Let’s say you sell a home to your ideal customer. They are blown away by your service, quality of product, and spot-on communication. You’ve just gained a raving fan. Now if only you could find 100 more customers just like them, who are roughly the same age, have the same interests, and live in or visit the same places. With Facebook’s Lookalike Audience targeting option, you can!
What’s a Lookalike Audience?
A Lookalike Audience is a way for home builders to reach new people who are very similar to their best existing prospects or homebuyers, and who are also more likely to be interested in their communities and homes.
To create a Lookalike Audience, you must first build a source audience in Facebook Ads Manager. The source audience will be used to build your Lookalike Audience, and can be created from a CRM list, past website visitors, or Facebook users who like your page. Facebook will then work its algorithmic magic to match qualities of the people in your source audience with those of users on its platform within a certain country (or whichever geographical preferences you select).
Target criteria may include demographic information, like age and location, and interests, like decorating or fishing. The AI then delivers your ad to an audience of people who “looks like” your original source audience. That’s several hundred (if not thousands) of people who behave (online at least) just like that raving fan who bought from you last week!
What’s the Benefit of a Lookalike Audience Over Other Audiences
Lookalike Audiences are designed to reach a larger audience compared to remarking or interest-based audiences alone due to the potential large number of lookalikes. Facebook also allows you to get quite granular with the targeting. You can choose your audience size on a scale from 1 to 10. Smaller numbers on the scale (1-5) will have more qualities in common with your source audience, while larger numbers on the scale (6-10) will have a higher potential reach. The numbers indicate 1-10% of the entire population of the region or country you choose to target.
Are There Any Best Practices When Using Lookalike Audiences?
Your source audience should be of the highest quality possible, like people who have bought a home with you, visited a model home, or are strong prospects in your CRM system. Facebook can find users who have the same qualities and interests as those users to increase the likelihood that they’d be interested in your homes, too.
The larger your source audience, the better (while still maintaining quality). It should contain at least 100 names, but between 1000 and 5000 is ideal for more precise targeting.
When Should I Try Lookalike Audiences
Now! With iOS 14.5+ changes and ATT (App Tracking Transparency) updates, targeting options used in the past are less accurate today and paid social remarketing audiences are smaller. Lookalike Audiences are an effective way to reach the people most interested in YOU, whether they realize it or not!
If you’re interested in learning more about Facebook Ad strategies for home builders, give us a shout. We’d love to connect!
