Today I want to show you guys high performing lookalike audiences that no one else is talking about, and how I use them to get results like this:
These lookalike audiences have the potential to double your return on ad spend. This isn’t clickbait, either; this simple audience change will truly take your marketing to the next level.
Before we go any further, here’s some proof showing you exactly how well these secret lookalike audiences perform.
The first campaign targeted the secret lookalike we’re about to discuss and the second campaign targets the typical lookalike that most people make. As you can see, there’s a clear difference.
In the example above, using a secret lookalike gave us a 35% cheaper cost per purchase when compared to a normal lookalike. Results like this probably make you want to test this for yourself, so I’ll show you guys exactly how to make these secret lookalikes step by step.
Step 1
Pull up the Facebook business manager and then click on the top left tab to open up the business panel. Then click on the analytics tab.
Step 2
Select the pixel you want to make a lookalike audience from. Do not accidentally select the Facebook page.
Step 3
Then click on ‘activity’, and then select percentile from the drop-down menu.
Step 4
Now, hover your mouse over the 80% mark. This will tell you how many pages your top 20% of page visitors views, on average. In this case, a member of the top 20% page visitor audience views 4 or more pages.
We are looking at the top 20% because according to the Pareto principle, 80% of effects come from 20% of causes – or in the case of eCommerce, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers.
What’s really cool about this graph is that not only can you make top 20% audiences, but you could make top 15%, top 10%, top 5%, etc. It really all depends on how much data you have available!
Step 5
OK, so now that you the average amount of pages your top 20% of page visitors view, it’s time to go ahead and create the custom audience.
If you take a look at the top, next to the purple button you should see an option to create a filter.
Set your filter to “Filter by people who viewed a page at least X times.” You can fill in whatever number of page views your top 20% of page visitors view for the X.
Step 6
Once you’ve set the filter, it’s time to create the custom audience. Hover over the little drop-down arrow next to the purple button. Then click “Create Custom Audience.” This should bring up a little box.
Name the audience “Top 20% Page Visitors”.
Then, set the ad account to the account you want to create the custom audience under. For the filter, select “use current filter.”
Set the timeline to the last 90 days. and then click on ‘Create Custom Audience”.
Voila! You have just made a secret custom audience.
Now, you have to turn this custom audience into a lookalike audience so that you can use it to target potential customers.
Step 7
Go into your audiences tab, and navigate to the asset library. Then select the checkbox next to the custom audience you just made, click on the three-dot dropdown, and select ‘Create Lookalike’.
Step 8
Select the countries you would like to make the lookalike for, and use the slider-bar to specify the lookalike audience range (0-10%). For this example we picked 3% — but you can select a size that best fits your budget. Once you’ve got everything selected, click on “Create An Audience”.
You’ve just made your first secret lookalike!
When running your new lookalike audience, we recommend you split test it against a normal pageview lookalike (or whichever performs consistently for you) in two separate campaigns. Let those run for a few days, and then check back over the lifetime stats to evaluate results.
Feel free to test out other secret lookalike audiences as well — though they all tend to work very well, you’ll never know which one works best until you give it a shot.
To make different secret lookalikes, just scroll to the bottom of the analytics page and then select a different event of your choice, and repeat the same process for each one.
Wrap Up & Conclusion
Good luck testing out your new secret lookalikes! We hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments section, or post in our Facebook Group.
