The Pros and Common Mistakes of Lookalike Audience Builder

Finding potential customers willing to buy from you is easier said than done. But instead of blindly searching through a vast number of users, marketers optimize their search by focusing on people who have already made a purchase. 

This approach is known as lookalike modeling. The premise is simple: people who resemble your current customers are more likely to become customers themselves. 

For example, suppose you have a customer who buys running shoes. A lookalike audience builder will help you find similar users who share the love of running, improving your marketing efforts. 

While lookalike modeling offers numerous benefits, many marketers commit avoidable mistakes that limit its potential. In this article, you’ll explore both the advantages and potential pitfalls of lookalike modeling and utilizing a lookalike audience builder. 

What is Lookalike Modeling?

Lookalike modeling is a strategy that involves leveraging your current audience—your “seed” audience—to find and connect with new customers. It’ll help you engage with high-converting users with a profile matching your best customers. 

These features are why lookalike audience builders form an effective part of your customer acquisition strategies. To implement this process, you collect data about your customers, including first, second, and third-party data, typically through a pixel. 

You can organize this data through a data management platform like Inquiro, which also serves as your lookalike audience builder tool. These platforms analyze your existing audience to find people with similar characteristics. Ultimately, lookalike modeling allows you to target the right audience more effectively and refine your understanding of your ideal customer. 

Benefits of Lookalike Modeling

Lookalike audience builders are powerful tools in your digital marketing arsenal since they can help you repeat your successes and find more paying customers. Below are a few more ways your business can benefit from lookalike modeling. 

1. Increases targeting accuracy

Finding your first audience might be long and tedious since you still might not know your ideal customers. But based on data from your existing audience, lookalike audience builders can help you target users more accurately. 

2. Saves time and resources

Finding the right audience often takes many trials and errors, costing companies a lot just to find audiences interested in their products. However, a lookalike audience builder eliminates the need to continue playing the guessing game, saving modern marketers time and resources. 

3. Improves lead generation

 consider generating leads their most important goal. If lookalike modeling allows you to find audiences more likely to be attracted to your products or services, it can help you generate the right leads. Lookalike audiences are already warmer prospects since they share similar interests with your current customers. 

4. Broadens your reach

The insights you gain from lookalike modeling push you to broaden your reach of potential customers, offering your products and services to people who match your seed audience’s characteristics but haven’t interacted with your business yet. 

5. Allows you to learn more about your audiences

Data forms the foundation of the lookalike modeling process. You can leverage this data to target customers likely to buy from you and to guide you in improving your products, services, and marketing. 

As beneficial as a lookalike audience builder can be, common mistakes marketers make block them from pushing the tool to its full potential.  

Common Mistakes of Lookalike Modeling 

Success in lookalike modeling still depends on the marketer using it. Avoid these common mistakes to save time, money, and resources. 

1. Limiting control over audience selection

The effectiveness of your lookalike audience depends on the factors you incorporate into the platform. If you only focus on age and gender similarities, you may miss other influential factors that shape your customers’ behavior, like occupation and income. 

2. Only using lookalike modeling once

Regularly use lookalike modeling to accommodate the evolving behavior of your seed audiences. Constant utilization of a lookalike audience builder enhances your customer understanding, enabling you to refine your targeting for greater accuracy based on new insights.

3. Relying on lookalike audiences too much

While a lookalike audience builder is a powerful tool, it shouldn’t be relied upon as the sole solution for seeking customers. 

Targeting APIs offer versatility and allow you to find different audience targeting techniques, such as affinity segments and utilizing data from your customer dashboard. By leveraging targeting APIs, you can reach and connect with your desired audience using multiple strategies.

4. Being too general 

The more specific you are with the lookalike audience you want, the better your results will be. For instance, suppose you sell high-end jewelry. While you can create a lookalike audience based on similar interests, targeting people from a broad income range may be inefficient. 

It’s best to be as niche as possible without shrinking your seed audience by too much. The ideal size depends on your platform and how large you want your lookalike audience to be. In general, Facebook recommends 100 people as your seed audience to allow lookalike audience builders to understand what you’re looking for. 

5. Neglecting the sales funnel stages

While on paper, two customers may be similar, but they may be both at different stages of the sales funnel. One may already be prepared to tap Check Out on their orders, while another could still consider and compare their options with your competitors. Identifying which stage you want to create your lookalike audiences after will help you find the right ones. 

Continuously Find the Right Audience

Finding the right audience for your product isn’t as big of a challenge as it used to be. Thanks to tools like the lookalike audience builder, you can find high-converting customers quickly and accurately. 

With the rise of , lookalike audience builder tools are becoming smarter in targeting the right audiences for your business. However, it’s still best to understand the intricacies of lookalike modeling. 

Create a niche seed audience and always review the tool’s recommendations. The wrong audience or an overreliance on it may lead you to waste even more resources. An excellent solution is to work with customer analytics experts to help you with lookalike modeling and customer segmentation, CRM, and more. 

Inquiro provides a comprehensive customer data platform that enables you to understand your customers better and find similar audiences to target. Contact us today, and let us help you expand your customer base with our expertise. 

FAQs

How does lookalike modeling work? 

A lookalike audience builder uses specific information like age, location, and purchasing behavior from your existing customers—called the “seed” audience—to find people who share these traits. Since they’re similar to your current customers, they’re more likely to buy from the brand too. 

What is an example of lookalike modeling?

Suppose a luxury fashion brand wants to generate more leads. Through lookalike modeling, they can reach out to prospects with similar characteristics to their existing customers, such as matching income levels. The process saves the brand significant time and resources. 

What are the benefits of lookalike modeling? 

Lookalike modeling allows you to save time and resources while finding new audiences likely to buy from you since the process is based on your existing customers’ data. It’s why lookalike modeling can also help you improve your customer acquisition efforts.