How to Create a Facebook Lookalike Audience in 5 Steps

What if there was a way to target similar Facebook profiles to your existing customers?

Well, there is – and it’s called a lookalike audience.

But what is a lookalike audience and how can I set one up on my Facebook campaign?

A lookalike audience uses a list of your existing customers to seek Facebook users that they closely resemble. This could be based on their demographic information, groups they are members of, or what they interact with on Facebook.

Keep reading for 5 steps to set up a lookalike audience.

How to Create a Lookalike Audience?

Here, we’ll look at the 5 stages of setting up a lookalike audience.

Follow along with this quick and easy process.

1. Verify Your Ad Account Is Set up and That You Have a Facebook Pixel Installed on Your Website

First, you’ll need to have your Facebook Ad account up and running. Next, it’s time to verify you have a pixel installed on your website, in order to track conversions.

Even if you’re not using pixel data as your source (see step 3), you’ll still want your pixel in place for tracking purposes.

2. Navigate to Your Audiences

From the Facebook Ads Manager, click on “Create Audience”. You’ll then need to select “Lookalike Audience”.

As you can see, the Audience tab of your ad account provides a lot of flexibility when creating your digital marketing campaign. There are many tools and options for selecting the audiences of your Facebook Ad campaigns that you can get to know over time.

3. Choose Your Source

The source is the information that Facebook uses to find the lookalike audience. These are your existing customers (or simply those who’ve shown interest in your brand), and you’re hoping to find users who have similar profiles to them.

You can use a variety of different sources: pixel data, people who have ‘liked’ your page, customers from an email list, and many more options.

Facebook recommends choosing a group of 1,000 – 50,000 for your source.

4. Choose a Country That You’d Like Your Audience to Come From

If your business is based in the U.S., you will want to select the U.S., of course. However, if you have an international operation, lookalike audiences can be a great way to replicate the success from one country to another.

For example, if you’ve got a successful customer base in Canada, you could use a source of these customers to develop your market reach in the U.K.

5. Select the Audience Size of Your Chosen Country

Ranging from 1-10%, this changes the number of people who will see your ad. A smaller percentage means you select the people with the closest profiles to your source.

A larger percentage means a greater number of people will see your ad, however they will not be as similar to your source.

It’s Time to Set up Your Lookalike Audience

Now all you need to do is hit “Create Audience” and there you have it. You can now apply this lookalike audience to your ad campaigns and wait for the results.

Facebook lookalike audiences are just one of many ways you can optimize your online marketing strategy.

If you found this article helpful, make sure to check out our other posts!