What are lookalike audiences?

The only thing better than converting high-LTV customers is finding more like them. With lookalike audiences, you can create a microcosm of people who share specific characteristics with your existing customer base. From there, you can craft messages to those valuable targets, and in the best circumstances, acquire new customers.

Lookalike audiences can be used for a variety of marketing objectives, such as:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Driving traffic to your website
• Generating leads
• Boosting sales

How do lookalike audiences work?

A variety of data points go into the creation of lookalike audiences. Demographics, interests, online behaviors, purchase history, or engagement with a brand's website or social media content tend to be the primary ingredients. Once that mix is established, machine learning algorithms are deployed to ferret our patterns and similarities among the target group. Based on this analysis, the platform can then find and target a larger pool of people who exhibit similar traits to the original audience.

Types of lookalike audiences:

There are two main types of lookalike audiences:

• Customer lookalike audiences: These are lookalike audiences that are based on your existing customers.
• Website visitor lookalike audiences: These are lookalike audiences that are based on your website visitors.

How to measure lookalike audiences:

• Reach: The number of people in the lookalike audience.
• Engagement: The number of people in the lookalike audience who interact with your ad or content.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people in the lookalike audience who click on your ad.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of people in the lookalike audience who take a desired action, such as signing up for your newsletter or making a purchase.

Why are lookalike audiences important to marketers?

The ability to reach the “right amount” of the “right people” who reflect a brand’s wider existing customer target is the height of marketing efficiency and effectiveness. Marketers who use lookalike audiences can be more confident that their ads and content will reach relevant consumers, which then produces higher engagement and conversion rates.

Who needs to know what lookalike audiences are:

• Performance marketer
• Digital marketer
• Marketing manager
• Brand manager
• Product manager
• Social media manager
• Paid search specialist
• Display advertising specialist
• Email marketer
• Sales manager
• CEO

Use lookalike audiences in a sentence: “Our retargeting efforts are under pressure from cookie depreciation, but thanks to our partner program with a group of vertical publishers, we were able to assemble lookalike audiences that nailed the target demographic and led to higher sales last quarter.”