How do you create a lookalike audience in facebook
How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences [2023 Guide]
What is a lookalike audience on Facebook?
How to use Facebook Lookalike Audiences
4 tips for optimizing Facebook Lookalike Audiences
FAQs about Facebook Lookalike Audiences
Facebook Lookalike Audiences is a sophisticated matchmaker between your brand and new fans — and a powerful advertising tool. You tell Facebook the characteristics of your favorite customers, and Facebook recommends a new target audience filled with prospects that meet your criteria.
Ready to find the audience of your dreams? Read on to learn how to create a Lookalike Audience for your Facebook ads, plus tips that will help you find the best match.
Bonus: Get the Facebook advertising cheat sheet for 2022. The free resource includes key audience insights, recommended ad types, and tips for success.
What is a lookalike audience on Facebook?A Facebook Lookalike Audience is a custom advertising audience that can be used to reach people similar to your current customers.
How are Facebook Lookalike Audiences created?
Facebook’s advertising system takes an existing audience, identifies its key characteristics (like behavior and interests), and then finds similar audiences sharing those traits.
You can pair Lookalike Audiences with other ad targeting parameters, such as age and gender or interests and behaviors.
Benefits of Facebook Lookalike Audiences
People in a Lookalike Audience are more likely to engage with your content than the general public, which makes this type of ad targeting particularly valuable. Here are other reasons to choose Lookalike Audiences over other types of ad targeting on Facebook:
- Easier to find high-quality leads. You can reach new people outside of your customer list with Lookalike Audiences. But not just any person on Facebook – you are specifically targeting people who share similar characteristics to your top customers. This means they are more likely to be interested in your ad.
- More value on ad spend. Experimentation is necessary for social media ads, but no one wants to spend more money to find their top-performing ad. With Lookalike Audiences, you can test multiple audiences at once without needing to create several campaigns.
- Saves you time. Lookalike Audiences make it easy to find audiences interested in your ad without additional work on your end. If you already have an existing audience, then you can use it to find Lookalike Audiences.
Before you even begin creating a Facebook Lookalike Audience, you’ll need to create a Custom Audience first. Then Facebook will use the Custom Audience to create your personalized Lookalike Audience.
The steps to create a Custom Audience will depend on the source. (But don’t worry, we have a full guide on how to create a Custom Audience).
These are the basic steps to create a Custom Audience:
Step 1: Prepare your customer list in advance by creating a CSV or TXT file.
You may also want to install Meta Pixel on your website to track visitors.
Step 2: Go to Audiences within your Ad Manager.
Step 3: Choose a Custom Audience source. Your options include website, app activity, catalog, customer list, and offline activity.
Step 4: Follow the instructions to create your Custom Audience based on the source you chose in Step 3.
Once you’ve created your Custom Audience, you can use it to set up a Lookalike Audience. Here are the steps to create a Facebook Lookalike Audience:
Step 1: Select Create a Lookalike Audience within the Ad Manager.
Step 2: Choose your source. Remember, this will be a custom audience you’ve created from customer information, Pixel or app data, or fans of your page. You can also create a new source at this point.
Note: Your source audiences need to contain at least 100 people from the same country.
Facebook also generally recommends a source audience that has between 1,000-5,000 people, but high-quality sources take priority.
Step 3: Select the countries or regions you would like to find a similar group of people. The areas you choose will determine where people in your Lookalike Audience are based, essentially adding a geo-filter onto your Lookalike Audience.
Note: You don’t have to have anyone from the country you want to target in your source.
Step 4: Choose your desired audience size with the slide. Size is expressed on a scale of 1-10. Smaller numbers have a high similarity to your source audience. Meanwhile, larger numbers have higher reach but less similar characteristics. Facebook will provide you with an estimated reach for the size you choose.
You can also create multiple Lookalike Audiences with different levels of similarity to your source.
Step 5: Click Create Audience.
And you’re all set! It can take between six and 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be finished.
How to set up a Facebook Lookalike Audience in Hootsuite
Facebook’s Ad Manager can be overwhelming, especially for beginners. To keep things simple, manage your Facebook ads alongside all of your organic content in Hootsuite.
Here’s how to create a simple Lookalike Audience in Hootsuite Social Advertising.
- Sign in to your Hootsuite dashboard and select Advertise in the menu on the left side of the screen.
- Go to Advanced Audiences.
- Click the Add an Advanced Audience button in the top right corner of the screen
- Select Target people similar to existing customers and follow the prompts to complete the process.
- Select the ad account you want to use with this audience.
Request a free demo
Note: Hootsuite Social Advertising is only available to Enterprise plan users.
1. Choose high-quality sources
It can be tempting to put every customer you have into your source audience. Larger audiences are the best, right? Not really.
Lookalike Audiences more similar to their source audience tend to be more valuable. However, the results can vary dramatically depending on the quality of your audience.
For example, you may want to put your entire email subscriber list to find a Lookalike Audience. But it won’t necessarily translate into sales if most of your email subscribers don’t purchase or even open your emails. Instead, you would create a higher quality Lookalike Audience if you only put active email subscribers as your source audience.
Essentially, you want to focus on your best customers for your source audience to yield the best results.
2. Optimize bids with A/B testing
You can create multiple Lookalike Audiences with ranging similarities to your source audience.
This is a strategic method to find your most effective audience.
To begin, you should do A/B testing. Target the same ad to each of your Lookalike Audiences with initial bids.
You can evaluate how well the ad did based on metrics like revenue per conversion or the lifetime value of each audience.
Once you’ve analyzed what is your best-performing Lookalike Audience, you can modify your bids for each audience. You can start bidding more for valuable audiences and less for lower-performing audiences.
It’s a win-win because you can stretch your social media ad budget for your more effective audiences while ensuring you are reaching your ideal customer.
3. Use Lookalike Audiences in combination with other parameters
Enhance your lookalike audience targeting by adding more targeting parameters such as age, gender, or interests.
4. Get creative with your source audience
You can create custom audiences around a variety of parameters. Start by evaluating your campaign goals, and then drill down to the most relevant audience options.
Ideas for source audience include:
- Video audience: If you’re launching a video-based campaign, create an audience based on people who have engaged with your videos in the past.
- Recent website visitors: All website visitors may be too broad of a list, especially if conversions are your objective. Target people who have visited your website in the past 30 days, or visitors who have put something in their cart.
- Email audience: Newsletter subscribers are interested in receiving news and deals about your business. Use this audience to get more subscribers, or if you’re planning a campaign with similar content.
Are lookalike audiences effective in 2022?
Lookalike Audiences are still effective in 2022, but you may notice a slight decrease in results. Since the Apple iOS 14.5 privacy update, users must now opt-in to data sharing.
Only 25% of users have opted in. While it does have an impact on ad results, you can still reach your ideal customers with Lookalike Audiences.
What is the difference between a custom audience and a lookalike audience?
The difference between a Custom Audience and a Lookalike Audience is based on if there is a pre-existing relationship or not. A Custom Audience is based on people who already have a relationship with your business, while Lookalike Audiences are people who share characteristics with your Custom Audience but don’t know about your brand.
How many people do you need for a lookalike audience?
You need at least 100 people for a Lookalike Audience as long as they are all from the same country. If your source audience is based in multiple countries, you need at least 100 people from the same country to use it as a Lookalike Audience. Facebook generally recommends a source audience between 1,000-5,000 people.
How long does it take a lookalike audience to populate?
It takes between six and 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to populate.
Once your lookalike audience is created, it will appear as Ready in the Availability column. As long as your targeting ads with that specific lookalike audience, it will refresh every 3-7 days.
Manage your Facebook ads and organic posts alongside your other social media channels using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule posts, share video, engage your audience, and measure the impact of your efforts. Try it free today.
Get Started
Easily plan, manage and analyze organic and paid campaigns from one place with Hootsuite Social Advertising. See it in action.
Free Demo
How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences the Right Way
Wish you could take the guesswork out of your social ad targeting?
Don’t we all.
Sure, it’s awesome that marketers have so many choices when it comes to our Facebook advertising strategy and who we serve our ads to.
But navigating the numerous targeting options and factors can be downright daunting.
That’s where Facebook Lookalike Audiences are a game-changer.
Rather than start each campaign from scratch or tweak a bunch of targeting factors, Lookalike Audiences lets you base new ads on your existing audience.
The result? More engagement and conversions with a lot less guessing.
In this guide, we’ll break down the basics of Facebook Lookalike Audiences and what marketers need to know to get started.
What is a Lookalike Audience, Anyway?
Facebook Lookalike Audiences represent an ad-targeting option for a totally new target audience that shares characteristics with your existing ones, based on previous engagements with your business account or ads.
The concept here is simple. Instead of researching a new audience manually, Facebook figures out who’d be most likely to click through your campaigns on your behalf. This is determined by factors such as interests, interactions (think: “likes,” comments, shares) and previous ad clicks.
While Lookalike Audiences are ideal for marketers that have run ads successfully in the past, they’re fair game for first-timers as well. That’s because Facebook allows you to create Lookalike Audiences based on:
- People who like and follow your Business Page
- Conversion pixels you’ve created in the past
- Existing custom audiences
In addition to more accurate targeting by default, this format also provides more experienced advertisers with customization and flexibility. For example, you can broaden your Lookalike Audience to your liking or keep new ad targets almost identical to your own.
If nothing else, Facebook does a pretty good job of holding marketers’ hands through the process of creating a Lookalike Audience to make sure they’re relevant. Doing so is in the best interest of the platform, after all.
Why use Facebook Lookalike Audiences versus other ad formats?
Again, there are plenty of ad formats on Facebook to choose from.
What makes Lookalike Audiences so special?
Below are some of the key benefits:
- They save you a ton of time. If you’ve already gone through the legwork of fine-tuning a Custom Audience, you’ve done the hard part. Lookalike Audiences allow you to squeeze more out of what you’ve already established.
- In theory, Lookalike Audiences are “proven” versus creating something cold. That’s because they’re based on parameters that show user interest.
- Lookalike Audiences can easily supplement your existing ads. For the sake of stretching your social media budget, Lookalike Audiences allow you to experiment and target multiple audiences at once without running totally different campaigns.
What scenarios are Facebook Lookalike Audience ads ideal for?
Good question. Let’s look at some of the most common scenarios, for reference:
- You’re interested in engaging a new audience. Let’s say you want to reach a previously untapped demographic.
With a Lookalike Audience, you can expand your targeting without going totally off-base in terms of interests. - Your existing ad audience isn’t engaging like it used to. If you suspect you’ve exhausted your customers as-is or your base is too small, these types of ads can help you test the waters.
- You want to compare two different audiences against each other. Again, Lookalike Audiences can supplement any of your current ads. Comparing performance might open your eyes to new opportunities without blowing out your budget.
What do Lookalike Audience ads look like in action?
In reality, ads based on Lookalike Audiences resemble any other successful Facebook campaign in terms of creatives.
Here are a few examples from Facebook’s own ad success stories which highlight how such ads can be used, piggybacking on the same scenarios we discussed earlier.
This ad from the Teaching Company highlights how Lookalike Audiences can be used to explore new ad targets in terms of geography.
For this campaign, the company took a US-only ad and served it in Canada, the UK and Australia based on their best customers. The end result was a 10x boost in monthly average subscriptions to their service.
Here’s another example from Shipt. For this ad, the brand created multiple Lookalike Audiences based on current and past customers. Experiencing a 14-point lift in conversions, this is yet another shining example of how targeting based on your existing audience can be so effective.
This campaign from OLIPOP included Lookalike Audiences of top purchasers as part of a budget experiment, attempting to determine whether increased spending resulted in diminishing returns. The brand found that ramping up their efforts resulted in a significant lift in conversions and add-to-cart events alike.
How to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook
Let’s say you’re interested in putting together your first Lookalike Audience.
Excellent! First things first: log into your Facebook Ads Manager account.
On the left-hand corner, you’ll see the “Create Audience” dropdown.
Again, the platform makes the creation process fairly straightforward but the number of options to choose from can be overwhelming. The breakdown below can help speed things up.
1. Select your audience source
From the word “go,” you have the options we talked about earlier: Pages, Facebook Pixel or an existing Custom Audience.
Facebook recommends using “events with value” (AKA value-based sources). That’s because such targeting is based on actual past customer purchasing data. For example, creating a Lookalike Audience based on a remarketing Pixel allows you to base your campaigns around targets with higher (or lower) average order values.
If you opt to use a Custom Audience as your source, make sure to familiarize yourself with the various Facebook ad targeting options available. For example, you can upload a customer list or base your Lookalike Audience on people who’ve interacted with your website.
2. Choose your audience location
No big surprises here. Once you select a source, you’ll be prompted to select a region for your Lookalike Audience.
Again, this is helpful if you’re looking to run or experiment with international marketing. This selection allows you to find relevant ad targets based on geography.
3. Determine your audience size
Finally, you have a choice to choose just how “alike” your Lookalike Audience is.
The smaller the percentage here, the more similar your audience is to your source audience. On the flip side, a larger number makes your audience broader.
Whether you want a super similar audience or a larger one really depends on your goals and budget. Like any type of Facebook ad targeting, a little bit of experimentation goes a long way.
Note: Lookalike Audience specs and requirements
Before you’re allowed to create your audience, there are a few parameters you need to familiarize yourself with.
Although Facebook will prompt you on some of these, make sure to consider the following:
- Your audience size must be at least 100 people from the same country
- Facebook recommends between 1,000 and 50,000 of your “best” customers based on lifetime value, order size, or engagement for optimal Lookalike Audiences
- It can take between six and 24 hours for your audience to actually be created
More tips for Facebook advertising and targeting
Using targeting tactics like Lookalike Audiences can bring your ad campaigns to the next level. Make sure everything from content to budget is also optimized with these resources:
- How to foolproof your Facebook advertising strategy
- How to Master Facebook Ad Targeting & Zero-In on Your Audience
- Facebook advertising cost: Everything you need to optimize your ROI
- A step-by-step guide on how to use Facebook Business Manager
- 5 brilliant Facebook campaigns (& why they worked)
- 12 Facebook Ad Examples You Wish You Made
What can my Facebook Lookalike campaigns teach me?
Just like any other type of ad data, you should note how your Lookalike Audience performs and look at your KPIs.
If your campaigns perform similarly or significantly better than your previous ones, you’re golden. If not, you might consider some tweaking (think: pulling back or ramping up your audience size, experimenting with Custom Audiences versus Pixel, etc).
Either way, make sure you’re keeping an eye on your metrics. You should also assess not only how your ads compare against each other, but how your paid performance compares against your organic social posts.
With tools like Sprout Social, you can use our paid ad reporting and analytics to do exactly that. With a holistic view of your Facebook presence, you can better determine your budget in terms of time and resources.
Are you taking full advantage of Facebook Lookalike audiences?
Lookalike Audiences are an invaluable tool for social marketers.
Like any other type of ad, they can take time to master but are worth pursuing for the sake of experimenting and reaching new audiences.
Now that you know how to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook, perhaps it’s time to consider how such ads fit into your paid social strategy.
And if you need to secure a bigger budget to expand your campaigns, we’ve got you covered. Make sure to check out our guide on making a business case for social media to get the buy-in that you need to run a new campaign.
How to create look-a-like audiences on Facebook - ppc.world
This article was written in 2019. We updated it in December 2021. Enjoy reading!
What are Lookalike Audiences or look-alikes in Facebook
Lookalike Audiences can be used to reach users who are similar to those who have already become a customer. The system selects similar users according to different criteria: gender, age, geolocation, interests, online behavior, etc.
How this tool is useful and convenient for the advertiser:
-
Increases coverage. By adding Lookalike Audiences to your targeting list, you can show your ads to a much larger number of people.
-
Aimed at potentially interested users.
It is likely that people similar to existing customers are interested in the same products and services. They are more likely to place an order. -
Allows you to find new customers that are similar to current ones. It is easier and more convenient to work with such users, there is no need to radically change the approach.
-
Flexible settings. To keep your audience fresh, you can add new data sources and remove old data sources.
Look-alikes on Facebook are sourced from other - original - audiences. These include audiences:
-
based on pixel data;
-
based on lists of existing and potential customers, for this you need to upload a file with user data: phone numbers, email addresses, etc.;
-
based on data from mobile applications;
-
collected from users interacting with your Facebook ad or page.
Look-alike is one of the most effective types of targeting for working with cold audiences.
Compared to an affinity audience, lookalike audiences select users who are as close as possible to existing customers, which means they are more interested in buying. Let's walk through the process of creating a Lookalike Audience in Facebook Ads Manager.
How to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook
Before you start working with Lookalike Audiences, there are a few things to keep in mind.
-
To create a look-alike , you need to be an administrator of a business page or pixel from which the system collects data about the original audience.
-
A similar audience is not formed immediately, it takes from 6 to 24 hours to collect users. The audience will then refresh every 3-7 days until you turn off ads targeting this audience.
-
You can use a Lookalike Audience without waiting for it to be updated.
-
The source audience must include at least 100 people from one country.
-
Based on one source audience , you can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences.
How to create a Lookalike Audience step by step
Go to Audiences.
Click the blue Create Audience button and select Lookalike Audience.
Select source. You can specify an existing one (pixel data, page or site visitors, custom audience, etc.) or create a new one.
Locate the audience. The system gives hints about what other countries can be added besides those that are added by default.
Set the Lookalike Audience size using the slider and also define how many Lookalike Audiences you want to create.
Once you've set all the options, click "Create Audience". You will have to wait while the system collects users and forms an audience.
Once the data is collected, the audience can be used in ads. Start creating your ad in Ads Manager and in the Audience section, click Individual.
Custom Audience" - "Lookalike Audience" and select the audience you want to use from the list.
You can also create a new Lookalike Audience here. To do this, in the block "Individual. Custom Audience" click "Create" - "Lookalike Audience". It is configured in the same way as in the previous creation method.
In the future, as mentioned above, the audience will be updated periodically. To see the date the audience was last updated, you will need to go to the "Audiences" section. The date is displayed in the "Availability" column.
Tips for working with Lookalike Audiences
Finally, here are some simple tips that will make ads using Lookalike Audiences even more effective.
-
Settings allow you to specify the size of the Lookalike Audience. The smaller it is, the more users in this audience will be similar to users in the original one. If you specify a large size, you can significantly increase the reach, but the similarity with the original audience will be less.
Facebook recommends setting an audience size of 1,000-50,000 people, although of course this depends on the business and the objectives of the advertising campaign. -
Also keep in mind the quality of the original audience. For example, do not include all customers in it, but those who have more conversions, higher average bill, etc. Based on them, the system will select a more effective lookalike audience.
-
Use multiple Lookalike Audiences for the same ad group. This will show your ad to people in any of the selected Lookalike Audiences and significantly increase your ad reach.
Subscribe to receive useful materials about paid traffic
By clicking the button, you consent to the processing of personal data
How to create lookalike audiences (Look-alike) on Facebook and VKontakte
Look-alike is a tool that allows you to expand the pool of people covered by using a lookalike audience.
The essence of the tool: algorithms select an audience that is similar to yours in a number of ways, be it gender, age, interests, etc.
So you get new outreach from people who might be interested in your offer. Similar to social media, the algorithms will look at the data of the people who interacted with you and then select similar accounts for a new audience.
See also:
How to reduce the cost of advertising on Facebook*, Instagram* and VKontakte: 7 tips for a traffic manager
What are good look-alike audiences on VKontakte and Facebook* and what should you pay attention to when working with them? In this article, we will understand LAL and show you what advanced ad settings the sites offer.
Who needs it and why
Similar audiences are needed to increase advertising reach among potential customers who may be interested in your product.
This is an additional targeting tool that increases the effectiveness of your advertising through new users.
Who might need look-alike advertising:
- Large businesses whose general audience burns out over time and stops responding to advertising. However, this is also true for smaller segments.
- Businesses with a narrow audience. If you have a specific product or service, then with the help of LAL it is much easier to find new customers.
- Any business that does business online. If you sell through a website or social networks, if you have an online registration for services, and your customers look at reviews, testimonials and are generally active on the network, then lookalike audiences will be useful.
- Budget savings. An additional tool allows you to save on rates in advertising campaigns.
- Increasing coverage with potentially interested people. Interest matching increases the chance of a positive perception of advertising.
- Lots of sources to build an audience. LAL is collected from a lot of data, whether it's phone numbers, geolocation, friends on social networks, groups that have completed the target action. This gives room for maneuver when gathering an audience.
Disadvantages of using look-alike audiences:
- Chance to get non-target users. In general, you need to understand that look-alike advertising brings cold visitors. In addition, the algorithms are imperfect, so no one excludes the appearance of non-target users in the sample. Working with a similar audience is always a choice between coverage and accuracy.
- You need a quality source audience. If you don’t have enough traffic, or there are cheats and bots among the audience, then this database will not allow you to collect a useful sample of people. To increase conversions, you must have an existing and high-quality audience of real customers on hand for training algorithms.
Summarizing this information, we can conclude that if there is a quality audience, look-alike advertising can increase conversion and bring in new customers.
How to set up look-alike audiences on Facebook and VKontakte
There are three types of look-alike audiences on Facebook.
Simple , pre-existing audiences that most advertisers use. For example, this is an audience created based on 1 parameter (be it email or phone number) and with the choice of the desired geographic location.
Look-alike audiences created by based on the value of are searched based on Facebook pixel data. This is a much more advanced way of creating LAL, which is aimed at finding people similar to those customers who made purchases from you for a certain amount and in a certain currency.
See also:
How have Facebook* ad pixels changed since the release of iOS 14? Guide for Marketers
That is, the algorithm needs the parameters value (value, purchase amount) and currency (currency).
Then he will start looking for users who are able to buy for amounts similar to your data.
Open section Audiences in Facebook Ads and click Create custom audience .
In the window that opens, select the source of the custom audience - site .
The audience creation window opens. Here you need to do a few things.
- In the drop-down list, select the conversion Purchase aka Purchase, and set its expiration date.
- In the drop-down list of parameters, find value , and also set the condition by which it will be taken into account - is greater than , and write the desired value below.
- Enter the name of your audience and click Create Audience at the bottom left.
Done, now Facebook will look for users similar to your customers who are able to make a purchase for the specified amount.
LAL audience including LTV . It is created on the basis of a custom audience, where there is data on purchases, the total value from each client for all interaction with the company. Again we create an audience in the office, and then select Client list as the source.
Here you will need to choose which file Facebook will use as a source for audience search. In this situation, you need a CSV file, an example of which is right on this page.
After downloading the file itself, select the download source Direct from customers .
Do not forget to enter the name of the audience and click Next . In the next window, the system will prompt you to select a column with customer value data. We need value .
The next step is to check the client list to make sure that the data was matched without errors. Your file is uploaded and Facebook immediately offers to create a copy of the audience, click.
The Create Lookalike Audience window opens.
- In the first window with the source of the audience, the name of the file will appear, from where Facebook will take data to search for look-alike users.
- Select the region and country where the algorithm will search for your LAL audience.
- Audience size determines the percentage of targeted people from the total population of the selected territory.
Create an audience.
Choose the type of Facebook look-alike audience based on your goals and the amount of data available.
Vkontakte
- Users who visited your site.
This audience is collected based on VK pixel data.
- Existing clients. This audience is loaded from a file. VKontakte takes into account the following data: phone numbers, identifiers (IDFA) and Android (GAID), email, page IDs of VKontakte users.
- Users who interacted with your targeted VK ad.
A similar audience is created through an advertising account.
- Select section Retargeting ;
- Go to subsection Similar Audiences ;
- Click Find a Lookalike Audience .
Next, select the source audience and click Start searching for audience .
Be patient until the status Done appears in your account, then click Create Audience.
VKontakte will offer to choose between the reach of a similar audience and its similarity with the original audience. Press Create .
Your lookalike audience will appear in your account soon, for which you can run ads.
Life hacks and tips for working with LAL
In addition to the correct settings, there are a couple of tricks that will make your advertising with look-alike audiences more effective.
- Create different audiences for different purposes. Based on social media followers, brand awareness can be increased, and video ads will appeal to an audience based on those who have interacted with video ads before.
- Use fresh conversions as source audience. The older the data, the less efficiently the algorithms will find similar users.
- Check how often your audience's interests change to make it easier for the algorithm to find quality users for you. Remember that people's behavior on the Internet is constantly changing.
- Take the initial base, where there are at least 1000 users. Both social networks have recommendations, but you should understand that the quality of users that the algorithm will find depends on the volume of the initial audience.
