LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES

This is another Facebook magic trick. With lookalike audiences, you can ask FB to create an audience of FB users that “looks like” one of your custom audiences. Let me give you an example: You upload a list of email subscribers (people who are obviously interested in your products because they signed up for your list) and tell Facebook: go find people who behave in the same way. 

So this time, you are targeting COLD traffic (people who have never heard of you) but it’s much more likely to be highly targeted because it’s based on people who interacted with your shop/brand rather than just on “interests” or “demographics”. Careful though, I wouldn’t recommend using lookalike for an audience of LESS than 1000 as a bare minimum. It’s just not enough data for Facebook to work its magic below that – and of course, the more the better.

TO SUM IT UP

There are 3 main ways to target ads on Facebook:

• Basic targeting – uses demographics, locations, behaviors, and interest, and is targeting COLD traffic;
• Custom audiences – targeting to WARM or even HOT audiences of people that have already interacted with your brand or shop in the past;
• Lookalike audiences – targeting COLD traffic, but people that behave like the ones that already like you.

So, what can you do today with what we’ve learned?

First, ask yourself again if you’re ready for Facebook ads. I know that a lot of people say that they are easy and they made $100 000 overnight just by running some Facebook ads, but in reality, it’s much more complex.

Even if you don’t want to start right now, you have to start getting data so that the day you are ready to run the ads, you have the best chances at finding low-cost, highly targeted audiences. To do that, you can:

• Instal the FB pixel on your website;
• Start an email list. An email list is very important – not only for ads! There are tutorials and workshops on that if you want to learn more about it here.

Have you run Facebook ads already? How did it go? Let me know!