How to use Facebook Lookalike

Facebook Lookalike can help you find your best new customers. Learn how to create your Facebook Lookalike and master these 9 best practices from the experts for business success using Facebook advertising.

Facebook Lookalike Audiences are a tool that helps connect your brand and new audiences. You tell Facebook the characteristics of your favorite customers, and Facebook suggests new target audiences filled with prospects who meet your criteria.

What is a Lookalike audience on Facebook?

Facebook Lookalike Audiences are custom ad audiences 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 behaviors and interests), then finds similar audiences that share those characteristics.

You can pair Lookalike Audiences with other ad targeting parameters, such as age and gender or interests and behaviors.

Benefits of Lookalike Audiences on Facebook

People in Lookalike Audiences are more likely to engage with your content than the general public, which makes this type of ad targeting especially valuable. Here are more reasons to choose Lookalike Audiences over other types of Facebook ad targeting:

• Easily find high-quality leads. You can reach new people outside of your customer list with Similar Audiences. But Lookalikes aren't targeting just any person on Facebook – you're specifically targeting people who share characteristics with your target customers. This means they are more likely to be interested in your ad.
• More value on ad spend. Testing is necessary for social media ads, but no one wants to spend more money to find their best performing ads. With Lookalike Audiences, you can test multiple audiences at once without creating multiple campaigns.
• Saves you time. Similar audiences make it easy to find audiences interested in your ads without any extra work. If you already have an audience, you can use it to find Similar Audiences.

How to use Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Before you start creating a Facebook Lookalike Audience, you first need to create a Custom Audience. Facebook will then use Custom Audiences to create a personalized Lookalike Audience for you.

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 in your Ads Manager.

Step 3: Select the Custom Audience source. Your options include website, app activity, categories, customer lists, and offline activity.

Step 4: Follow the instructions to create a Custom Audience based on the source you selected in Step 3.

Once you've created your Custom Audience, you can use it to set up Lookalike Audiences. Here are the steps to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook:

Step 1: Select Create a Lookalike Audience in Ad Manager

Step 2: Choose your source. Remember, this will be a custom audience you created from your customer information, Pixel or app data, or your page followers. You can also create a new source at this point.

Note: Your source audience needs to have at least 100 people from the same country. Facebook also typically recommends a source audience of 1,000-5,000 people, but prioritizes high-quality sources.

Step 3: Select the country or region you want to find similar groups of people. The areas you choose will determine the locations of the people in your Lookalike Audience, essentially adding a geofilter to your Lookalike Audience.

Note: You don't need 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 object. Meanwhile, larger numbers have higher reach but fewer similar characteristics. Facebook will give you an estimated reach for the size you choose.

You can also create multiple Lookalike Audiences with varying degrees of similarity to your source.

Step 5: Click Create Audience. And you are ready! Your Lookalike Audience may take six to 24 hours to complete.

4 tips to optimize Facebook Lookalike Audiences

1. Choose a high quality source

It can be tempting to include every customer you have in your source audience. Bigger audiences are best, right? The answer may be no.

The more similar a lookalike audience is to their source audience, the more valuable it is. However, results can vary significantly depending on the quality of your audience.

For example, you might want to set your entire email subscriber list to find Similar Audiences. But it won't necessarily translate into sales if most of your email subscribers don't buy or even open your emails. Instead, you'll create a higher quality Lookalike Audience if you only set active email subscribers as your source audience.

Essentially, you want to focus on your best customers so that your source audience delivers the best results.

2. Optimize bids with A/B Testing

You can create multiple Lookalike Audiences that have many similarities to your source audience. This is a strategic method for finding your most effective audiences.

To start, you should do A/B testing. Target the same ad to each of your Lookalike Audiences with an initial bid.

You can evaluate the effectiveness of your ads based on metrics like revenue per conversion or the lifetime value of each audience.

Once you've analyzed what your best-performing Lookalike Audiences are, you can modify your bids for each one. You can start bidding more for valuable audiences and less for lower-performing audiences.

This strategy is a win-win because you can stretch your social media advertising budget to more effective audiences while still ensuring you're reaching your ideal customers.

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 according to a variety of parameters. Start by assessing your campaign goals, then drill down into the most relevant audience options.

Ideas for source objects include:

• Video audiences: If you're launching a video-based campaign, create an audience based on people who have interacted with your videos in the past.
• Recent site visitors: All site visitors may be too broad a list, especially if conversion is your goal. Target people who have visited your site in the last 30 days or visitors who have placed something in their cart.
• Email Audience: Newsletter subscribers 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.

Facebook Lookalike Audiences FAQ

Will lookalike audiences be effective after 2024?

Lookalike audiences remain in effect after 2022, but you may notice a slight decrease in results. As of the Apple iOS 14.5 privacy update, users must now opt in to data sharing. Only 25% of users have opted in. While this does impact your ad results, you can still reach your ideal customers with Similar Audiences.

What is the difference between a Custom Audience and a Lookalike Audience?

The difference between Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences is based on whether there is a pre-existing relationship or not. Custom Audiences are 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're all from the same country. If your source audience is in multiple countries, you need at least 100 people from the same country to use it as a Lookalike Audience. Facebook typically recommends a source audience between 1,000-5,000 people.

How long does it take to get a similar audience?

It takes 6 to 24 hours to create your Lookalike Audience. When your lookalike audience is created, it will appear as Ready in the Available column. As long as your ad is targeted to that specific lookalike audience, it will refresh every 3-7 days.