Terms

Lookalike Audiences

A lookalike audience is a group of potential new customers, identified by an advertising platform's algorithm, who share similar characteristics, interests, and behaviors with a business's existing customers. Advertisers provide a source audience, such as a list of their best customers or page followers, which the platform analyzes to find common attributes. The platform then builds a new, larger audience of people who are statistically more likely to be interested in the business, making targeting more data-driven and less based on assumptions.

Benefits of Using Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences offer a powerful way to scale customer acquisition efforts efficiently. By leveraging platform algorithms, marketers can move beyond guesswork and connect with high-potential users. This data-driven approach yields several key advantages for campaign performance and growth.

  • Targeting: Reach new, highly relevant audiences who mirror your best customers.
  • Efficiency: Save time and resources by automating the audience discovery process.
  • Cost: Lower customer acquisition costs and reduce wasted ad spend.
  • Scale: Expand your reach to find new potential customers you might not otherwise discover.
  • Performance: Generate higher-quality leads and improve overall campaign conversion rates.

How to Create Lookalike Audiences

This is how you can create a lookalike audience for your campaigns.

  1. Select a high-quality source audience, like your best customers, website visitors, or page followers.
  2. Choose your target location and the desired audience size, typically a percentage from 1-10%.
  3. The platform’s algorithm will then analyze your source to find new people with similar traits.
  4. Launch your ad campaign to this new audience and monitor its performance for future refinements.

Lookalike Audiences vs. Custom Audiences

While both are powerful targeting tools, they serve distinct strategic purposes in digital advertising.

  • Lookalike Audiences are algorithmically generated groups of new users who mirror your best customers. They are ideal for expanding reach and acquiring new leads, making them valuable for enterprises and mid-market companies focused on growth. However, their effectiveness depends entirely on the quality of the source data.
  • Custom Audiences consist of people who have already interacted with your business, such as existing customers or website visitors. This allows for highly targeted re-engagement and nurturing campaigns. Their main limitation is that they don't reach new prospects, making them best for retention-focused strategies.

Best Practices for Lookalike Audiences

To maximize the effectiveness of your lookalike campaigns, it's crucial to follow established best practices. These guidelines help ensure you're reaching the most relevant new users while optimizing your ad spend and improving overall performance.

  • Quality: Use a high-quality source audience, like your best customers, to give the algorithm strong, relevant data to model from.
  • Size: Test different audience sizes, from a narrow 1% match for high similarity to a broader 10% for greater reach.
  • Refinement: Regularly update your source lists and monitor performance to avoid audience overlap and maintain campaign efficiency.

Common Mistakes with Lookalike Audiences

Marketers often make avoidable errors that undermine their lookalike campaigns and waste ad spend.

  • Source: Using low-quality or outdated source data that misleads the algorithm.
  • Sizing: Selecting an audience size that is too broad, sacrificing relevance for reach.
  • Overlap: Failing to exclude existing audiences, leading to duplicated efforts and mixed messaging.

Frequently Asked Questions about Lookalike Audiences

How long does it take to create a lookalike audience?

Creation time varies by platform but typically takes between 6 to 24 hours. The algorithm needs time to process your source data and identify new users who match the specified characteristics, so it's rarely an instantaneous process.

Can I use the same lookalike audience across different ad platforms?

No, lookalike audiences are platform-specific and cannot be transferred. You must create a new lookalike audience natively on each platform (e.g., Meta, Google, LinkedIn) using a relevant source list, as their algorithms and user data are distinct.

What is the ideal source audience size for a lookalike campaign?

While platforms have minimums, a high-quality source audience of 1,000 to 50,000 people is ideal. This provides enough data for the algorithm to find strong patterns without being too broad, ensuring the new audience is both relevant and scalable.

Other terms

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Buying Intent

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Headless CMS

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B2B Data Platform

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Product-Led Growth

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Account-Based Sales

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Sales Territory

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Landing Pages

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Landing Pages

White Label

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White Label

Ideal Customer Profile

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.

Ideal Customer Profile

Sales Development

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Sales Development

CRM Enrichment

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Applicant Tracking System

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Applicant Tracking System

Persona-Based Marketing

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Persona-Based Marketing

Contact Data

Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.

Contact Data

CRM Integration

CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.

CRM Integration

Rollback Procedures

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Rollback Procedures

Lead Scoring Models

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Shipping Solutions

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Shipping Solutions

Cross-Site Scripting

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Demand Generation

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SEO

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Qualified Lead

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Sales Prospecting Software

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Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

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Lead Generation Funnel

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Sales Enablement

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Account Development Representative

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GPCTBA/C&I

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GPCTBA/C&I

SFDC

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Competitive Intelligence (CI)

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Competitive Intelligence (CI)

Copyright Compliance

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Copyright Compliance

Knowledge Base

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Knowledge Base

Simple Object Access Protocol Application Programming Interface

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Simple Object Access Protocol Application Programming Interface

Enrichment

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Enrichment

Sales Enablement Technology

Sales enablement technology refers to software and tools that equip sales teams with the resources they need to close more deals efficiently.

Sales Enablement Technology

Net New Business

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Net New Business

Lead Qualification

Lead qualification is the process of determining which prospects are most likely to become paying customers based on predefined criteria.

Lead Qualification

Cohort Analysis

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Cohort Analysis

Smile and Dial

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Email Personalization

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Email Personalization

Warm Outbound

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Warm Outbound

Website Visitor Tracking

Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.

Website Visitor Tracking

Dark Funnel

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Accounts Payable

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Accounts Payable

Sales Automation

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Lead Generation Software

Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.

Lead Generation Software

Performance Plan

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Performance Plan

Canary Releases

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Product Recommendations

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AI Sales Script Generator

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Pipeline Coverage

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Firmographics

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Account-Based Selling

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Closed Opportunities

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Product Champion

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Lead List

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Lead List

Channel Partners

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Channel Partners

Consumer

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Consumer

Sales Dashboard

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Gamification

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Gamification

User Interface

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Average Revenue per User

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Content Rights Management

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Marketing Qualified Account

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AI Data Enrichment

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AI Data Enrichment

No Cold Calls

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No Cold Calls

Lead Routing

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Account Executive

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Value Statement

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Bottom of the Funnel

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Bottom of the Funnel

Audience Targeting

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Audience Targeting

Single Page Applications

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Sales Intelligence Platform

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Operational CRM

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator

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Buyer Intent Data

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Buyer Intent Data

Predictive Lead Generation

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Business Development Representative

Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.

Business Development Representative

Objection Handling in Sales

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Objection Handling in Sales

Generic Keywords

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Generic Keywords

Intent leads

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Intent leads

User-generated Content

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User-generated Content

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.

Sales Funnel

End of Quarter

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End of Quarter

Single Sign-On (SSO)

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Single Sign-On (SSO)

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

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Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Point of Contact

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Point of Contact

Responsive Design

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Responsive Design

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.

Email Marketing

Customer Relationship Management Systems

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Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

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Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Demand Generation Framework

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Business Continuity

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Business Continuity

Cross-Selling

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Cross-Selling

Integration Testing

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Integration Testing

Behavioral Analytics

Learn about behavioral analytics, including implementing behavioral analytics successfully, & key metrics in behavioral analytics.

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Sales Coach

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Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

Sales Coaching

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Sales Coaching