You're probably already familiar with Facebook's basic targeting options: age, gender, interests, behaviors, and so on. But you've likely realized that these targeting methods have their limits over time.
Let's say you just launched a brand and you're running an e-commerce site selling security cameras. You could target people who have shown an interest in surveillance or security. If the cameras are connected, you could target people interested in smart home technology or connected devices. If those people have visited your site, you could retarget them. But what if those audiences don't perform? Or once those interest-based audiences are exhausted, what do you do? That's exactly why lookalike audiences are indispensable.
What is a Lookalike Audience?
A lookalike audience is like a magnifying mirror for your custom audiences. You target new people who are likely to be interested in your products because they share characteristics with a custom audience you've already built. To create a lookalike audience, you therefore need to already have a source audience.
For example, if your goal is to increase sales, you'll want to find people who look like your buyers. In that case, you simply create a lookalike audience based on the characteristics of your buyers. This buyer audience is already built by Facebook, so all you have to do is create your lookalike audience. Facebook's system will then identify the common signals (interests, demographics, behaviors, etc.) between your buyers and Facebook users to find you new customers!
Why Use Lookalike Audiences?
Most of the time, lookalike audiences are the ones you'll use most often. Why?
Interest-based targeting works well, but it can be difficult to set up because you have to determine your ideal customer's interests and socio-demographic characteristics yourself. That may sound straightforward, but it requires research that takes time and resources. And as mentioned earlier, the risk of failure remains fairly high.
That's why we recommend using lookalike audiences as soon as you can. They allow you to uncover unexpected characteristics with little to no effort on your part.
Finally, what makes this type of targeting particularly powerful is its size. Lookalike audiences are broad, which makes them highly effective for reaching large numbers of people who don't know you yet and scaling acquisition.
{{expert-primary="/cta"}}
How to Create a Lookalike Audience
Nothing too complicated here. In this example, we'll target an audience that looks like your buyers. Go to your Ads Manager and navigate to the "Audiences" section, which you'll find under "Business Tools."
Next, you'll need to create a custom audience if you haven't already done so. Click on "Custom Audience."
Since we want to target people who share characteristics with your buyers, the audience falls under the "Website" category.
Then, click on the dropdown menu and select "Purchase."
As for the time period, the longer the window, the larger the audience will be.
Now that the custom audience is created, let's finally build our lookalike audience! Select your "Purchase" audience and click "Create a Lookalike Audience."
Last step: choose the country where you want to target your audience and set its size. The 1% represents the portion of the audience that most closely resembles your buyers. The broader the percentage, the larger the audience grows, and Facebook's system will start pulling in users whose signals are increasingly distant from your source audience.
And there you have it! Your Lookalike Audience is ready!
If you have any questions about lookalike audiences or other topics related to Facebook and other acquisition channels, don't hesitate to reach out!
{{audit-primary="/cta"}}
.jpg)
.jpg)