Are lookalike audiences back in style?
I’m going to let you know what I think after experimenting with various targeting options for our agency clients at ScaleDriven.
And my honest answer is yes.
I do believe lookalike audiences are back in fashion!
So if you’ve been sleeping on lookalike audiences because they stopped performing for you…that ends now.
It’s time to give them another shot!
Lookalike audiences have been on my mind, because the other day, I was on the phone with a prospective client.
I was asking them all of the usual questions about their goals, their product, their ideal clients, and what worked well for them in the past.
They were telling me about their niche product that’s really taken off with their demographic. In fact, about two years ago they were actually having a ton of success on Facebook ads by leveraging lookalike audiences.
But suddenly, that performance dropped off and lookalike audiences were no longer viable.
So what changed?
The Demise Of Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences stopped working after the massive iOS 14 issue with Facebook and Apple.
The reason why is that lookalike audiences require a lot of pixel data to work well.
There are actually two types of lookalike audiences.
- Dynamic Lookalike Audiences. These are constantly updating automatically via pixel data.
- Static Lookalike Audiences. These are the ones you have to manually update yourself – with emails, phone numbers, past clients, and all of the data that you have.
When the iOS 14 issue happened, Facebook was no longer able to feed good data back to the pixel, and lookalike audiences suffered.
After this update, my friend totally stopped trying to use lookalike audiences to market his product.
The Renaissance Of Lookalike Audiences
Over the past 2-3 months, we’ve seen the reawakening of the lookalike audience, especially on Facebook ads.
Here’s my theory for WHY lookalike audiences have started to perform well for advertisers again.
Nowadays, we have so many sophisticated third-party tools for sending data back to Facebook. We’ve got Anytrack, Hyros, and even Zapier feeding the Facebook pixel with good data.
I’m not just speculating that lookalike audiences are working well again.
We’ve recently been getting some amazing results for our agency clients at ScaleDriven, like our client whose cost per acquisition we decreased by 333%!
This was all due to the power of lookalike audiences.
If you would’ve suggested we use lookalike audiences six months ago – I would have told you no way! We were sticking exclusively to interest targeting.
And again, a big reason for this is because of the third-party tools we’re using for all our clients.
Whether you’re an agency client or Facebook ads coaching client, we walk you through setting up third-party tracking tools in the right way.
In fact, third-party tracking is so important that we won’t take on a client if we’re not able to install tracking for them.
So my theory when it comes to lookalike audiences is that two big things are happening.
- There’s an influx of information coming into the pixel, making lookalike audiences way more viable.
- Facebook is changing the way they’re doing lookalike audiences and they’re doing a lot of different modeling.
So for the longest time, they were testing, and now they’ve hit the nail on the head when it comes to creating lookalike audiences out of the seed audiences we give them.
What Does This Lookalike Audience Mean For You?
If you’re running Facebook ads and lookalike audiences used to work well, but then they stop performing, I suggest giving them another try.
Try the 1% lookalike audience, then the 2% lookalike audience.
Upload all of your buyers, email lists, abandoned carts, past leads, and whatever other data you have.
Even if lookalike audiences worked terribly in the past, giving them a second chance could be *the* thing to skyrocket your campaigns.
Because they’re working magnificently for our clients and our business!
Now once you’ve mastered targeting the RIGHT people….how can you be sure you’re showing those people an ad that entices them?
That’s *exactly* what I teach you in The 100 Million Framework – our product to help you create, launch and scale super profitable ads that work every single time.
No matter the niche, no matter the price point – this formula works!
