How to Create a Lookalike Audience in Facebook

Tired of showing your Facebook ads to people who will never buy? Lookalike Audiences solve that by finding new people who are remarkably similar to your existing best customers. This guide breaks down exactly what they are, why they are so powerful, and gives you a step-by-step walkthrough to create your first high-performing Lookalike Audience today.

What Exactly Is a Facebook Lookalike Audience?

In simple terms, a Lookalike Audience is a targeting tool that lets Facebook do the heavy lifting for you. You provide Facebook with a “source” audience - typically a list of your best customers, top website visitors, or most engaged followers - and its algorithm gets to work. It analyzes the common qualities, interests, and behaviors of the people in your source audience to build a profile of your ideal customer.

Then, Facebook scours its massive user base to find new people who share those same traits and are therefore likely to be interested in your business. It’s like telling a record store clerk, "I love this obscure indie band," and having them instantly recommend five other bands you’ve never heard of but are guaranteed to love. You’re leveraging existing data to make incredibly smart predictions about who else might become a loyal customer or fan.

This is far more effective than manually guessing at interests or behaviors. Instead of targeting people who "might" be interested in hiking gear, you are targeting people who look and act just like the people who've already bought hiking gear from you.

Why Lookalike Audiences Are a Game-Changer for Your Marketing

If you're not using Lookalike Audiences in your social media advertising strategy, you're leaving performance on the table. They are one of the most efficient ways to scale your advertising efforts because they bridge the gap between your established audience and millions of potential new customers. Here’s why they work so well:

• Higher Quality Leads and Sales: Because Lookalike Audiences are modeled after people who have already converted or shown high intent, they are inherently more qualified. This leads to better click-through rates, higher conversion rates, and a more positive return on your ad spend (ROAS).
• Efficient and Scalable Reach: It's difficult to run out of people to target. Lookalikes let you systematically expand your reach to hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of highly relevant users within a specific country or region. You can go from a proven source of 1,000 customers to an audience of 2 million potential customers in minutes.
• Reduced Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Smart targeting means less wasted ad spend. When you show your ads to people who are more likely to convert, your CPA naturally goes down. You spend less to acquire each new customer because the algorithm has done the hard work of filtering out the noise.

The Foundation: Picking a High-Quality Source Audience

The success of your Lookalike Audience depends entirely on the quality of your source audience. The principle is simple: garbage in, garbage out. If you feed the algorithm a source audience of low-quality leads or unengaged followers, it will just find more people exactly like them. You need to give it a model of your best customers.

The ideal source audience size is between 1,000 and 50,000 people. This gives Facebook's system enough data to find meaningful patterns without being too broad. Here are the most effective types of sources to use:

1. Your Customer List (The Gold Standard)

Nothing beats a list of your actual paying customers. This is the most powerful source because it's based on people who have already taken the ultimate step: giving you their money. You can upload a CSV file containing customer data like email addresses or phone numbers, and Facebook will match it with its users.

Pro Tip: Don't just upload all your customers. Segment your list to create a source audience of your best customers - those with the highest lifetime value (LTV), repeat purchasers, or those who bought your flagship product.

2. Website Visitors (via Meta Pixel)

Your Meta Pixel is a treasure trove of data. You can create custom audiences based on people who have taken specific, high-intent actions on your website. Think beyond simple pageviews and focus on actions that signal real interest or purchase intent.

• Purchasers: The best pixel-based audience. These are people who completed a purchase.
• Add to Cart: People who were close to buying but didn't complete the checkout.
• Initiate Checkout: Even higher intent than "Add to Cart."
• High Time-on-Site visitors: Visitors who spent the most time on your website, signaling deep engagement.

3. High-Engagement Social Followers

While not as potent as a customer list, you can create custom audiences from people who have heavily engaged with your Facebook Page or Instagram Profile. This is great for brands that have a strong social community but may not have a large customer list yet.

• Video Viewers: Create a source from people who watched at least 75% or 95% of one of your core video ads or content pieces. This filters out casual scrollers.
• Instagram Engagers: Build a list of people who have sent a message, saved a post, or commented on your Instagram profile in the last 60-90 days.

Step-by-Step: How to Create a Lookalike Audience in Facebook

Ready to build one? The process is surprisingly straightforward. Here’s how you do it inside the Facebook Ads Manager.

Step 1: Navigate to the 'Audiences' Dashboard

From your Facebook Ads Manager, click on the "All Tools" hamburger menu (the nine dots in a square). In the menu that appears, select "Audiences."

Step 2: Start the Lookalike Creation Process

In the Audiences dashboard, click the blue "Create Audience" button and select "Lookalike Audience" from the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Choose Your Source Audience

This is where you tell Facebook which group of people to model the new audience after. In the 'Select Your Lookalike Source' section, you can either create a new source or choose an existing custom audience you've already made (like a customer list you uploaded previously).

• Click into the section and search for the Custom Audience you want to use (e.g., 'Email List - Top Customers 2024').
• If you haven't created your source yet, you can click 'Create new source' to start the process now.

Step 4: Select the Audience Location

Choose the country or countries where you want Facebook to find people for your audience. For example, if your business only ships to the United States, you'll want to select "United States" here. This is a mandatory step.

Step 5: Pick Your Audience Size (The 1% Slider)

Next, you’ll see a slider from 1% to 10%. This setting determines the size and similarity of your Lookalike Audience. The percentage reflects how closely your new audience will match your source. Let's break this down:

• 1% Lookalike: This is a small, highly targeted audience that contains the people who most closely resemble your source audience. This size is usually the best-performing and is perfect for conversion campaigns. Start here.
• 2-5% Lookalike: This creates a larger audience but sacrifices some similarity. It’s a good option to test once you've seen success with the 1% audience and want to expand your reach.
• 6-10% Lookalike: This is your broadest option. The audience will be much larger, but the people in it will be less similar to your source. This can be effective for brand awareness campaigns or when targeting niche markets where expanding your reach is a priority.

You can create multiple lookalikes at once. For instance, you could create a 1% audience and a separate 1-3% audience to test both.

Step 6: Create the Audience

Click the "Create Audience" button. Facebook will immediately start building your new audience. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours for the audience to finish populating, after which it will be ready to use in your ad sets.

Pro Strategies for Getting the Most from Lookalikes

Once you've mastered the basics, you can experiment with more advanced strategies to improve your results even further.

Test Multiple Source Audiences

Don't just create one Lookalike and call it a day. Create several, based on different high-value sources. For example:

• Lookalike based on your top 25% of customers by lifetime value.
• Lookalike based on website visitors who triggered a "Purchase" event in the last 60 days.
• Lookalike based on users who watched 95% of your main product video.

Run these in different ad sets with the same ads to see which source delivers the best-performing Lookalike.

Use Value-Based Lookalikes

This is an incredibly powerful, but underused feature. If you can export your customer list with a lifetime value (LTV) or average order value (AOV) column, you can create a value-based Custom Audience. When you use this as your source, Facebook's algorithm won't just find people who look like your customers - it will specifically search for people who look like your most profitable customers.

Remember to Exclude Audiences

This is a simple mistake that can waste a lot of money. When setting up your ad sets targeting your Lookalike Audience, be sure to exclude the source custom audience you used to create it. For instance, if you're targeting a lookalike of "past purchasers," you should exclude the original "past purchasers" list. There's no sense in paying to show ads to people who have already bought from you.

Final Thoughts

Creating Facebook Lookalike Audiences is one of the most reliable methods for finding new, qualified customers at scale. By leveraging data from your actual customers and most engaged fans, you let Facebook’s intelligent system do the work, resulting in better targeting, more efficient spending, and ultimately, greater growth for your brand.

Once you've set up your incredible Lookalike Audience, the next step is reaching them with a consistent stream of standout content. This has become harder as social media shifts to short-form video. That's actually why we built Postbase. We found that the older social media scheduling tools struggle with today's content formats like Reels and Shorts, leading to unreliable posting and clunky workflows. Our platform makes it simple to plan your content visually, create it once, and schedule it seamlessly across all your accounts, so you're consistently reaching the right people with content that works.