Are You Missing Out on Potential Sales on Facebook?

If you are using lookalike audiences on Facebook, you may actually be shutting down potential sales on the platform.

When you work with lookalike audiences on Facebook, you are effectively narrowing your target group. Facebook is actually better than either YOU or ME at targeting ads based on both your campaign type and the goals you have set for your Facebook campaigns.

Here you will find concrete tips on how to scale your sales on Facebook both with and without using lookalike audiences, and guidance on how to test lookalike audiences against cold audiences.

What are lookalike audiences on Facebook?

Lookalike audiences on Facebook are groups that resemble the people who are ALREADY in your audience. These allow you to narrow down your targeting in terms of the number of people who will see your ads.

You can create lookalike audiences on Facebook ranging in size from 1-10%, which are similar to your existing audiences.

Your existing audiences might include:

• Visitors to your website
• All customers
• Users who have added items to their basket
• Anyone who has engaged with you on Facebook or Instagram
• All newsletter subscribers
• And so on…

For example, if you sell women’s shoes, you can create a lookalike audience based on previous buyers in your webshop.

You set up a lookalike audience in Facebook under Audiences > check the audience you want to copy > select audience location (country) > choose audience size

• 0-1% lookalike audience are those most similar to your original audience
• 1-2% lookalike audience are those next most similar
• 2-3% lookalike audience are less similar
  and so on…

For example, a 1-10% lookalike audience can give you a group of up to 433,200 people in Denmark.

Below is an example of a 0-1% Facebook lookalike audience, which matches all visitors from the last 60 days

But with Facebook lookalike audiences, you risk losing potential sales! (Ouch!)

Because! If you only advertise to a 1% lookalike audience, you are NOT reaching all the other potential buyers in that country – and there are many. They could potentially be within the remaining 99%.

Because! Facebook’s algorithm may not function optimally during the learning phase (read about the Facebook learning phase here)

And! Your audience becomes exhausted (because it is too small) and the frequency of ads shown to each person rises (making each sale more expensive).

And! You do not know whether a 1% lookalike audience converts better than a 2% lookalike audience.

And! You also do not know whether a “cold” audience performs better than lookalike audiences.

Okay! What can I do instead?

You should try letting Facebook manage the ad delivery, focusing less on the audience and letting the AD CONTENT determine your SUCCESS.

This means you now test your ad content against different audiences, rather than testing audiences against your ad content (as has traditionally been the case). The traditional approach (still used by some) is to select specific demographics and interests for your audience and design a specific ad for them. This is very time consuming (and costly). 

Because: Facebook knows BETTER than both YOU and ME who should see your ads (and with which message), based on the campaign objective you have selected 👇

Example of choosing a Facebook campaign objective

Isn’t there a “but…”?

Of course there is – as with almost everything in online marketing. It might work, it might not. But if you do not test, you risk missing out on leads or sales by limiting yourself (and Facebook) with lookalike audiences.

Therefore!
You need to work MUCH more with your ad content, try to focus less on the audience, and let Facebook do the heavy lifting. Facebook’s algorithm is very good at delivering ads to the right people.

And!
You should try split testing lookalike audiences against a “cold” audience.

How to use a cold audience for a Facebook campaign

Using lookalike audiences for a Facebook campaign

Building a Facebook campaign with cold audiences and lookalike audiences

“Stacking” Facebook audiences

You can also “stack” your lookalike audiences. Here, you use one ad set for e.g.: 0-1%, 1-2%, 3-4% and so on. You will find that different lookalike audiences perform differently. Stacking is a good idea if you have smaller Facebook budgets to work with. Below is an example of how to “stack” lookalike audiences, and how in this case the individual lookalike audiences perform. Here you can see that the 7-8% lookalike audience performs better than the 0-1% lookalike audience.

This was an overview of how you can work with Facebook lookalike audiences, cold audiences, and how you can stack your lookalike audiences to see what works best for your Facebook campaign. But REMEMBER to test and see what delivers results for your specific campaigns.