Back in the day, Facebook looked a LOOOOT different than it does these days.

Was it better? Not in every way, no.

But in some ways? YEP — specifically with these things called custom conversions — which you could utilize for ALL your various offers.

See, here’s an example: for instance, you could create a custom conversion, and use it for a specific purchase confirmation page URL. You could name it “The FB Ads Method Purchasers,” and then instead of optimizing your campaign for any ol’ “purchase,” you could optimize it for that exact course purchaser. That way, Facebook could gain traffic for THAT course.

It was fantastic. However, as things do on Facebook, it changed. The iOS update and privacy changes meant that the events Facebook allowed you to prioritize were a lot less than usual (you could only choose 8 — including “lead,” “purchases,” “page views,” “add to cart,” etc) and, in a sense, made custom conversions obsolete (you could still use them but they reeeealllly didn’t work). So, everyone had to optimize for one of the broad events, meaning, you could only see that A purchase was made, not WHAT was purchased. When you’re doing a lot of sales, it was hard to report accurately and tell what was selling well. 

But, guess what? FB custom conversions are (partially) back!

How to create custom conversions on Facebook

While there are still some limitations (which we’ll jump into a bit), you can create the custom conversions of days past! With these, you’ll be able to think strategically for *your* funnel and where you want to track people — and you can create these conversions to do just that. Here’s exactly how to do it from our pals at Facebook!

However, here’s what to keep in mind

While we use these custom conversions, we don’t use them how we used to. Instead, we now use custom conversions for a different data point in our reporting. With these custom conversions, you’ll be able to really analyze traffic and make better, more data-informed decisions. This is super, super helpful if you have multiple offers and you’re trying to either see where people are going or what you should put your budget towards.

But, like I said, these changes are still kiiinda in flux. So, it is not (in any way) perfect however, they are continuing to work on this and make it better.

And, here’s the thing: while you may not be able to utilize custom conversions in the same way you used to be able to, you CAN utilize custom conversions to be data-focused…

…and data-focused is the best, most strategic way to build trust with your audience and even your clients.

So, definitely set up custom conversions for all of the events in your funnel that you want to be able to see/track. For example, if our funnel is: ads > webinar > retargeting ads > sales page, we would set up a custom conversion for the webinar thank you page (so it will track anyone who signed up for the webinar) and also set up a custom conversion for the sales thank you page if possible. This way, if I have multiple offers, I can see how many people registered for the webinar (via that custom conversion) AND how many people purchased that specific offer (again, via the custom conversion I set up), instead of seeing a generic “purchase” and not knowing WHAT was purchased. 

I LOVE custom conversions because, although, sales are great…I always want to see WHAT was sold. 

What say you? Have you brought back custom conversions in your ads manager? I’d love to hear?