A Guide To Setting Up Your Own Domain For Custom Conversions

The best way that advertisers can leverage the benefits of the Facebook pixel and conversion tracking is to own their domains.

Music Marketing: New Best Practices for Facebook Conversion Campaigns

If you’re a creator that sells a product online or runs social growth campaigns, we recommend using the Conversion objective if possible. Due to Facebook’s recent changes for iOS 14, the best way that advertisers can continue to leverage the benefits of the Facebook pixel and conversion tracking is to own their domains. Otherwise, campaigns will default to link click optimization.

We've included a video & step-by-step guide of how to set up a custom domain below:

Below is a step-by-step guide to:

Register a domain name (with Namecheap)
Creating a Facebook Business Manager Account
Verify domain within Facebook Business Manager
Connect subdomain for use with ToneDen Smart Links
Configure subdomain (using Namecheap)
Configuring events to use aggregated event measurement (Add View Content)

Step 1: Register a Domain Name

If you already have a domain that you own you can skip this step.

Here’s a step-by-step on registering your domain on Namecheap (recommended for ease of use):

Think of a few good domain names for your brand. Your first option might already be taken (more than likely).
Choose a domain name registrar (Namecheap)
Check domain availability here.
Once you’ve pinned down an available name, pay for the domain. Keep in mind: pricing varies based on higher page rankings in search engines. Upon payment, you can claim and get the domain name immediately upon application.

Step 2: Creating a Facebook Business Manager Account

If you already have a FB Business Manager Account, you can skip this step.

Once you've registered a custom domain name, you'll want to make sure you have a Facebook Business Manager Account. In a general sense, Business Manager is a Facebook tool that helps organize and manage your business, at no added cost. A Business Manager account is also required in order to start the verification process of your custom domain, which we cover in the next step.

Here's a comprehensive guide on getting your Business Manager Account up & running:

How to Create a Business Manager AccountToneDen Knowledge

Once you've completed setting up your Business Manager account, and have purchased your custom domain, you are ready to start the verification process!

Step 3: Verify Domain Within Facebook Business Manager

Next, you’ll need to claim ownership of your domain in Business Manager. This ownership allows you to run conversion campaigns as well as control editing privileges of your links and other content to prevent misuse of your domain.

Add your domain in Business Manager

In Business Manager, click on the Business Settings button in the upper right corner.

2. In the Business Settings, select the Brand Safety tab, and select Domains from the left side navigation list.

3. Click on the Add button, and enter your domain (the top-level or root domain, not the subdomain—for example, if you're setting up listen.myband.com as the subdomain in ToneDen, you’d want to verify myband.com here) in the Add a Domain pop-up dialog.

4. If you have more than one domain listed, select the domain for which you desire to confirm ownership.

5. Choose the method you wish to use to verify your domain: DNS Verification, Meta Tags or the HTML File Upload.

Step 4: Connect Subdomain For Use With ToneDen Smart Links

Access your Advertising Settings within the ToneDen platform. In Custom Domain, click Add Domain.

Now that you have your website set up at your domain, enter your subdomain, like link.yoursite.com, get.yoursite.com, or music.yoursite.com, and ToneDen will automatically connect your Smart Links to your subdomain.

We normally recommend adding a subdomain as you may have a website already at your domain (or you might want to have one down the road).

If your domain is "yoursite.com", an example of a subdomain would be "link.yoursite.com" or "music.yoursite.com". You're basically adding a word and a . before your domain!

Step 5: Configure Subdomain (Using Namecheap)

NOTE: These are step-by-step instructions for configuring your subdomain using NameCheap which is a domain registrar we recommend. Configuring your subdomain with other registrars will vary.

1. Go to your Domain List and click Manage next to the domain:

2. Select the Advanced DNS tab:

3. Find the Host Records section and click on the Add New Record button:

4. Select CNAME.

5. For the Host field, put your subdomain (IE if your subdomain is ‘music.yourdomain.com’, you’d simply put ‘music’ here.) For the Value field, enter ‘fanlink.to’:

Normally, it takes 30 minutes for newly created records to take effect. You’ll know if your subdomain has been configured properly if visiting subdomain.yourdomain.com redirects to the ToneDen site.

Step 6: Configuring Events to Use Aggregated Event Measurement (Add "View Content" + "Lead")

The final step in configuring your domain, pixel, and events is to specify which pixel/event pairings are allowed for the domain within the Events Manager section of Business Manager. Facebook has limited each domain to 8 total pixel/event pairs.

First you’ll want to go to the Events Manager section of your Business Manager in Facebook:

2. Next you’ll want to click on the Aggregated Event Measurement tab:

3. Then click on Configure Web Events:

4. On the Web Event Configurations page, you’ll see a list of your verified domains, like this:

Expand the section for the domain you want to configure (note: the domain you want to configure is your own domain, not the smart link domain), and click Edit Events, then proceed via the modal warning that will show.

5. Now you should be on the Edit Web Event Configurations page, for your specific domain. Here is where you can add up to 8 pixel/event pairings that you want to utilize and rank them in priority order:

6. Click on Add Event to add additional pixel/event pairs. While you can add as many pixel/event pairings (up to 8) that you like, for ToneDen Growth campaigns and View Content conversion campaigns you’ll want to at the very least add the View Content event for the pixel you use for advertising. Here's a breakdown of Events we recommend adding, based on common campaigns users run on ToneDen:

Growth Playbooks (Spotify, IG, Youtube, TikTok) & promoted Smart Links (any paid social ads for a non-pre save link): "View Content" event
Pre-Save campaigns (any paid social ads for a pre-save link): "Lead" event

Additionally, the pixel that you select in the first dropdown menu should reflect the same pixel you added to your Smart Link in step 6. It should match the pixel connected to your ad account!

7. Once you’ve added your pixel/event pairings, click Submit.

Not able to select a pixel/event combo? There needs to be pixel activity on the domain you verified before you can add standard events to it (refer back to Step 6). Once you've completed connecting your domain to your smart links, we suggest creating a smart link and visiting the smart link page once.

8. Lastly, you will want to go into toneden.io/settings/advertising and scroll down to "Default Facebook Pixel." From the dropdown menu, you will want to select the same pixel you added to your Smart Link (Step 6) and configured in FB events manager, which you have just now completed. This will ensure that all campaigns moving forward utilize the pixel you have attached to your domain, which is necessary for running conversion campaigns. If you configured multiple pixels on your domain, you can forego setting a default pixel in your profile settings, but will have to make sure you select the proper one in the "Set A Goal" section of your ad campaigns before you launch!