Scaling your Facebook ads means increasing your ad spend strategically while maintaining a positive ROAS.

While scaling profitable is the problem, targeting lookalike audiences is often the solution.

Lookalike audiences allow you to target new audiences who match the interests of prospects who expressed a certain level of interest in your business.

This could be prospects similar to people who saved an Instagram post, visited your website, watched your video, or even customers who purchased one or multiple products.

To create a lookalike audience, you can use data from your:

• Facebook Pixel
• eCommerce store database

Note: The minimum database needed to generate a lookalike audience is 100 people.

1. Generate Audiences

The Audiences tab allows you to:

• Create lookalike audiences from pre-made custom audiences templates automatically — or use existing lookalike audiences from your ad account— to implement in your ads immediately
• Use the Audience Builder that allows you to customize the audience template you selected
• Generate multiple audiences to retarget using the flexible Add Audience Variation button.

1. Select an audience template

The first step here is to select an audience template from the options below. You can also select an existing lookalike audience or create a new one from a custom audience you previously created.

Customers

Create a lookalike audience to target people who are similar to your existing customers with pre-made lookalike audience templates:

• Customers From Your Orders, to find people similar to your customers based on your store orders
• Customers From Website Traffic, to find people similar to your customers based on data from your Facebook Pixel

Website Visitors

Create a lookalike audience to target prospects similar to people who acted on your website with pre-made templates:

• All Website Visitors, to target prospects similar to all your website visitors who visited any page of your website without purchasing a product
• Visitors Who Added a Product To Cart, to target prospects similar to visitors who added a product to their cart but did not purchase
• Visitors Who Reached Checkout, to target prospects similar to visitors who reached checkout but did not purchase
• Hesitating Visitors, to target prospects similar to visitors who checked your website at least twice without purchasing
• Deep Browsers, to target prospects similar to the top 25% of prospects that spent the most time on your website
• Visited a Page URL, to target prospects similar to prospects who visited a specific page on your website

Video Watchers

Create a lookalike audience to target prospects similar to people who viewed one or several videos on your Facebook page with pre-made lookalike audiences templates that cover:

• All Video Watchers, which includes people similar to those who viewed at least 10 seconds of the video or videos you chose
• Moderate Video Watchers, which includes people similar to those who viewed at least 25% of the video or videos you chose
• Interested Video Watchers, which includes people similar to those who viewed at least 50% of the video or videos you chose
• Super Interested Video Watchers, which includes people similar to those who viewed at least 75% of the video or videos you chose
• Obsessed Video Watchers, which includes people similar to those who completed watching the video or videos you chose

Facebook Page Engagement

Create a lookalike audience to target prospects similar to people that interacted and engaged with your Facebook page with pre-made audience templates that cover:

• Everyone, to target prospects similar to all the people that interacted with your page
• Engaged With a Page Post, to target prospects similar to the people that engaged with any page post or ad on your page
• Click a Call To Action Button, to target prospects similar to the people that clicked a call to action button on your page
• Sent a Message To Your Page, to target prospects similar to the people who started a conversation with your page through Messenger
• Saved Your”Page or a Page Post, to target prospects similar to the people who saved your entire Facebook page or page post

Instagram Profile Engagement

Create a lookalike audience to target prospects similar to people who interacted with your Instagram business profile with these pre-made templates:

• Everyone, to target prospects similar to all the people who interacted with your Instagram profile
• Visited Your Profile, to target prospects similar to the people who visited your Instagram profile
• Engaged With a Post or Ad on Your Profile, to target prospects similar to the people who engaged with a post or ad on your profile
• Sent a Message To Your Profile, to target prospects similar to the people who sent a direct message to your Instagram profile
• Saved Your Profile or Post, to target prospects similar to the people who saved your profile or post

Use Existing Lookalike Audiences

This option allows you to target lookalike audiences you created previously on your ad account.

Lookalike Audiences From Existing Custom Audiences

This option allows you to generate a lookalike audience based on an existing custom audience that was created previously.

2. Use the Audience Builder to customize your template

Depending on the audience template you chose, the Audience Builder generally allows you to:

1. Include people who performed a specific action recorded on a specific Pixel
2. Exclude people who performed a specific action recorded on a specific Pixel
3. Refine people by time spent on your website, frequency of visits, and device type
4. Set the time frame from which you want to retract Pixel data from
5. Set the countries you want your lookalike audience to target
6. Set the number of lookalike audiences you want to create
7. Choose the demographic percentage of your lookalike audiences
8. Optionally, choose to:
   1. Create a separate lookalike audience for each country
   2. Create a separate ad set for each demographic percentage
   3. Add a prefix to the audiences’ name for better organization

The Audience Builder allows you to select the exact product, video, page post, or ad you want to include or exclude using the drop-down.

3. Add other audience variations

Using the Add Audience Variation button you can add other audience variations, and follow the same steps as before.

2. Set Campaign

Now, you can either create:

• A new campaign.
• New ad sets in an existing ad campaign.
• New ads in an existing ad set.

In this guide, we'll cover creating a new campaign from scratch.

Create a New Campaign

1. In the Campaign tab, click on New Campaign.
2. Select your campaign's objective.
3. On the Campaign Settings section, type your campaign a name, and optionally, enable Campaign Budget Optimization using the toggle.
4. Choose a daily or lifetime budget for your campaign and enter the amount you'd like to spend.
5. If you'd like to run Special Ad Categories campaigns, make sure to enable it using this toggle.

Note: Your account must be verified to run Special Ad Categories campaigns.

Tip: To use the same campaign settings in the future, click on Templates and Save current setup as a template.

3. Create Ad Sets

Follow the steps below to generate ad sets for your lookalike audiences:

1. General Settings

The General Settings tab is where you set the Facebook Pixel, conversion event, schedule, and budget.

Note: The settings you’ll see in this tab depends on Campaign Budget Optimization.

1. Choose a Pixel from the drop-down or create a new one by clicking on New Facebook Pixel.
2. Choose a conversion event from the drop-down.
3. Optional: Enable the Start Date toggle, then enter the time and date you want your campaign to start.
4. Leave the Start Date toggle turned off to let your campaign run immediately.
5. Optional: Enable the End Date toggle, then enter the time and date you want your campaign to stop delivering.
6. Leave the End Date toggle turned off to let your campaign continue running until you disable it manually.

Note: Your campaign will launch at the start date of your ad account's timezone.

If you enabled Campaign Budget Optimization in the Campaign tab, you can continue to the next step.

If you didn’t, you’ll get a Budget for each ad set widget, where you can set your ad set’s daily or lifetime budget.

Click Next when you’re done.

2. Locations (Optional)

The locations tab is where you can specify the geolocations of the prospects you want to target.

By default, your ad sets use the same locations as your lookalike audiences.

To change your ad set's locations, please follow the steps below:

1. Untick the box next to "Use the same location in the lookalike audience".
2. In the Include section, select the living situation of your prospects from the drop-down.
3. Use the search bar to type the name of the locations you want to target or browse the suggestions.
4. Use the Exclude bar to eliminate people living in certain locations from viewing your ads.
5. Use the Languages section to type the name of the languages your prospects speak or browse the suggestions.

Note: Leaving the languages section on default results in targeting people who speak all languages.

To target a new set of locations, click on Add Variation and add as many variations as you want.

Click Next when you're done.

4. Exclude Audiences

1. Optional: In the Exclude Audiences section, you can choose to exclude custom audiences
2. To target a new set of interests, click on Add Interests Variation, and repeat the same steps.

Note: Each unique variation is used in one ad set.

You can add as many variations as you want. No ad sets are duplicated. No time wasted!

Click Next when you’re done adding all the interest variations you want to target.

5. Age/Gender

On the Age and Gender tab, set the age groups and genders you want to target.

Steps:

1. Use the From drop-down to select the youngest age you want your prospects to be.
2. Use the To drop-down to select the oldest age you want your prospects to be.
3. To split test your prospects by age groups, select the age range in years. If you don’t want to split test your audience by age, leave this on default.
4. In the Genders drop-down, select to target only males, only females, both, or split to test your audiences by gender.
5. Click on the Generate button to create unique variations of the age and gender options you chose.

Note: If there’s a variation you don’t want to target, you can click the X on the corner of the variation you want to eliminate. 

Click Next to continue.

6. Placements (Optional)

The Placements tab enables you to choose where your ads are displayed.

By default, your ads will have automatic placements set up.

If you want to select placement, please follow the steps below:

1. Un-tick the default Automatic placement box.
2. Tick the boxes of placements you want your ads to be shown on.
3. Optional: Tick the boxes to target all devices, desktop only, or mobile-only.
4. Optional: Tick the box to show your ads only when devices are connected to WI-FI.
5. Optional: Choose to target All Mobile Devices, Android devices only, or IOS devices only from the drop-down.

To add another placements’ variation, click on Add Placement Variation.

Click Next to continue.

7. Optimization

The Optimization tab enables you to set your ad sets’ optimization and delivery settings. These depend on the campaign objective you selected in the beginning.

Steps:

1. Choose an Optimization For Ad Delivery from the drop-down.
2. If you chose Conversions, select the Conversion window you want your ads to run on. Skip this step if you chose another option.
3. Optionally, you can set cost control to not exceed your desired maximum cost per acquisition.
4. Choose when you’ll get charged from the drop-down.
5. Pick your delivery type.

Click Next when you’re done.

4. Create Ads

The Ad Creatives tab is where you can:

• Create new ad creatives from scratch
• Choose ad creatives from the product
• Select page posts from Facebook pages
• Use ads from previous ad campaigns
• Search Post ID or URL.

1. Create new ad creatives

To generate up to 20 ad creatives from scratch, please follow the steps below:

1. Facebook page

In the Pages tab, select the Facebook page you want to create your ads with. You can select multiple pages to test which Facebook page performs the best.

2. Ad copy

Then, in the Copy tab, click on the + button to add multiple text variations to split test. You can save them as a template to reuse later, by clicking on Templates and Save current setup as a template.

Click on the Media tab when you're done.

3. Media

Now, in the Media tab,  you can select:

• All Media tab to use images and videos from products and previous ads
• Current product tab to use creatives from the product you launched your campaign with
• Upload tab to import images and videos from your laptop.

Click on the URL tab when you're done.

4. URL

Next, on to the URL tab where you can add the URL of the web page you want your ads to redirect to. You can add multiple URLs to split different web pages.

Note: if you launched your campaign with a product, its URL will automatically set as the default redirecting URL for your ads. Make sure to edit the display link to your preference.

Click on the CTA tab when you're done.

5. CTA

On the CTA tab, choose the call to action button you want your ads to display.

The list of CTA's visible depends on the campaign objective selected. You can also add multiple ones to split the test.

Click on the Description tab when you're done.

6. Description

The Description tab where you’ll add the headline and description that will appear in your ads. Again, you can add multiple ones to split test.

Click on the Create tab when you're done.

7. Create

Finally, on the Create tab, you can preview your ad variations on different placements, and enable the ads you want to use in your campaign.

2. Choose ad creatives from the product

1. From the left sidebar, click on Product's Creatives.
2. Select the page posts you want to use as ads by enabling them with this toggle.
3. You can also click on the View on Facebook button to preview the page post before selecting it.

Note: the page posts selected must have a redirecting URL and call to action button.

Finally, once you're done selecting the page posts you want to use as ads, click on the Next button to proceed to the review tab of your ad creation workflow.

3. Choose page posts from Facebook pages

1. Click on Pages in the left sidebar.
2. Choose the Facebook page you want to select your creatives from. You can choose one page or multiple ones for split testing.
3. Select the post you want to use in your ads and switch its toggle on. You can choose one post or multiple ones to split test which one works best.

If you selected multiple Facebook pages, you can still choose one post or multiple ones from each page.

Finally, click Next and continue to the Review tab.

4. Choose ads from previous ad campaigns

1. In the left sidebar, select Ad campaigns.
2. Click Choose a campaign. Here you can choose the campaign you want to use ads from.
3. Select the ad set of your choice.
4. You'll find all the existing posts you have in the ad set you selected. Now, enable the post you want to use in your new ads. You can choose one or multiple posts to split test which one works best.

Finally, once you're done, click Next and continue to the Review tab.

5. Search Post ID or URL

1. Click on Post Id or URL in the sidebar.
2. Choose Post Id or Post URL.
3. If you choose Post Id, select the Facebook page your post is from. Right under, enter your post ID and hit Search.
4. If you choose Post URL, you can proceed to enter your post URL right away and hit Search.
5. Click the Search button to display your post.
6. Enable post using the toggle.

Click Next and continue to the Review tab.

5. Review Campaign

The review tab is where you can double-check your campaign details, such as:

• Campaign name, objective, spending limit, and Campaign Budget  Optimization status
• Ad set variations, budget settings, calculate their potential reach, and make sure that all your variations are exactly what you want them to be before launching
• Ad variations and enable the ones you want to use.

Click Next when you're done reviewing your campaign.

6. Launch

The launch tab is where you:

• Choose Campaign Structure
• Name Your Ad Sets (optional)
• Enable Google Analytics Tagging (optional)
• Enable Created Campaign (optional).

1. Choose Campaign Structure

Automatically set up your campaign structure as:

• All ads inside each ad set variation, to allow Facebook to automatically optimize your ad delivery
• Each ad variation inside a separate ad set, to force Facebook to spend all the ad set’s budget on each ad.

2. Name Ad Sets

To name your ad sets, please follow these steps:

1. Choose to leave the values on default or change them to include information you care about from the drop-down.
2. Choose your preferred spacing character.

Now, the app will generate your ad sets' names based on the values you selected.

3. Enable Google Analytics Tagging

Enabling Google Analytics UTM tagging allows you to accurately track your ad campaign's performance beyond Facebook's Pixel events and get advanced insights on your prospects' behavior.

Just enable the UTM tags toggle to tag your ads automatically.

4. Enable Created Campaign

Now all that's left is to launch the ad campaign.

Tick Enable Created Campaign to enable your campaign as soon as it's created.

If you’d like to go in and review things one more time before launching then make sure it’s ticked off.

Click Launch to launch your campaign.

To keep up with your task's creation status, make sure to go to the History tab from the sidebar.