How to create a lookalike audience inside Facebook (and why you should)

What’s the next best thing to a real customer? One that looks and behaves just like them.

The other week I shared a post on the 3 kinds of audiences that you can select inside Facebook to reach your target audience.

A custom audience - what are people that are directly connected to you. These are the best audiences to have, but when are just starting out with Facebook ads are numbers here can be very small and so our chances of success are likely to be smaller ( see my previous post on conversion rates and what to look out for)

A lookalike audience - which should be a happy hunting ground for you as you build your reach. These are the next best thing to custom audiences as they help you find people that are similar to your warmest leads. So whilst these people are cold audiences, your chances of attracting them and selling to them are better than with a saved audience.

A saved audience - these are people you find on Facebook based on demographic data or interests inside Facebook. This is the place you can find cold leads that you need to attract into your custom audience area. It is hard to sell to this audience unless your product is super amazing, priced right and your ad creative is fabulous. Not impossible - but hard. It is better to provide value first into this audience (well technically it is better to provide value first for all posts) via say a blog post, free trial, discount coupon, something to spark interest and bring people into your Facebook funnel to give you an opportunity to sell to at a later stage.

When I am doing ads for my clients, I encourage them to utilise Lookalike Audiences as much as they can and be strategic in that approach.

So let’s look further at this magical audience type.


To create a lookalike audience - you first need a custom audience.

This could be any of the following

  1. Website Visits

  2. Engagement with your Facebook page

  3. Engagement with your Instagram Account

  4. Engagement with Video

  5. A custom file from an offline database - ie your current database of customers, your current email list, your LinkedIn contacts (yes you can you upload any of these lists into Facebook and then activity target them or find people similar to them!)

So step 1 - Create a custom audience first inside Facebook Ads manager

In this instance, we are looking at uploading a customer file that you already have.


Step 2 - Upload your file

Make sure you file is in CSV format. Firstname and LastName plus email are really essential items

Step 3 - Save your Custom Audience

There are loads of fields that you can match as Facebook will do its best to find your people.


Step 4 - Create your Lookalike Audience

Once your file has been uploaded then you can Create your Lookalike Audience. Facebook will prompt you to do this. You can also do this from inside the Audience List - choosing your audience and then clicking on actions to create a Lookalike Audience


Step 5 - Choose your target country and also target % of potential reach you wish to have

You can create multiple audiences from this option, but only within the target country. 1% is most closely aligned to your source audience, all the way up to 10%.


Fine tune your Lookalike Audience to suit your ad purpose

When you choose to use these audiences inside your ads, you can also further target the results. You can target ages within these groups, locations within these countries and interests as well.

So you can get very granular and really boost your chances of connecting with people that are most like your existing customers.

The next best thing to a fantastic customer is a person who looks and acts just like them - but has not heard of you yet.

Wouldn’t putting your business in front of this person make so much more sense than randomly targeting people?

I think so.

If you would like to know more about the strategy behind lookalike audiences, you need more help setting them up and you are looking for help to do exactly that, my upcoming round of the Facebook Frontier is exactly the course you have been looking for. 

Facebook Advertising really is an essential Small Business skill, isn't it time you added to your list of skills?