Facebook reigns supreme as the leading social media advertising platform, offering advertisers and brands access to a plethora of cutting-edge features and tools. With an active user base of billions of consumers worldwide, Facebook audiences allow businesses to generate high-quality leads and acquire new customers.
Over the years, Meta has refined its targeting options by gathering user data and utilizing it to refine audience selection for ad campaigns. Seasonal events present massive opportunities for businesses to take advantage of Facebook audiences and supercharge sales. Facebook lookalike audience targeting allows brands to engage new customers most likely to love their products and shop from their websites.
Imagine promoting your offers to people who share the key characteristics of your loyal customers! That’s the power of Facebook lookalike audiences; this targeting approach connects your ads with users most likely to complete the desired actions.
Read on to learn how to create lookalike audiences and take full advantage of this targeting feature.
Table of Contents
What are Lookalike Facebook Audiences?
The Meta Business Suite utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to collect and compile user data, offering advertisers valuable insights into Facebook audiences most likely to respond to their ad campaigns. This data is utilized to categorize Facebook audiences and connect businesses with consumers most likely to spend on their products or services.
Lookalike Facebook audiences is a dynamic targeting tool that connects brands with new users who share the key characteristics of their existing consumer audience. Meta’s AI-powered bots and crawlers meticulously analyze the brand’s current consumer audience, gathering data from multiple sources, to examine their behaviors, interests and traits.
Then, this data is utilized to identify new Facebook users who share similar characteristics, allowing businesses to acquire new customers. The size of the Facebook lookalike audience is determined by the allocated percentage and the size of the seed audience.
Presently, Meta offers three different size options in Facebook lookalike audiences:
- 1-10% Facebook Lookalike Audience
Smaller in size but extremely similar to the brand’s seed audience.
- 10-25% Facebook Lookalike Audience
Larger in size but share less similarities with the seed audience.
- 25-50% Facebook Lookalike Audience
Considerably larger in size but share even less similarities with the seed audience.
Using Lookalikes? Let’s Make Them Convert
Lookalike Facebook Audiences: How do they Work?
In order to understand how Facebook lookalike audiences work, it’s important to understand Meta’s backend configuration and AI-powered algorithm. Facebook features a highly intuitive algorithm that meticulously collects and tracks user data, identifying the traits of a brand’s source audience.
This data is utilized to generate similar audiences, also known as the Facebook lookalike audience, by identifying the key activities, behaviors, demographics and interests of the source audience.
Facebook audiences are created by extracting data from the following sources:
- Tracking customer events through Facebook Pixel, such as adding products to cart, past purchases and users viewing products on your website.
- Data generated by users interacting with your online store, Facebook ads, video ads, lead forms, Shops and product landing pages.
- User data focusing on followers liking, sharing and commenting on the posts on your Facebook Business Page.
Lookalike Facebook audiences work by analyzing and tracking user data from the brand’s seed audience to identify users who share similar characteristics and social media activity patterns. After a detailed analysis, Facebook’s algorithm creates a lookalike audience that is most similar to the brand’s source audience.
If you’re actively using the lookalike audience targeting approach, Meta will automatically refresh your Facebook lookalike audience every 3 to 7 days. The platform’s algorithm is designed to continually refine and update the list with new users who share the most similarities with the source audience.
It’s pertinent to note that consumer preferences change with time, as do their buying behaviors and personality traits. It’s crucial to continually update your seed audience to ensure your lookalike audience targeting approach adapts to these changes.
Advantages of Facebook Lookalike Audience Targeting
Advertisers vying to secure maximum conversions and sales on Black Friday aim to engage ideal customers who are primed to love their discounted offers and products. When it comes to promoting seasonal discounts and limited-time offers, lookalike Facebook audiences offer a multitude of advantages, including a higher click-through-rate and greater conversion potential.
Let’s examine the advantages of lookalike Facebook audiences in more detail.
Lookalike Audience Targeting Ensures Precision
Meta’s lookalike audience targeting approach ensures precision with a highly refined approach that engages users most likely to be attracted to a brand’s products or services. Since Facebook lookalike audiences are based on specific activities, behaviors, demographics and interests, this targeting approach ensures relevance.
It leads to a highly effective and relevant advertising strategy that generates high returns on ad spend (ROAS) and revenue growth.
Reduces Costs & Increases Advertising Returns
Lookalike Facebook audiences refine the user engagement process, resulting in a highly personalized and hyper-relevant advertising experience. The lookalike audience targeting approach reduces ad spend by allowing advertisers to target users most likely to convert.
It eliminates wastage as the brand is no longer spending money on advertising its products or services to irrelevant Facebook audiences. When you create lookalike audiences for a time-sensitive ad campaign, Facebook is able to minimize the ad spend and ensure a significantly higher ROAS.
Facebook Lookalike Targeting Allows Precise Customer Segmentation
Facebook lookalike audience targeting supports precise customer segmentation, allowing brands to divide their consumer audience into highly specific groups based on their key traits and shared preferences.
By supporting precise customer segmentation, this targeting tool allows advertisers to create tailored ad campaigns that deeply resonate with their Facebook audiences. Advertisers can design personalized campaigns to boost user engagement and inspire consumer loyalty with extensively tailored ad campaigns.
Stellar Ad Performance with Relevant Facebook Audiences
Ad campaign performance is bound to improve dramatically when you’re targeting a hyper relevant audience most likely to love your products or services. Black Friday ad campaigns that deploy lookalike audience targeting secure higher website visits, conversion rates and click-through-rates, resulting in a significantly higher ROAS. Pair this with compelling Facebook ad headlines to capture attention instantly and drive even more engagement.
Utilizing Facebook Lookalike Audience Targeting
When it comes to taking advantage of different Facebook audiences, it’s important to identify the right targeting approach for your ad campaign. Understanding when to use Facebook lookalike audiences is of the utmost significance to maximize conversions and improve ad performance.
Here are some advertising objectives you can achieve by targeting Lookalike Facebook audiences:
Improve Ad Campaign Performance
Are you struggling to secure user engagement and video views for underperforming ad campaigns? Consider targeting lookalike Facebook audiences to revive engagement by engaging users most likely to resonate with your ad messaging and brand offerings.
Generate High-Quality Leads
Targeting lookalike Facebook audiences is a masterful lead generation strategy that connects brands with users most likely to convert into loyal customers. Lookalike audience targeting approach allows businesses to acquire new customers and scale their campaigns to new heights. Integrating Facebook Lead Ads with this strategy makes capturing potential customers’ information seamless and efficient.
Grow your Target Audience
Businesses vying to tap into a nationwide, regional or global audience must prioritize Facebook lookalike audience targeting to continually expand their reach. Targeting lookalike Facebook audiences allows advertisers to grow their audience beyond the confines of an email list of existing customer base, tapping into new users with similar characteristics.
While Facebook lookalike audience targeting may not be ideal for retargeting existing customers, it’s a dynamic approach to broaden reach for ad campaigns.
How to Create a Lookalike Audience in Facebook?
Learning how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook isn’t as complicated as it may seem to a small business owner or marketer starting out with Meta’s advertising toolkit. Once you set it up, Facebook lookalike audience targeting will continue refining your target audience to supercharge campaign performance.
Essentials for Facebook Lookalike Audience Targeting
Before you figure out how to create lookalike audience for your ad campaign, it’s important to set up all the essentials you need. You need to familiarize yourself with key terminologies and acquire strategic assets that support optimization to build your ideal audience.
Here’s everything you need to learn how to create lookalike audience Facebook:
Seed Audience
The seed audience, also known as the source audience, is an essential that serves as the primary database to create lookalike Facebook audiences. One seed audience is all you need to create hundreds of Facebook lookalike audiences. A seed audience is typically built from a custom audience, and it must feature at least 100 customers from the same country.
Custom Audience
Custom audiences refer to the users who have previously engaged with your brand, allowing you to set up tailored ad campaigns designed specifically to engage them.
Advertisers can build custom Facebook audiences by extracting data from the following sources:
- App users’ activity
- Email subscribers’ list
- Customer list
- User activities on e-commerce website
- Offline user activity
- Facebook lead forms
- Facebook Business Page
- Video views
- Instagram profile
Advertisers can create 500 custom audiences with one Facebook ad account. These Facebook audiences are immensely useful as they allow brands to target various consumer segments with personalized ad campaigns. Custom Facebook audiences streamline campaign creation and management, allowing advertisers to retarget existing customers and promote new products.
In order to create lookalike Facebook audiences, it’s important to set up multiple custom audiences.
Meta Pixel
Previously known as Facebook Pixel, this dynamic tool plays a vital role in the creation of Facebook lookalike audiences. Meta Pixel tracks user data and information from various events, such as user activities on your website, interactions with product landing pages, adding products to cart and online purchases, among others.
As you’re learning how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook, Meta Pixel will streamline the process by identifying new customers similar to your existing consumer base. This tool plays an instrumental role in building a value-based seed audience based on the user activities of your current customers.
Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create Lookalike Audience
In order to learn how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook, you must have a functional Facebook Ad account that’s connected to your Facebook Business page or account. Be sure to set up the above mentioned essentials to create lookalike audience Facebook.
Follow these steps to learn how to create lookalike audience:
Step#1: Open Facebook Ads Manager
Go to Facebook Ads Manager and scroll to Assets.
Now, open the Audiences section.
Step#2: Building Facebook Audiences
Select Create Audiences, and scroll through the dropdown menu to find Facebook Lookalike Audiences.
Step#3: Pick a Seed Audience
A seed or source audience is a crucial element in the creation of a Facebook lookalike audience. You can select Facebook audiences from different sources, including website activity, Facebook page visitors or customer lists.
Make sure your source Facebook audiences feature at least 100 individuals from the same country.
Step#4: Finalize the Location for Facebook Audiences
Facebook allows marketers to specify which country or region they want to target for new customer acquisition. This feature is immensely valuable in expanding a brand’s target audience and acquiring customers from specific regions or countries.
Once you select the location for Facebook lookalike audience targeting, Facebook will identify users with similar traits as your existing clientele within the region you’ve specified. Combining this with Facebook Ad Location Targeting ensures your ads reach the most relevant audience in key areas.
Step#5: Finalize Size for Facebook Lookalike Audience Targeting
If you want to find new customers most similar to your existing consumer base, select smaller percentages to find most similar users. If you want to broaden your reach and engage more consumers with varying levels of similarities, choose a higher percentage. We suggest adjusting the size of your lookalike Facebook audiences between 1 to 10%.
Step#6: Create Lookalike Audience Facebook
Once you select Create Audience, Facebook’s algorithm will start identifying users who share the most similarities with your seed Facebook audiences.
Strategies to Take Advantage of Lookalike Facebook Audiences
Effective optimization is instrumental to create tailored ad campaigns and supercharge ad performance. It’s important to utilize best practices as you figure out how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook.
We’ve listed some strategies below to help you secure the highest sales as you set up lookalike audience targeting for your campaigns.
Curate a Detailed Seed Audience List
A high-quality seed audience list determines the effectiveness of lookalike audience targeting when it comes to new customer acquisitions. If your source audience doesn’t feature highly engaged or loyal customers, Facebook’s algorithm won’t be of much use.
Be sure to create a detailed list featuring your most valuable customers who repeatedly buy from your website or engage with your content. We suggest including multiple sources, such as customers who purchase from your website, email subscribers, and visitors who interact with your Facebook page and website.
A Well-Defined Selection Criteria
As you learn how to create lookalike audience for your campaign, it’s important to set a well-defined targeting criteria. We suggest refining your targeting approach by including multiple factors, such as behaviors, demographics and interests.
As you learn how to create lookalike audiences for your campaign, it’s important to set well-defined targeting criteria. Refining your approach with Facebook Interest Targeting helps you focus on users engaged with specific topics, ensuring your ads reach those most likely to connect with your offer.
This multifaceted targeting strategy will broaden your reach and engage a specific segment of users who are most likely to shop with your brand.
Organize your User Data
Most marketers who struggle to learn how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook often begin with insufficient data. Meta recommends utilizing lookalike audience targeting with at least 1,000 people in your seed audience for best results. You cannot create impactful and result-oriented lookalike Facebook audiences with insufficient data or a small seed audience. In fact, Facebook keywords can reflect a lot on how much audience you will tend to target in your campaign.
Figuring out the right size for your Facebook audiences can be tricky, and we suggest experimenting with different sizes to find the right fit. Smaller Facebook audiences lead to highly responsive and precise lookalike audience targeting while larger audiences will broaden your reach, allowing you to acquire more new customers.
On Black Friday, it’s wise to expand your audience reach with a larger audience size to increase the chances of conversions.
Final Thoughts
Are you struggling to create multiple Facebook audiences and generate personalized campaigns? Or perhaps, you’re unable to target consumers from multiple regions due to daily ad spend limitations? Regular Facebook ad accounts are riddled with limitations and restrictions that render marketers unable to take full advantage of their creative assets and ad spend.
At GCG Media, we empower advertisers and brands with specialized Facebook agency account for rent, featuring an unlimited ad spend and an AI-powered algorithm to supercharge ad performance.
Sign up to our app to learn more.
Using Lookalikes? Let’s Make Them Convert
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Does Facebook still allow lookalike audiences?
Yes, Facebook allows lookalike audience targeting in 2024, and this feature has been improved with recent algorithmic updates and the enhancement of Meta Pixel (formerly Facebook Pixel). However, marketers must consider Meta’s recent changes to its privacy policies alongside the private update for Apple iOS users.
When to create Facebook lookalike audience?
It’s wise to create lookalike Facebook audiences when you have over 1,000 active and engaged customers in your seed audience. Then, you can use this list to acquire new customers during promotional offers like Black Friday or while promoting a new product line.
What does 1% lookalike audience mean?
In Facebook lookalike audience targeting, 1% indicates the percentage of users who closely match the traits and activities of your seed audience.
