Boost Your Remarketing Efforts with Lookalike Audiences

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a proven digital marketing strategy that delivers targeted ads to people who visited your website but never made a purchase. If you haven’t tried out remarketing, we can help get you started. Once you’ve found success through remarketing, there are even more ways to take advantage of custom audiences to find new qualified leads.

Lookalike Audiences is a digital marketing tool developed by Facebook that connects your business with new customers whose behaviors align with your top existing customers. Google offers Similar Audiences, which helps identify qualified leads based on your remarketing list.

You may be wondering, how do I sign up for these audience targeting tools? Well, there are some basic list requirements you need to meet to qualify for each service. Continue reading to learn how to use Lookalike Audiences and Similar Audiences to boost your remarketing efforts.

Getting Started With Lookalike Audiences

According to Facebook, Lookalike Audiences provides “a way to reach new people who are interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.”

You need to have a Facebook business page to access Lookalike Audiences. From there, you can use Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager to access custom audience targeting.

How Does Lookalike Audiences Work?

Lookalike Audiences are custom audiences based on existing audience sources. You must have a pre-existing audience list available to get started on Lookalike Audiences.

You can create Lookalike Audiences based on data from customer information, website visitors, app activity, engagement, and offline activity. You can even use value-based data.

Select Your Audience Size

You’ll want to determine the best lookalike audience size to create and market to. The smaller the Lookalike Audience, the more closely your users will match, but you could be missing out on potential sales for the sake of accuracy. If the audience is too large, then you might end up wasting ad dollars on only slightly related users. The trick is to start small and build from there.

When creating a Lookalike Audience on Facebook, you will have to define your audience size on a scale that ranges from 1 to 10 percent (similarity vs. reach). A 1% Lookalike Audience includes those people in a selected country who are most like your source audience.

Lookalike Audiences Minimum List Size

Your source audience must contain at least 100 people from a single country for Facebook to be able to create a Lookalike Audience. Facebook recommends 1,000 or more for better results.

Pull From Your Best Customers

Understanding the profitability and lifetime value of your customer segments can provide you with a better, more refined source list to create a Lookalike Audience from. You want to pull from your best customers to find the most qualified candidates with similar buying habits.

Facebook for Business offers a basic guide to help you create a Lookalike Audience.

Getting Started With Similar Audiences

Remarketing involves the delivery of targeted advertising to potential customers who have visited or interacted with your website. This audience is already interested in your product or service. Similar Audiences helps you find new website visitors based on shared traits or behaviors.

You need to have a Google Ads account to access Similar Audiences. Once signed in, you can navigate to the “Display campaigns” section or select a specific campaign to add targeting.

How Does Similar Audiences Work?

Similar Audiences examines the search behavior of your existing remarketing list members to identify new users that are similar in characteristics and behaviors to your existing customers.

Many of the same criteria that apply to Lookalike Audiences determine how successful your Similar Audiences campaign will be. Audience size and quality are important factors.

Similar Audiences Minimum List Size

You need a remarketing list with at least 1,000 users to activate Similar Audiences. It’s better to upload a smaller remarketing list with your top converting customers in most instances.

Google Ads offers a basic guide to help you add Similar Audiences to a campaign.

A Misconception About Lookalike Audiences

Some people might worry about an overlap between existing and lookalike audiences. This is a non-issue as long as you negate existing audience lists from lookalike audience campaigns.

You also can use pixel code tracking to avoid any sort of audience overlap. As long as you take the time to set up your list correctly in Facebook or Google, you can avoid duplicate leads.

Custom Audience Targeting Is a Gamechanger

Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences and Google’s Similar Audiences have developed algorithms that allow you to reach a qualified audience in a way that saves you time and money. Meanwhile, Facebook and Google’s algorithms continue to improve each day through machine learning.

Still hesitant to jump in? Think about it this way: your competition is likely either (a) already using these audience targeting tools or (b) getting left behind by others who are using these tools.

Don’t be part of the latter group. And even if your competition is taking advantage of Lookalike Audiences and Similar Audiences, you can always use strategy to outsmart the competition.