How to Build Your Facebook Lookalike Audience

Unlock the power of Lookalike Audiences on Facebook to find new users who resemble your best customers — improving ad efficiency and driving higher ROI without spending more.

What Is Lookalike Audience?

A Lookalike Audience uses Facebook’s machine learning to analyze a source audience — like your email list, website visitors, or top purchasers – and finds people with similar traits and behaviors. You’ll reach new, qualified users faster and scale your campaigns.

Prepare Your Source Audience

To create a Lookalike, first build a Custom Audience from one of the following:

• Customer Lists (emails, phone numbers)
• Website Visitors via Facebook Pixel
• Social Engagement (video views, form submissions)

Ensure your seed group has at least 100+ unique users in one country -ideally 1,000–5,000

Create the Lookalike

1. In Facebook Ads Manager, go to Audiences → Create Audience → Lookalike Audience.
2. Choose your source audience (e.g. top customers or website visitors).
3. Select the country or region you want to target.
4. Adjust audience size — 1% means closest match; higher percentages mean broader reach
5. Click Create — Facebook will take a few hours to build the audience, then sync data every 3–7 days .
6. Unlock the power of Lookalike Audiences on Facebook to find new users who resemble your best customers — improving ad efficiency and driving higher ROI without spending more.
   

Why It Works

• Targeted Expansion: Reach users with similar traits to your best customers
• Multi-Source Flexibility: Combine emails, pixel data, and engagement for richer targeting wordstream.com+15klientboost.com+15blog.emb.global+15

Best Practices

A. Start Small: Use 1–3% Lookalikes for precision; then test with 5–10% for scale
B. Segment Creatively: Create separate audiences (e.g., purchasers vs. page viewers)
C. Refresh Seeds Regularly: Update source lists to keep targeting current
D. Layer Targeting: Combine Lookalike audiences with interests, demographics, and behaviors

Example Setup

Let’s say you manage an online store and have 2,000 customers.

• Upload their email list as a Custom Audience (seed)
• Create a 1% Lookalike audience targeting your top country
• Build ads focused on product benefits, using budgets focused on Lookalike campaigns

Wrap-Up

Lookalike Audiences are a powerful, cost-effective strategy to scale ad campaigns with precision -ideal for growing your reach while maintaining quality.