Facebook Custom Conversions – What Are They & How To Use Them?

Do you want even more customized conversion goals? Or do you want to define a conversion with a URL rule instead of using Pixel Events? With Facebook Custom conversions all of these two are possible, as we will show in this article.

This is a beginner guide explaining everything about Facebook Custom Conversions, where we will cover:

• What is a Facebook Custom Conversion?
• When and why should you create Custom Conversions?
• Where you can access Custom Conversions in Facebook Business Manager?
• How to create Facebook Custom Conversion?
• Difference between Facebook Custom Conversions, Standard Events and Custom Events.

At the end of this guide, we will also answer some frequently asked questions related to Facebook Custom Conversions.

What is a Facebook Custom Conversion?

A Facebook Custom Conversion is a special conversion type of Facebook that you can use to measure more specific customer actions. For example, you can create a Custom Conversion for people who have purchased at least 2 products or people who purchased a specific product type.

And once you created a custom conversion, you can use it to optimize your Facebook campaign to this Custom Conversion why you run a campaign with a conversion objective. Unfortunately, you can’t make a Facebook Custom Audience out of a Custom Conversion.

Custom Conversions can be used for more as we will show in the next paragraph.

When should you create a Facebook Custom Conversion?

You can use Facebook Custom Conversions to

• filter Facebook Pixel Events to more specific user actions.
• Create Standard Events like tracking without adding any additional code to your Facebook Pixel Base code,
• optimize Facebook custom events, and all URL traffic. (these can’t be used as optimization event on their own)

Let’s go over these three one by one and explain what they mean.

Use Custom Conversions to Filter Facebook Events

These can be really useful when a specific event can happen in multiple ways and can be triggered by very different demographic groups. So let’s say, you have an e-commerce store, and you sell women and men clothes as well. You can create separate custom conversions if someone purchases only women’s or men’s clothes.

Another application you could have it to create a Custom Conversion for your most valuable buyers. So by using the value parameter value of the Purchase Standard Event, you could set a rule that would only trigger the Custom Conversion if the purchase value is higher than a certain amount.

Optimize Facebook Custom Events and All URL Traffic

Facebook Custom Events and the Basic PageView event can’t be used on their own as an optimization event when you set up new FB ads campaigns with a conversion objective. But Custom Conversions can also help you out here.

When you set up Custom Conversions, you can also choose a standard event category that is similar to the user action you want to optimize for.

So let’s say you create a Custom Conversion from All URL traffic to record purchases on your website. In this case, you would choose Purchase as a standard event for optimization. When next time you want to run a conversion campaign with a Purchase objective, you can set the optimization event at the ad set level as this new Purchase Custom Conversion, and then Facebook will try to show your ads for likely buyers.

Log Standard Events with using the Facebok Pixel base code only

When you first set up the Facebook Pixel code, you probably placed the Facebook Pixel Base code to the head section of your website. But as you probably know that will only track page views on your website, Pixel won’t log and collect the data if the page view happened on a product page on a cart page or on a thank you for your purchase kind of page.

You have to set up standard or custom Pixel events to be able to log conversions. But what if you don’t know how to set these or some Facebook Pixel Events up?

Then you can also use Custom Conversions to create basically the same type of conversions you could have by creating Facebook Standard Events. (although it is more limited than a Standard Event but still better than nothing)

All you have to use it to create a Facebook Custom Conversion with using the All URL rule. For instance, if you know that once someone purchases something from your e-commerce store they land on a URL that contains the text “thank-you”, then you can create a Custom Conversion to log any pageview that contains “thank-you” as a Purchase.

In this case, you also have to choose a Standard Event for optimization which in this case would be of course purchase.

Facebook Custom Conversions Examples

To give some additional examples of Facebook Custom Conversion we have listed out some common implementation:

• Custom Conversion from people who purchased a specific product
• Custom Conversion from people who purchased a specific product type
• Custom Conversion from people who checked their cart
• Custom Conversion from users who purchase over a certain order value
• Custom Conversion from people who purchased on a specific currency

Where To Access Custom Conversions?

You can access Custom Conversions in your Facebook Business Manager in two main ways. You can navigate there by first going to Events Manager, then on the left, click on Custom Conversions.

Or you can just simply remember or bookmark this link to access the area where you can create, edit, delete and see the performance of your Facebook Custom Conversions. The link is: https://www.facebook.com/events_manager/custom_conversions

How to create Facebook Custom Conversions?

We have a separate guide where we go step by step how you can create Facebook Custom Conversions.

We just want to show the outline of the process that is actually really easy.

1. Open the Custom Conversions page by clicking on this link.
2. Then click on Create Custom Conversions.
3. A window will pop up where you can define the name, rules and the parameters of the Custom Conversions.
4. You will have two types of options to create Custom Conversions. You can either create a Custom Conversion from All URL Traffic or from Custom and Standard Pixel Events.

If you are interested in more details of setting up Custom Conversions, check out our article on how to create Facebook Custom Conversions. Or you can also check out this quick video on how to create Custom Conversions:

How to take advantage Facebook Custom Conversions?

Once you created Facebook Custom Conversions, the Facebook Pixel will start logging it and sending the data back to Facebook.

So, when you want to create a campaign that optimizes for this Custom Conversion, Facebook will be able to use the previous Custom Conversion data to show the ads for people who are more likely to convert.

Optimize Ad delivery for Custom Conversions

The process of setting up Custom Conversions as an optimization event is actually pretty much the same as optimizing for a Standard Event.

First, choose the Conversion Campaign objective in the campaign setup step, so you can choose Standard Events or Custom Conversions as optimization events in the ad set level.

In the ad set setup section, basically the first thing you have to choose is what optimization event you want to optimize for. Here you will be able to find all Custom Conversion events as well.

Custom Conversions in the Reporting View

You can also measure the performance of your Custom Conversions in the reporting view. If you choose to customize your columns, you can find all your Custom Conversions under a dedicated section:

As you can see you can choose to display in your reporting the total number of Custom Conversions, the value of the Custom Conversions and the average cost of getting that specific Custom Conversion.

Making Custom Audiences from Facebook Custom Conversions

Currently, you can’t make Facebook Custom Audiences from Custom Conversions. However, you can make a more specific custom audience from Standard and Custom Events by adding a URL or parameter rule when you create custom audiences.

In this way, you can also optimize for a specific custom conversion and also use segmented custom audiences to target only a specific type of users.

Facebook Custom Conversions vs Standard Events vs Custom Events

Before wrapping up, we just want to explain one more thing. For a lot of Facebook advertisers, differentiating between Facebook Standard Events, Custom Events and Custom Conversion can be confusing, so we are here to once and for all kill this confusion.

Facebook Standard Events

So first, you have to know about Standard Events. There are Pixel Events that Facebook predefined and are the most frequent user actions that happen on a website and are related to some kind of micro or macro conversions. You can optimize for Facebook’s Standard Events, and make Custom Audiences from them.

Facebook Custom Events

When none of the 17 Standard Events apply to a conversion type you have on your website, you can create Custom Events with the Facebook Pixel code. Facebook Custom Events can also have parameters and you can use Custom Events to create Custom Audiences but you can’t optimize your campaigns with Custom Events.

Facebook Custom Conversions vs Pixel Events

Custom Conversions can be created from already set up Standard and Custom Events. So while Standard and Custom Events are created by setting up and customizing the Facebook Pixel codes, Custom Conversions can be only set up from Facebook Business Manager.

You can use Custom Conversions to create conversions from the simple PageView event from the Pixel Base code or customize/filter standard and custom events based on parameter values or specific URLs to create more customized conversions. However, you can’t create Custom Audiences from Facebook Custom Conversions.

We hope, these separate explanations cleared things up for you. If not, let us know in the comments below and we will get back to you with an answer.

Get help with Facebook Custom Conversions

If you still don’t really know how to create Custom Conversions or you just don’t want to deal with the setup process, you can also contact us here and we will do it for you in a professional way.

Frequently Asked Questions – Facebook Custom Conversions