What do you call “lookalike” spaghetti?
Answer: Impasta.
What do you call “lookalike” audiences?
Answer: A great way to grow your list of ideal leads.
This spring, LinkedIn launched Lookalike Audiences, a target marketing tool that many know from Facebook. Lookalike Audiences can be an effective way for B2B companies to reach their targeted customers, from lead generation, through retention and win-back (another way to say “getting back” dormant customers.)
Buzzword alert
Lookalike Audiences not the same as LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences, Facebook ‘s Custom Audiences, or Instagram’s Engagement Customer Audiences.
Matched or Customer Audiences are lists that a business builds using its own email databases in addition to contact information pulled from website visitors and marketing automation platforms. These lists, when created from targeted campaigns, are extremely valuable because you already know that the contacts on these lists have shown interest in your products and/or services.
Creating new leads out of existing target characteristics
Now, what if you could automatically find new contacts that have the same closely matched characteristics as your Matched or Custom Audiences? This brings us to Lookalike Audiences.
A Lookalike Audience is an audience targeted by a social media platform, based off of a custom list (matched/custom audience) that you already know represents your ideal customers. For example, you could actually take a list generated from a successful account-based marketing campaign and request a lookalike audience.
In LinkedIn, for example, a Lookalike Audience can only be generated when you are setting up an ad campaign and already have a Matched Audience. You are asked to choose whether or not you want to include Lookalikes, and then you set the criteria. Once your campaign is launched, LinkedIn searches for Lookalikes that match the criteria that have been created and your campaign starts delivering.
LinkedIn as an ideal source for “lookalikes”
Here’s where the beauty of LinkedIn comes into play. Lookalike Audiences on LinkedIn are going to be an accurate source of high-quality leads. And if you need a bit of convincing, look at some recent LinkedIn stats:
-
Out of its 500 million members, there are an identified 61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision makers on LinkedIn.
-
LinkedIn is the most used social media platform of Fortune 500 companies. Since members are already on LinkedIn, they’re in the right professional mindset to engage and respond to your brand.
Don’t get lost in the complexity
When it comes to setting up a lookalike campaign (as well as creating matched or custom audiences), you may want to get some outside assistance. The set-up looks deceptively simple; but there are countless detailed targeting options and features that suck up time. You also want someone that knows how to test various targeting combinations in order to find the best-performing audience segments.
The magic lies in knowing every detail you can about your ideal customer, and then, how to optimize this information so you increase your chances of success. If you can combine the two, you’ve got a powerful tool for finding more of your preferred leads.
At Maguire Marketing Group, we believe in data driven results, and yes, we talk “ROI”. But we also know that for any company, these are difficult to measure or repeat. We work with B2B companies and professional service companies. Let us take marketing off of your plate and start getting results today.
