What it is
Lookalike audiences are Meta's (and Google's, called 'similar audiences') way of expanding cold-acquisition targeting. You give the platform a 'seed audience' (your customer list, your high-value site visitors, your purchasers) and the platform finds new people who behave similarly.
Best seed audiences:
Recent purchasers (last 30-90 days) — highest signal
High-LTV customers (top 10% by lifetime spend) — even stronger signal if you have the data
Email subscribers who opened recent emails
Site visitors who hit your pricing page (intent signal)
Lookalike best practices: seed audience minimum 100 people (Meta's threshold), ideally 1,000+; refresh seed audience every 30-60 days as customer base evolves; test multiple seed audiences against each other; combine with interest targeting for cold acquisition.
Real example
A Shopify brand creates a lookalike from their top 10% LTV customers (n=850). They run Meta Ads to a 1% lookalike of that audience. The lookalike campaign achieves 4.2x ROAS vs 2.6x ROAS for their interest-targeting campaigns.
How Apex Marketings uses this
Our marketing strategists work with this concept daily. Learn more about the related service: Meta Ads Management, or get a free consultation on how this applies to your business.
Ready to talk? Book a free 30-minute consultation with Apex Marketings, or request a project quote.