought that traffic is not everyone converts right away. Or did you end up getting them to convert through a text message later on? Or do you get them to convert through push notification? Or did they follow you organically on social? And then it was a social conversion. And with your analytics, you also need to do multi-touch attribution because these days, typically it's not that someone comes to your website once and then right away they buy.

3:50It's more so they see the product, they hear about it. A lot of times a rule of seven in marketing, when they see or interact with your brand seven times, makes them more loyal, more likely to purchase. And then you can start attributing, spend two different channels and look at which ones have a better ROI than others. No, I have a friend that I think he makes 25 to$30 million a year from his email list. and he mostly sells his traffic on a performance basis. So let's say if you're a bank or something like that, then if you're paying for leads, right? That's what you'd be paying for. And so he has all his first party data.

4:23It is the same exact example you're using. So he knows what kind of customers they are, how they behave and all that. And at the end of the day, they built their own tool really to understand what the LTV was per subscriber and per region and all that. And that's the power of first party data. Like that's not available anywhere else. And I'm like, do you know of any other tool that's available that does that? He's like, no. there's a lot of companies that have a ton of first-party data look at all the credit card companies yeah and what you want to end up building in essence is called a cdp customer data platform the customer data platform will allow you to harness your first-party data to make better informed marketing decisions what are the top cdps they like the segment what else is there would mutiny be considered one no mutiny is for personalization okay i don't know of any good ones dude most of the companies we work with that have amazing cdps they've built the solutions in-house.

5:11Yeah. And I think that's probably the most long-term practical solution. Even the mutinies, like thinking about it with all these privacy changes, it's actually going to be harder for them to personalize as well. It's going to be less effective. Yeah. Well, a couple of years ago, I had to be on this podcast, probably five, six years ago, we were talking about CDPs already. And I was testing that crap out of the CDP and it was cool, but it didn't get me everything I needed. And so did I have the time to build my own right now? Not right now, maybe in the future. If you have enough first-party data, you need to end up building your own because you're going to have a lot of unique requirements that other platforms cannot provide.

5:44All right. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe on the podcasts, whatever podcast platforms you're using, but also subscribe to us on YouTube as well. And we'll see you later. We appreciate those five-star reviews. Thank you.