4 Ways to Build Facebook Lookalike Audiences to Expand Your Targeting

Before you can create a video lookalike audience, you first need to create a custom video audience, which will be the source audience for the lookalike. Build a Video Lookalike Audience Now you’re ready to create your video lookalike audience. As with video lookalike audiences, first you’ll need a custom email audience of your subscribers/customers before you can create an email-based lookalike audience. Create a Custom Email Audience Navigate to the Audiences dashboard, click Create Audience, and select Custom Audience from the drop-down menu. Build an Email Lookalike Audience In the Create a Lookalike Audience box that opens, you’ll see your custom email audience in the Source field. As with video and email lookalike audiences, you need to create the source audience first. Create a Website Custom Audience for Conversions In the Audiences dashboard in your Facebook Ads Manager, click Create Audience and select Custom Audience from the drop-down menu. Build a Conversion Lookalike Audience Now navigate to the Audiences dashboard, click Create Audience, and select Lookalike Audience from the drop-down menu. In the Create a Lookalike Audience box, choose your website custom audience from the Source drop-down list. Then choose your target country and select your audience size.

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Do you want to reach more consumers with your Facebook ads?

Looking for creative ways to reach more people like your ideal customers?

Lookalike audiences allow you to build new audiences using an established source audience such as people who have viewed your video or previously purchased from you.

In this article, you’ll discover how to use Facebook lookalike audiences to successfully scale your ad targeting.

4 Ways to Build Facebook Lookalike Audiences to Expand Your Targeting by Charlie Lawrance on Social Media Examiner.
4 Ways to Build Facebook Lookalike Audiences to Expand Your Targeting by Charlie Lawrance on Social Media Examiner.

What Are Facebook Lookalike Audiences?

Facebook lookalike audiences are an advanced targeting option that goes beyond the basic interest and demographic targeting functionality. They’re currently the most effective Facebook targeting tool to find your ideal customer.

At the core of all lookalike audiences is a source audience upon which you build a lookalike audience. Facebook takes all of the data points of your source audience and finds new, similar people using a set percentage sample (which you specify) of the population in your chosen country.

You'll see these options when you create a Facebook lookalike audience.
You’ll see these options when you create a Facebook lookalike audience.

Unlike interest-based targeting, lookalike audiences allow you to create the source audience, giving you more control. As a result, you end up with better-quality audiences because you can find new audiences that are almost identical to your existing ones.

Lookalike audiences are best used to target new cold audiences at the top of your sales funnel. For example, you could run top-of-funnel content campaigns to all of the lookalike audiences you build. This would start to warm them up as you take them from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

Now let’s look at how to create four types of lookalike audiences.

#1: Create a Video Lookalike Audience

Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video on the platform every day, so it should come as no surprise that video is Facebook’s best-performing content.

Video allows you to build brand recognition and trust with your target audience quickly. If you’re running a video-based content strategy and want to scale your campaigns to reach more people, lookalike audiences let you find new people based on those who’ve already watched your videos.

BuzzFeed's Tasty generates over 1.4 billion video views per month on Facebook.
BuzzFeed’s Tasty generates over 1.4 billion video views per month on Facebook.

Before you can create a video lookalike audience, you first need to create a custom video audience, which will be the source audience for the lookalike.

Create a Custom Video Audience

Custom video audiences allow you to segment your viewers based on what videos they’ve watched and their level of engagement.

To create a custom video audience, open your Facebook Ads Manager and navigate to the Audiences dashboard. To do that, click the menu button and click All Tools.

Navigate to the Audiences dashboard in your Facebook Ads Manager.
Navigate to the Audiences dashboard in your Facebook Ads Manager.

Under Assets, click Audiences.

Click Audiences under Assets in Facebook Ads Manager.
Click Audiences under Assets in Facebook Ads Manager.

Next click Create Audience and select Custom Audience from the drop-down menu.

From the Create Audience drop-down menu, select Custom Audience.
From the Create Audience drop-down menu, select Custom Audience.

In the pop-up box that appears, you’ll see four custom audience options. Select Engagement on Facebook.

Select Engagement on Facebook when creating your custom video audience.
Select Engagement on Facebook when creating your custom video audience.

Next select Video.

Select Video for your Facebook custom video audience.
Select Video for your Facebook custom video audience.

You’ll see the box where you create your custom video audience. Select your engagement criteria from the Engagement drop-down list and choose the videos from which you want to build your audience.

Select the engagement criteria for your Facebook custom video audience.
Select the engagement criteria for your Facebook custom video audience.

Define the time period, give your audience a name, and click Create Audience.

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Create a Facebook custom video audience of people who have watched at least 25% of any of your videos in the last 90 days.

You can create an audience for all video views at every engagement level: 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 95%. To create each one, repeat the process outlined above for the different engagement options.

Build a Video Lookalike Audience

Now you’re ready to create your video lookalike audience. Navigate to the Audiences dashboard in your Ads Manager just like you did when you created the custom video audience. Then click Create Audience and select Lookalike Audience from the drop-down menu.

In the Create a Lookalike Audience box, you’ll see three fields: Source, Country, and Audience Size. For the source, select the custom video audience you created in the previous step.

Create your Facebook video lookalike audience.
Create your Facebook video lookalike audience.

Next choose your country. This is typically the country in which the majority of your source audience is located. For example, if you…

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