Creating lookalike audiences, i.e. groups of similar audiences is an option that allows to reach people who, with high probability, may be interested in our products or services even though they do not yet know them. This is due to the fact that groups of similar audiences
But how is this even possible?
On Facebook, you have the option of adding a file with your customers’ data and creating a group of recipients based on it. If you do this, Facebook will search through phone numbers and email addresses in the database you have uploaded to Facebook, and then check which of these data is already in its system. It will determine which of the email addresses or phone numbers you have uploaded can be assigned to specific Facebook or Instagram users. This way it will search for Facebook and Instagram users who are your customers and save them as a group of recipients.
Similar situation will occur, if you create an audience based on Facebook Pixel or Facebook Pixel Events.
You can read about what Pixel Facebook is here:
https://onlinemarketing.help/en/what-is-facebook-pixel/
You can read about what Pixel Facebook events are here:
https://onlinemarketing.help/en/what-are-pixel-facebook-events/
Having the right source group, such as a group containing customers, users of your website, mobile application, or followers of your Facebook fanpage or Instagram Profile, you are able to create groups of similar recipients for these people.
Thanks to the information held by Facebook and Instagram, the algorithm determines the characteristics and categorizes the behavior of people who are members of a previously defined group, and then searches in a given territory for people who are most similar to the initial group. That is, if you create a group consisting of your customers and then on its basis Lookelike Audience, then Facebook will analyze all these people from the initial group, see what characteristics they have and how they behave online. Then, based on this information, will search for people most similar to Your customers and save them as a ready Lookelike group that you can use to target your advertising campaigns.
It is also important to choose the size of similar recipient groups. A smaller group will be more consistent with the source group, while a larger group may extend the range. However, when the group is too large it may cause that the degree of similarity will differ too much from the initial group and the use of such a group may not be effective.
However, not only the group size and interest of the recipients have an impact on the campaign success. In this case, the most important role is the quality of the source, which finally defines the amount of sales. Therefore, it is a good idea to create the before mentioned customer group, because then the results of a customer-based Lookalike Audience campaign can be much better. An undoubted advantage of using groups of similar recipients is that we have the ability to use very advanced Facebook behavioral analysis algorithms, thanks to which Facebook can find for us people who are most likely to cause a given conversion. For example, purchase.