Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences

A Lookalike audience is a new audience that is created based off of a ‘seed’ audience (for example, Website Traffic or your email list). I like to call lookalike audiences warm-ish audiences because they are cold in the sense that the people seeing your ad don’t know who you are yet. However, they are warm in the sense that they have similar attributes of the seed audience. 

Facebook knows A LOT about us. It knows where we hang out online. It knows whether we opt into this a lot or just click. It knows if we engage with pages (i.e. like, comment, share, etc.) and it knows where we visit when we are OFF of Facebook. Kinda creepy, right? Well, yes, but this is Ah-mazing for marketers because it gives us amazing data to work with when we’re running ads. 

So, if you have a nice size email list or have had lots of traffic to your website, consider creating a Lookalike audience before starting with a dead cold audience. Facebook will look at the emails from your seed audience and match the attributes to new people. 

You might be wondering, “Well, how big does my seed audience need to be?”

I generally say a MINIMUM of 500. The more the better, as it gives Facebook more data to work with. 

Here are some Lookalike audiences that you can create (some you may not have considered!)

• Your email list

• Website traffic

• Facebook fans

• Past buyers

• People who've visited a Thank You page

And the list goes on.

For my recent course launch, my Lookalike audience outperformed my cold audience with cheaper and more frequent cost per conversions, so I’d definitely start there if you have a decent size ‘seed’ audience to work with.