How to Create a Lookalike Audience – Meta and Google Guide

What is Like-Minded Audience Building and Why is it Important?

In digital marketing, finding new people similar to your existing customers is one of the most effective ways to achieve your sales and promotional goals. A lookalike audience is a group of potential customers created by considering the characteristics, behaviors, and interests of your existing customers. Platforms like Google and Meta (Facebook, Instagram) can analyze the data you provide to find and present users with similar profiles.

For hotels, restaurants, real estate, and e-commerce businesses operating in the Alanya and Antalya regions, similar mass marketing campaigns enable more efficient use of advertising budgets. This is because the cost of acquiring new customers decreases, and conversion rates increase.

Data Needed to Create a Lookalike Audience

To establish a like-minded audience, a "source audience" must first be identified. This data can be collected in the following ways:

• Customer List (CRM Data): Email addresses, phone numbers, or physical addresses. You can extract this information from your business software or customer database.
• Website Visitors: Browser information (via pixels/tags) of people visiting your site is collected.
• App Users: Data about people who download and use your mobile app.
• Video Viewers: Accounts that watch your videos on YouTube or social media.
• Social Media Followers: People who follow your Instagram and Facebook pages.
• Page Interactions: Users who comment on, like, or message your posts.

The more numerous and up-to-date the data, the more accurate and effective the results will be for a similar demographic. While at least 100 people are needed, you can obtain more reliable results with around 1,000 data points.

How to Build a Lookalike Audience on Meta (Facebook, Instagram)?

Step 1: Accessing the Mass Library

Log in to your Meta Ads Manager account. Click on "Audiences" in the left menu. From there, you will see "Custom Audiences" and then "Lookalike Audiences" .

Step 2: Selecting the Target Audience

To create a lookalike audience, you first need to define a source. This source could be one of the following:

• A custom audience you created previously (such as customer list, website visitors, app users)
• Your page's followers
• Those who watch the videos
• Participants of the event

Step 3: Determining Audience Size and Area

When creating a lookalike audience, Meta determines the target country/region through its algorithm. You can select options such as Alanya, Antalya, or Türkiye as a whole. In terms of audience size, Meta offers you three options:

• 1% Lookalike Audience: Consists of the 1% of the population most similar to your source audience. The narrowest, highest-quality audience.
• 5% Similar Audience: A slightly wider, mid-range selection.
• 10% Similar Audience: Includes the broadest, lower-quality but larger potential customer base.

It is generally recommended to start with 1% and then increase to 5% or 10% depending on the results.

Step 4: Using it in the Campaign

Once you've created a lookalike audience, select them during the audience selection phase when setting up a new ad campaign or editing an existing one, and then run your ad.

How to set up Lookalike audiences in Google Ads?

The audience setup process on the Google Ads platform is slightly different. You can find the steps below:

Step 1: Preparing Your Custom Audience

In your Google Ads account, go to the "Audiences" section in the left-hand menu. First, you need to create a Custom Audience. To do this, upload your customer lists (email, phone), website visitor data, or app users.

Step 2: Creating a Lookalike Audience

Once your custom audience is created, you will find the "Create Similar Audience" option below it. Click on it and select your target country (such as Turkey, Alanya/Antalya).

Step 3: Implementation in the Campaign

When creating a new Search, Display, or Performance Max campaign, select this lookalike audience in the audience targeting section.

If you're wondering how long it takes for Google Ads to show results , you can check out our detailed guide.

Similar Audience Strategies and Best Practices

Try different audiences.

Test with similar audiences created from different sources, not just the general customer list. For example:

• A similar audience consisting of high-value customers.
• A similar demographic consisting of frequent buyers.
• Similar audiences to those who visited a specific page of the website.
• 50% of the people who watch your videos are your similar audience.

Choose the Right Similar Audience Size

You need to decide on the quality aspect. Determine whether you want to target a narrow and targeted approach (1%) or a broad and exploratory one (10%). Adjust it according to your budget and objectives.

Combine like audiences with retargeting.

Retargeting allows you to show ads again to people who have already visited your site, and similar audiences can also be included in this strategy. This way, both returning visitors and new people similar to them are targeted.

Update Data Regularly

The more up-to-date the data that makes up your target audience, the more effective the matching audience will be. Add new customer data to the system or update website data monthly.

Measuring Similar Audience Performance

Just because I've created a similar mass campaign doesn't mean the job is done. You need to monitor its performance.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): How many people clicked on your ad? Compare it to other audiences.
• Conversion Rate: How many people purchased, filled out the form, or contacted us?
• Cost: What is the average cost of customer acquisition (CPA) for your lookalike campaign?
• Return on Investment (ROAS): How much money did you get back for every lira you spent?

Hotels, reception services, and real estate agencies in Alanya need to monitor this more closely during the tourism season. As Digital Marketing Alanya , we provide our clients with transparent monthly reports and review these metrics together.

Conclusion: Advantages of Building a Lookalike Audience

A similar audience strategy is highly effective for spending your advertising budget more wisely, increasing your success rate in finding new customers, and improving your marketing ROI (return on investment). Platforms like Meta and Google do this quite well thanks to their machine learning algorithms.

But remember, a like-minded audience should be part of your overall marketing plan, rather than a strategy in itself. It yields the best results when combined with organic growth, email marketing, social media, and other methods. Ensure you retain account ownership; it's important to take security steps before handing over your Google Ads account to an agency . If you also work on Instagram and other social media channels, you can check out our projects on our Instagram page.

If you have any questions or are wondering how a similar audience strategy could be applied to your business, you can visit our office in Alanya or contact us directly.