+9 votes
by (2.3k points)
Alright.  Embarrassing fact to admit on the page.Alright. Embarrassing fact to admit on the page. I still don’t understand how to use lookalikes in a PRACTICAL fashion. How do you know the percentage of look alike to use for your audience? What are some special look alike audiences you guys use that have been successful? What does “1-3%” look alike even mean? Is this based off of 3% of their interests, 3% of the demographics, or 3% of that TOTAL FB audience that’s similar? Thanks in advance FBAB family.  
Alright.  Embarrassing fact to admit on the page.

4 Answers

+5 votes
by (1.3k points)
Testing is your answer. There is no "which % of lal work" In the early days we test many ways to find audiences to determine which ones are the most effective.  
by (2.3k points)
Good answer. What is a tangible process for testing that isn’t just throwing darts?  
by (1.3k points)
@scrimpy10 Good strategy before you start into knowing who the target audience is then designing a setup that will prove or disprove your strategy. FB is an ever evolving platform and what worked yesterday may not work today. One thing I have learnt is always on a cold account (new or not used for a while) is to go back to wide spread testing of copy , creative (2 or 3 images, 2 or 3 videos, LAL and interest based targeting. Ideally you have been given a big enough budget to do widespread testing.  
by (2.3k points)
@toxicology527 that’s really good for widespread. I’m still trying to think of a good strategy for a cheap budget. $300-$400 a month for small business case studies.  
by (1.3k points)
@scrimpy10 no such thing. This is not enough money.  
by (2.3k points)
@toxicology527 I took the time to go on your profile and you’re clearly a genius. Haha. I can’t send you a friend request but would love to pick your brain someday. This is good to know also.  
by (1.3k points)
@scrimpy10 Only people who get to pick my brains are paying clients. Otherwise you get what I say in groups. No point with a friend request as anything I have to say in my own groups or on my business page.  
+5 votes
by (660 points)
1-3% just means you have a 1%, 2%, AND 3% lookalike. Good practice is to seperate them in their own CBO and see how each of them perform
by (2.3k points)
@popsicle3025 But 3% - of what?  
by (2.3k points)
@popsicle3025 that’s more of where I’m lost
by (130 points)
@scrimpy10 it’s the top 3% of user that “look like” your seed audience. Let’s say you do a 1%LAL of your purchasers, FB will give you the audience of the 1% that ressemble the most your buyers
by (1k points)
@scrimpy10 3% out of the ppl on facebook in that country where you making the lookalikes, read the post below i wrote for u
by (2.3k points)
@evangel so for example; if my buyers demographics and interests are Ohio, 20-34, Cars and television shows. It will create an audience that is that same demographic but of the entire audience of Facebook, correct? (Entire audience meaning people I haven’t targeted to before)
by (2.3k points)
Oh I got it this makes sense nowww thank you!  
+3 votes
by (1k points)
@scrimpy10 okay so obviously first, u need to understand what lookalike actually is. 1% lookalike is 1% of people in certain country that are most similiar to the audience you are creating lookalike from. 1% is the most "accurate" up to 10% being the "least accurate" (note that sometimes it doesnt really work like that and 10% lookalike can perform as well as 1%) And then the question, % of what? % of people in the country So 1% lookalike in US - is 1% out of US population. (on facebook). So out of the gate thats usually around 2. 5 million ppl audience. 1% lookalike in some small country, lets say mine, Czech Republic, will be around 100k, cause we are only 10 million peeps country. So basically you giving facebook some audience to create a lookalike from, right? then you choose country. And Facebook will find the people in the country, those are most similiar to the ppl in the audience. And as i mentioned before, you can choose between the closest similarity, 1% up to 10%, (where 1% out of US as i said will be lookalike audience of size around 2. 5 millions, 3% will be 3x that. 10% will be 10x that. ) you can also make straigt 3%, 6%, or all 10% together. But its better to separate them and test the different percentages in each ad sets. Hope you understand it well now :-)
by (2.3k points)
@astragal that helped ALOT dude you killed that explanation thank you
by (1k points)
@scrimpy10 glad it helped bro
by (330 points)
@astragal if am making 3 ad sets with 1%, 3%, 5% lookalike audience, will it overlap?  
by (1k points)
@potboiler90723 yep it will, you have two options, dont worry about the overlap, or exclude it, so at 3% you gonna exclude 1%, at 5% you gonna exclude 3%, both options are viable and i use both of them sometimes, i would say use the exclusions option if you have small budget, if you have bigger budget like 100usd+ a day on cbo, use the other option :-)
by (330 points)
@astragal please one more thing. If I have 10k contacts of my old customers who bought the property one year before, on that time their interest was property, but after one year their interest is obviously changed, may be they are looking for a car, or home appliances. Now if facebook algorithm (for lookalike audience)workes on interest base, it means their is possibility my lookalike laudience will not be related real estate because of their old interest.  
by (1k points)
@potboiler90723 yea so what you are saying makes sense, basically now you are selling them different product/service and you want to use same lookalike from different type of product/service, that could work, or not. Definitely test it. You can also narrow the lookalikes by some interest targeting. Something i havent done yet, but definitely something to test too.  
by (330 points)
@astragal bundle of thanks, I will must try it.  
by (650 points)
@astragal great explanation
by (750 points)
That's the meaning of helping people. If u are up for a pint in Prague let me know :)
by (1k points)
@lindsay92226 i live in bali for past 5 years already, here we drink Bintang! Haha
+3 votes
by (670 points)
Test all with your winning creatives. Then scale
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