Facebook Lookalike Audience: What It Is and How to Use It
If you've managed online campaigns, especially on social media, the first question you've likely asked yourself is: how do I capture the attention of an audience that doesn't know me or follow me yet?
The fact that the web and social networks allow us to potentially reach billions of users is exhilarating.
But to minimize advertising investment and maximize conversions, it is necessary to drastically reduce the range of action in order not to waste energy and resources in vain.
Successfully intercepting the right audience is the long-standing problem of online media that we all face.
If you use Facebook Ads, there is an excellent tool that can help you specifically target that audience. This tool is Facebook Lookalike Audience.
What is Facebook Lookalike Audience?
The Lookalike Audience is a group of users who are "similar" to your current audience and are therefore likely to be interested in your business.
By planning your campaigns with the Lookalike Audience feature, you will create a new target audience made up of users who do not know you yet but are very similar to your current audience.
How does Facebook Lookalike Audience work?
To create a Lookalike Audience, Facebook will simply select those users present and active on its network who share common and similar characteristics to your audience.
You need to define the audience that Facebook will use as a basis for cross-referencing data and creating the Lookalike Audience! You can choose from website visitors, your customers, your followers, and more.
Don't underestimate this choice, as the accuracy and depth of profiling that Facebook will perform will depend on it.
The higher the quality of the audience you choose, the more effective the creation of your Lookalike Audience will be!
THE LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE FROM WEBSITE VISITORS
Choosing your customer base as your target audience to create the Lookalike Audience is definitely the best choice.
However, you might not have sufficient data or a large enough customer base.
In this case, you could consider using website visitors as your audience.
Remember that to create your Lookalike Audience based on website visitors, you first need to install the Facebook Pixel.
At that point, through the tracking pixel, Facebook will automatically be able to detect users and create the target audience!
Why use Lookalike Audiences?
Using the Lookalike Audience feature will maximize the effectiveness of your Facebook campaign and minimize acquisition costs.
In fact, by spreading the campaign to a "warmer" audience compared to a generic one, you will multiply the chances of conversion in a short time.
In terms of cost, if used correctly in Lead Generation campaigns, the Lookalike Audience can reduce the CPL by up to 70%!
An important note: it may seem paradoxical in some ways, but to maximize results, it's preferable to choose a more narrow audience.
When you define the size of your Lookalike Audience, you can choose the number of users to whom you want to show the campaign. Keep in mind that while a larger audience provides more coverage, a larger number reduces the precision of profiling.
We will revisit this discussion later.
Site and brand authority
Blogging is a strategy that really should not be underestimated. Also and above all because in addition to the benefits for SEO and site traffic, it is truly a more unique than rare resource for sales and the image of the company.
How to Create a Lookalike Audience
The procedure for creating a new Lookalike Audience is very simple. It's just a little bit cumbersome to get to the right page, but by following these steps you shouldn't get lost:
1- access your Facebook Business Suite;
2- from the menu (left column) go to Other Tools;
3- from Other Tools select the Audience item.
Here we are. It's from this page that you can start creating your Lookalike Audience.
The first step will be to upload the source audience from which Facebook will then derive the similar and related audience (the lookalike).
Remember what we discussed earlier? Choose this source audience carefully, because the quality of this data base will determine the quality of the subsequent selection of the Lookalike Audience that Facebook will perform.
If you have a list of current customers, use that. This audience is the most precise one.
Note: this audience must consist of at least 100 users, but Facebook recommends starting with an audience of at least 1,000 users.
After uploading your list, you will need to define two other very important parameters:
1- the nationality/country of your Lookalike Audience;
2- the size of your new Audience.
The nationality of the Lookalike Audience
For nationality, this choice will depend on your business objectives:
- Do you want to expand locally and reach national users?;
- Or are you looking to venture abroad and internationalize sales?
There are no better or worse paths to follow in this case.
If you are creating Lookalike Audiences to make yourself known in foreign countries, remember that it is always better to create a separate Lookalike Audience for each country.
This way, you can uniquely associate it with the specific campaigns you have created for foreign markets and monitor the performance of the campaigns for each market, analyzing the results separately.
The size of the Lookalike Audience
Facebook allows you to choose the size of the new audience on a scale from 1-10 of the total active users in the target country you have selected.
When you choose this parameter, keep your main goal in mind: CONVERT.
If you have chosen to use the Lookalike Audience feature, that is your goal. If you wanted to maximize coverage instead, you are in the wrong place. It is better to use standard Core Audiences (audiences created based on interests, geographic data, and demographics).
FACEBOOK TARGETING
Facebook mette a disposizione 3 strategie di targeting:
Mentre le Custom Audience e le Lookalike Audience sono strumenti efficaci per acquisire nuovi prospet e clienti, le Custom Audiences sono validissime invece per ampliare pubblico e copertura.
Dato che stai cercando dei prospect e nuovi clienti, ti servirà la massima precisione e similarità con il tuo Buyer Persona.
Per scegliere la numerosità del pubblico Lookalike, tieni a mente che:
- scegliere come numerosità 1 = dimensioni del pubblico minime e massima similarità con il tuo Pubblico;
- scegliere come numerosità 10 = dimensioni del pubblico massime e minima similarità con il tuo Pubblico.
In sostanza, per ottenere maggiori conversioni e ridurre il CPL suggeriamo di mantenerti nella fascia 1-3.
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