The Power of Lookalike Audiences

a case study on Facebook targeting

“There is nothing permanent except change,”

philosophers and singers from Heraclitus to Bob Dylan keep telling us. And so does Facebook: change is the name of the game, and targeting on FB is no exception…

Let’s start at the beginning

In the last two years, I focused more on writing than on running ads. But I kept in touch with Facebook's developments, so it was rather easy to get up to speed again and adjust to the new features of Ads Manager.

What’s not so easy to adjust to is the loss of targeting power due to the privacy and data protection policies Facebook recently implemented. I used to meticulously research and compose my audiences in Audience Insights, but that’s no longer possible. One can still create targeted audiences in ad sets, but the laser precision of the days past is gone.

Nonetheless, thanks to the sheer amount of data available for advertisers, Facebook remains one of the most powerful advertising channels. Thus, I set out to create and test new audiences.

The Experiment

I started with targeting audiences interested in various Internet marketing gurus, which worked great not that long ago. However, this strategy seems to have lost its novelty and became less effective and more expensive than targeting based on the tools and services people use in the industry. That makes sense, of course. Many people “Like” Serena Williams, but if you want to sell products in the tennis niche, your chance to succeed goes up when you target active audiences that are interested in particular tennis gear.

Anyhow, I was experimenting with different combinations of marketing tools as interests, and although these audiences performed OK, none of them emerged as a clear winner. To get more inspiration, I perused my old audiences and came across a Lookalike audience that was based on people who liked one of my fan pages. The audience was too big, and because I seek active leads with a high buying potential, I reduced its size by overlaying it with interest in a marketing service that requires a monthly fee.

Lo and behold, the Lookalike audience took off from the gate like a champ.

Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I set up a mini case study and ran the same ad to the Lookalike audience and to a control audience based on the same interests. I spent $5.00 on each ad per day and let the campaign run a week. The objective of the campaign was signing up via Messenger.

What happened?

As expected, the Lookalike audience started better than the control. However, the control audience almost caught up on the third day of the experiment, but then ran out of steam. At the end, the Lookalike delivered 3x more messaging sign ups at considerably lower cost than the control:

What does this mean?

This was a very small study, but it suggests that even in our fast-changing world, change is not the only permanent thing after all 😉

Marketing to “warmer”, seasoned audiences remains more effective than trying to charm a cold crowd.

I know, this could sound rather discouraging if you are just starting online. But please don’t despair: even the most successful marketers started with zero Likes and zero customers… Just keep going, keep cultivating your platform and “warmer” audiences will follow.

The key is to take advantage of Facebook’s data and technology and create Lookalike audiences as soon as you can.

So, what’s in a name?

As the name says, a Lookalike audience comprises Facebook users who are similar to your customers of followers. To create a Lookalike, you need a source audience of 100 or more people from the same country who have Facebook accounts. The source audience can be people who liked your Facebook Page, visited your website (you need to install a Facebook pixel on your site to register the visitors), or your existing customers (for instance, you can upload their emails to Facebook, but please keep in mind that not all emails will match the email address people use on Facebook).

To create a Lookalike audience, go to Ads Manager -> Tools -> Audiences -> Create Audience -> Lookalike Audience. If needed, Facebook will provide assistance along the way.

Wishing you the best of luck and the most responsive audiences ☺️

And last but not least, have fun - life is too short not to!