Facebook Lookalike Audiences Create New Opportunities

You probably started advertising on Facebook specifically to boost your sales.

The problem is, all of Facebook’s targeting options aren’t the same, and none compare to the value of Facebook Lookalike Audiences if it’s new customers you’re attempting to acquire.

If you want to drive sales from new customers on Facebook, you need to create and integrate Facebook Lookalike Audiences into your campaigns ASAP.

Here’s a fast and easy approach to get started.

For more information on Lookalike Audiences and how Top Mercury can incorporate them into your overall Facebook Ads strategy, contact us today and we’d be happy to help!

How to Create Powerful Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences are essentially a group of 1%-10% of the total Facebook population that Facebook believes will be extremely interested in your goods and services based on customer data or other sources.

In the example below, we created a Lookalike Audience around this business’ page followers (the source).

The cool thing about Lookalike Audiences is that the “source” can be a number of things, including email lists or even customer lists!

Here’s another example of a Lookalike Audience created with a customer list.

As you can see in the example above, we’ve switched the source from people who like this page on Facebook to a batch of newsletter subscribers.

We recommend that you create a small handful of Facebook Lookalike Audiences. These should range from 1% to 10% in size using lifetime customer value (LCV) as part of your source file. This flexibility will come useful for certain campaigns.

Let’s return to this example brand.

Digging Deeper Into Targeting For Facebook Lookalike Audiences

They realized that their best market was in Southeast, and that business there was nearly 2x other parts of the country.

So, we created a few different Facebook Lookalike Audiences.

The first, a 10% Lookalike, for use only in Southeastern states.

The second, a 5% Lookalike Audience for use everywhere else (excluding the select five Southeastern states).

The results were outstanding.

Knowing that the Southeastern market was best, broadening it would help us reach a huge chunk of customers. Whereas a narrower target for the rest of the country helped ensure we didn’t waste spend on too large an audience.

Long story short, you should utilize Facebook Lookalike Audiences of a variety of different sizes. This lets you play with certain fact-based targeting (objective things such as gender, age, and locations) within your ad set.

What’s most important is the power of Lookalike Audiences in general. These audiences really deliver and you can trust that Facebook really knows what it’s doing when it groups people into each one.

Follow-Up by Targeting Website Visitors

Once you’ve attracted customers with your Facebook Lookalike Audiences, re-market to them using the Website Visits feature. This can be found in Custom Audiences.

We often stress the importance of website visitors on Facebook.

There is simply no better group of people you can possibly target your goods and services to on the platform (other than cart abandoners if you are a larger company).

To design this finalist stage of your Facebook sales funnel, simply go to the Create a Custom Audience portal and select Website Traffic from the list of options.

Next, use your pixel to target people who visited your website in the last 30 days.

I recommend keeping this to 30 max; most people who haven’t continued to visit your website again in this period of time are no longer qualified.

You can also create one 180 day group for big promotions or events. Just don’t make it part of your day-to-day campaigns or you’ll waste a lot of money and piss off a lot of people!

Secondary Targeting Options Are Secondary

Take extreme caution before proceeding with Demographics, Interests, and Behaviors as targeting options.

They should be viewed as secondary options behind Facebook Lookalike Audiences to assist in finding new customers, not standalone options to do so.

You’re probably familiar with Detailed Targeting on Facebook Ads.

Demographics allow you to: “Reach people based on education, employment, household and lifestyle details.”

Interests let you: “Reach specific audiences by looking at their interests, activities, the Pages they have liked and closely related topics.”

And Behaviors allow you to: “Reach people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more.”

Pretty cool stuff.

So long as you’re realistic about what these targeting options can actually do for your business.

Using Demographics For Facebook Lookalike Audiences

To start, Demographics are the best of the bunch, as they allow you to target mostly objective things. For example, if you are a tutoring company targeting high school students, you’ll probably want to target to “Parents of High Schoolers (13-18).” Which is a demographic available on Facebook.

Interests can get a little more broad and subjective. They can still be a great way to cross-target based on similar brands your leads already like. Use in conjunction with a Lookalike Audience or website traffic.

And Behaviors are the wild card of the bunch, offering some really cool insight into your market, but are also extremely large and somewhat inconsistent. Proceed cautiously.

The point is, all of these groups have a fundamental flaw: there are many highly active Facebook users who do not have complete profiles who you’ll miss if you target this way.

Compare that to Facebook Lookalike Audiences. Where Facebook uses its own algorithm and data to pick the best people for your business. Users are assessed by how they actually behave, not how they think they behave.

So be realistic with these groups. Think of them more as secondary options to assist in your testing and advertising battlefield.

And remember: stay away from language targeting!

There are tens of millions of Facebook users who don’t put their language in their profiles. You could be ignoring them for no reason.

There’s no reason to overdo it with targeting when you have better options available.

If you’re looking to find new leads on Facebook, you’ll never do better than via a Lookalike Audience. Plain and simple. You will not find some secret sauce of Interest or Behavior groups that will change the game. We’ve tried. It’s simply not as effective.

I hope you enjoyed this post on the value of Facebook Lookalike Audiences! Facebook Ads can be difficult, especially in the early stages when you’re trying to piece together a campaign. Top Mercury’s PPC ad management services are here to help, so give us a call if you’re interested in learning more! Best of luck with your campaigns.

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