June 11, 2021

How A Lookalike Report Helps You Increase Sales

LookALike Main Image

LookALike audiences have been a go-to targeting tool for almost a decade. Even before digital marketing, marketers used current audience demographics to target potential customers. With a growing number of AI tools available, businesses of all sizes have access to LookALike targeting. How can you use a LookALike Report to increase sales?

What is a LookALike Report?

Pioneered by Facebook in 2013, a LookALike report uses common attributes and demographics of your current audience to find more customers who “look like” them. These attributes can be anything from age and location to interests and hobbies. The more commonalities between your audience the more accurate your LookALike report will be.

Although originally only a tool on social media, LookALike reports are now available on many different types of platforms. For example, we often build LookALike reports with raw CRM data.

LookALike Stat - 85% percent increases

How to Maximize Your Report to Increase Sales

As great as it would be to dump all your current audience information into a LookALike report and get back a list of new customers, it usually takes a more finesse than that. Here’s 5 tips and tricks to take out some of the guess work.

#1 Define Your Audience

The goals of LookALike reports can be different so it’s important to start with the right data seeds or source audience. Since LookALike reports are based on the data you input, it really important that the data you start out with is accurate and will accomplish what you want. For example, do you want to find new customers that are like all your customers or like your best current customers?  

The amount of data you can use to start with varies greatly. Facebook recommends anywhere between 1,000 and 50,000 people. Although they do say that starting with “a larger audience increases your potential reach but reduces the level of similarity between the Lookalike Audience and source audience.” Those differences between your source data and LookALike audience could be the difference between a sale or not.

Where can you get source data? Here’s three different source audiences:

LookALike Targeting
  1. CRM Data

Seeds defined by existing CRM data match lookalike audiences with information gathered from existing customers, such as email, physical addresses, and phone numbers. However, this data is usually too broad and needs to be narrowed down to create an accurate base for a LookALike report.

  1. Social Media Engagement Data

Data from social media audience can also be used as a seed that a LookALike report is based on. This data is usually based on characteristics like page views and likes.

  1. Conversion Data

Source data based on conversion data are usually your “best customer” seeds. These are customers who have already competed and action with your business.

#2 Get Used to Segmenting Your Data

Building out your LookALike report will be a lot easier when you have a specific product or audience segment in mind. Knowing what you want to use this new audience data for will help you pick the right demographics to target. This is where audience segmenting comes in. Finding the right demographics will be easier if you already have your audience data organized or tagged by demographics.

LookALike Audiences

#3 Connect Your LookALike Goals to Your Marketing Goals

Targeting using a LookALike audience can give you a higher ROI and help you reach your marketing targets. For example, if your company has found that you get higher engagements on mobile devices, you can build a LookALike report from those people. By targeting those people, you can direct your marketing efforts towards the audience most likely to help you reach your goals.  

#4 Target and Retarget and Retarget

Targeting the right audience is effective, retargeting adds even more. Using a LookALike audience in a retargeting campaign adds to specific information gathered in the initial campaign.  And since retargeting uses a lot of the same principles as building a LookALike audience, they go hand in hand.

#5 Switch Up Your Platforms

Facebook isn’t the only platform that supports LookALike reports. Many online platforms have LookALike audience builders built in. Switch up your platform to test new audiences and ways of reaching them. And as we mentioned earlier, we often use raw CRM data to build a LookALike report within our list system. The data we get from those reports can be used for any type of marketing.

Have you ever used a LookALike Report?

 
 

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