Lookalike audiences have been a go-to targeting tool for almost a decade. Even before digital marketing, marketers used current audience demographics to target potential customers. With a growing number of AI tools available, Lookalike targeting is easier and more accessible to businesses than ever before. How can you use Lookalike reports to your advantage?
What is a Lookalike Report?
Invented by Facebook in 2013, a Lookalike report uses common attributes and demographics of your current audience to find more customers who “look alike” to them. These attributes can be anything from age and location to interests and hobbies. The more commonalities between the members of your audience, the more accurate your Lookalike report will be.
Although they were originally only a tool on social media, Lookalike reports are now available on many types of platforms. For example, we often build Lookalike reports with raw CRM data.
How to Get the Best Report and Increase Sales
As great as it would be to dump all your current audience information into a Lookalike report and get back a list of new customers, it usually takes more finesse than that. Here are 5 tips and tricks to take out some of the guesswork.
#1 Define Your Audience
It’s critical to start with the right data seeds or source audience. Since Lookalike reports are based on the data you input, it’s important that the data you start with is accurate and will accomplish what you want. For example, do you want to get an audience that’s like all of your customers or like your best customers?
The amount of data you can use varies greatly. Facebook recommends anywhere between 1,000 and 50,000 people. They do have a disclaimer that starting with “a larger audience increases your potential reach, but reduces the level of similarity between the Lookalike Audience and source audience.” That reduced level of similarity between your source data and your Lookalike audience could be the difference between getting a sale or not. That’s why you have to be careful about how much data you want to input.
So where can you get the source data necessary for building Lookalike reports? Here are three solid source audiences:
- CRM Data
Seeds from existing CRM data will create Lookalike Audiences with information gathered from existing customers, such as their emails, physical addresses, and phone numbers. Your CRM data as a whole is often too broad, so you’ll likely need to narrow it down to create an accurate basis for a Lookalike report.
- Social Media Engagement Data
Data from social media audiences can also be used as a seed for Lookalike reports. This data is usually based on actions like page views and likes.
- Conversion Data
Conversion data typically produces your “best customer” seeds. Conversions are customers who have already interacted or exchanged with your business. They make for great Lookalike source data.
#2 Get Used to Segmenting Your Data
Building out your Lookalike report will be a lot easier when you have a specific product or audience segment in mind. Knowing what the Lookalike report is for will help you pick the right current audience demographics to target. This is where audience segmenting comes in. Keeping your audience data organized by demographics in a data-management system, ideally a CRM, will make segmenting and Lookalikes easier.
#3 Connect Your Lookalike Goals to Your Marketing Goals
Targeting using a Lookalike audience can give you a higher ROI and help you hit your marketing targets. For example, if your company has found that you get higher engagements on mobile devices, you can build a Lookalike report from those people. By targeting those people, you can direct your marketing efforts toward the audience most likely to help you reach your goals.
#4 Target, Retarget, Retarget Again
Targeting the right audience is effective, but retargeting is even more effective. Using a Lookalike audience in a retargeting campaign adds to the information gathered in the initial campaign. Since retargeting uses a lot of the same principles as building a Lookalike audience–repurposing data, contacting the same group of people more than once–the two go hand in hand.
#5 Switch Up Your Platforms
Facebook isn’t the only platform that offers Lookalike reports. Many online platforms have Lookalike audience creation built in. Try other platforms to test new audiences and new ways of reaching them. As we mentioned earlier, we often use raw CRM data to build a Lookalike report within our list system. The data we get from those reports can be used for any type of marketing, not just social media.
How can a Lookalike report transform your sales?
