Lookalike audience

Imagine you’re throwing a party and you want all the fun people to have the best time. You already know your friend group who is always up for a good party, so you tell the bouncer, "Find me people who, while haven’t made our guest list yet, love dancing like Dave, laugh like Lisa, and always bring brownies like Brenda." In marketing language, that’s basically a lookalike audience – finding new potential customers who share similar traits with your existing best buds.

A lookalike audience is a marketing strategy used primarily in digital advertising to target new potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviors with an existing customer base. This technique leverages sophisticated algorithms, typically within platforms like Facebook Ads or Google Ads, that analyze an existing audience dataset—such as customers or newsletter subscribers—and identify common attributes and patterns. By doing so, the system can then build a new audience that might not be previously familiar to the brand but exhibits tendencies that make them likely to engage or convert similarly to the original audience. This approach enables businesses to expand their reach efficiently by homing in on potential customers who are more likely to resonate with their offerings, improving the likelihood of marketing success while optimizing ad spend.