To create a Lookalike Audience that you can use to expand your Facebook Ads audience.
By the end of this SOP, you will have a Lookalike audience in the target country of your choice.
To follow this SOP to add Lookalike Audience, you need:
- Google Tag Manager installed on your site. If you haven’t done so already and you are using WordPress you can follow SOP 004 (web version).
- You should have created a Business Manager account for your site (you can follow SOP 010 (web version) to do that).
- You also need to have the Facebook pixel on your website. If you don’t have it yet, you can follow: SOP 005 (web version) (or SOP 068 (web version) if you’re using Shopify).
- You also need to have set up Facebook conversion tracking (you can follow SOP 017 (web version) to start tracking your conversions).
- Finally, you’ll need to have verified your domain inside Facebook Business Manager (you can follow SOP 97 (web version) to do that).
A Lookalike Audience uses your selected source audience as an input to create a group of people that share the same qualities (demographic information, interests and other) of the people in it, allowing you to scale your ads effectively.
In your Facebook Asset Library.
When you want to scale your prospecting campaigns.
The person responsible for paid advertising.
Creating your lookalike audience
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Open Facebook’s Business Manager on your browser by going to https://business.facebook.com .
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On the left sidebar, click “All Tools”:
3. Next, scroll the page down and click “Audiences” under “Advertise”:
4. On the topmost-right corner, select the Ad Account you want to work on (or confirm that you are using the right one):
5. Click “Create a Lookalike Audience”:
Note: To create a lookalike audience, it is recommended to create a custom audience first for Facebook to recognize who your audience are and where they are from such as website traffic, facebook or instagram engagements, video views, and etc. For more information, you can refer directly to Facebook Business Help Center.
6. Select the type of audience you want to use as a “Source” for this new Lookalike audience:
Value-Based Sources (click here to jump to this option): If you are already assigning a conversion value to the conversion that you want to use as a source for your lookalike audience and you also want Facebook to create a lookalike based on your highest value customers instead of treating everyone equally, select this option.
Example: If you want to create a lookalike audience of the users who purchased on your e-commerce store and your tracking setup is sending conversion values to Facebook (recommended) you would select this option.
Note: If you haven’t implemented Facebook tracking yet, or want to improve your setup, you can follow SOP 017: Setting up FB Conversion Tracking .
Other Sources
(click here to jump to this option): If you want to use an audience you have previously created or that is not value-based, select this option.
Using Value-Based Sources: To create a value-based lookalike audience, your source audience must be a mobile app, pixel, SDK, catalog or a custom audience that has customer value as a data type.
7. Click “Custom audience with customer value”.
8. Read the requirements and click “I accept”.
9. Download, fill out, and upload the provided customer list template.
Down the customer list template file and fill it out at your own time. Upload it when you are ready.
10. Choose your customer value column that represents your customer value.
11. Name your audience and click “Next” at the bottom right corner.
Facebook would automatically match the customer list columns as highlighted in the green boxes above to ensure they are correct. You will be prompted if further actions are required.
12. Simply click on the “Action needed” tab to correct any. Click “Import & create” to move on.
13. Next, upload your imported list and confirm that the customer list is correct.
Note: If you are seeing no values being reported, and/or 0 purchases, like in this example:
Or if you see all events grayed out when you click on ‘Other events with value’:
You probably are not sending your conversion values and/or events to Facebook yet. You can follow SOP 017: Setting up FB Conversion Tracking to do so.
Select your Source - If you are not sure, that should be the company’s Facebook pixel. (Identified by a gray “Facebook Pixel” label next to it on the right of the drop-down)
Select your Event - The event you select here will be the one Facebook will use to generate the audience that will serve as a source for your lookalike audiences.
Note: Select an event that generates an audience of at least 100 people from a single country or you won’t be able to generate your lookalike audience. The more people in your source audience, the better your lookalikes will be.
Note 2: If you don’t have enough people in your lookalike audience for a given event (e.g: InitiateCheckout) select an event that occurs more often (e.g: AddtoCart).
Review your source audience - After you’ve selected your Source and your Event, you’ll be able to review the data that Facebook has and that will be used to generate your source audience (and consequently your lookalike audience).
Ask yourself the following questions:
Does this data make sense?
Did I ever have an event in the last 60 days with such a high/low value?
Does my customer number for the last 60 days make sense?
Does the total number of this event for the last 60 days make sense?
Note: You can cross-reference the data with the one you have in Google Analytics.
If the data does not make sense, make sure you have followed SOP 017: Setting up FB Conversion Tracking to correctly setup your Facebook tracking. If you are not able to fix it yourself contact a web developer to help you fix your tracking setup. It is not recommended to create this lookalike audience at this moment for you.
Click here to jump to the next step.
Using Other Sources:
Note: The audience you select here will affect the Lookalike Audience that ends up being created.
Example: If you run an e-commerce apparel business and create your Lookalike Audience based on the people that visited your “Women’s” section, you will most likely get a Lookalike Audience where the majority of the group is female.
Note 2: Your source audience must contain at least 100 people in the same country in order to use it as the basis for a Lookalike Audience.
Selecting locations where you would like to find your similar set of users.
Note 1: Facebook may automatically recommend you to add other countries as well according to your source audience. Click “Add these countries”, if feasible to you.
Note 2: You will be able to add locations when you create ad sets. This location does not need to be necessarily the same as the one where your source audience is located.
Select your intended Audience Size as a percentage of your target country’s Facebook users.
Note: You cannot edit the audience size after the audience is created. You can always create a new one, and you can create up to 500 Lookalike audiences from a single source audience.
Note 2: The percentage you select will vary depending on how broad you are willing to go with your targeting. Selecting 1% will yield highly similar users whereas 10% might include some less similar users but will increase your audience size.
14. Click “Create Audience”.
That’s it! Your Lookalike Audience has been created and you should now see it on your “Audiences” dashboard:
Note: When setting up your Ad Set, you will be able to filter your Lookalike Audiences:
Note 2: Your audience might not be ready immediately, sometimes it may take up to 24h for it to become available for use. Once ready the “Availability” column will feature a green light and a “Ready” status.
