Chapter 9. Lookalike Audiences
So far, we’ve seen many powerful features that are available to Facebook
advertisers. You can target by age, by location, by gender, by occupation, by
interest, and so forth. Now we come to the most powerful of all – the
lookalike audience. The lookalike audience is the nuclear bomb of
advertising.
Lookalike audiences can be developed in one of two ways. Or maybe we
should say they can be had in one of two ways. You can buy or obtain the
data you need for a lookalike audience from a broker or from someone who
markets a related product or service – in the event, they are willing to sell or
share it. In this case, you will upload the data to your Facebook account.
Facebook is going to ask you about it, and what you should do is be honest
and tell them that it’s from a partner.
The data itself is not the lookalike audience. What the data will do is help
Facebook create an entirely new list of customers that are Basically the same
as the people in the data you provide. Although we view ourselves as
thoughtful, independent, and smart actors, the scary thing is if we share a lot
of characteristics, we’re going to buy the same stuff. Robotically. If you’re
doing marketing – take advantage of it!
Facebook probably has secret formulas, and we don’t know what their secret
sauce is. However, there are a few things we can look at that Facebook uses
to create the lookalike audience:
● Age distribution
● Percent of males and females
● Device usage
● Income distribution
● Locations
● Occupations
● Page likes
● InterestsSo, if we’re selling Chevy trucks and just starting out, we might contact the
dealer on the other side of town and ask him for a database of his customers.