Website Traffic Lookalikes

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to create website traffic lookalike audiences automatically to target highly qualified prospects on Facebook and maximize your conversion rates.


What are Lookalike Audiences?

A Lookalike Audience is an audience of people who are similar to a database of people that you provide to Facebook.

What is a Traffic Lookalike Audience?

A Traffic Lookalike Audience means Facebook will match your store’s visitors with its giant database and find similarities between these people who visited your store, then create a wider audience of people similar to your visitors.

Why Should I bother making one?

Traffic Lookalike Audiences = Way more money!

I’m pretty sure you heard of the famous equation of traffic equals money, while it’s true to a certain extent, it’s not always the most rewarding way to go about it.

Now, what if all of your traffic was very similar to people who actually click through that ad and possibly even purchase? Well, you get a huge audience of people guaranteed to click through!

Another thing is using your budget in a more efficient way, instead of putting your ad out there and waiting for anybody to click, you’re putting your ad out there to the people who will, for sure, click.

Just like that, you saved yourself the cost of reaching out to people who will never click on your ad.

The only question I have is why the hell nobody is talking about website Traffic Lookalike Audiences? Seriously? This campaign type will blow your sales up!

Before Creating Website Traffic Lookalike Audiences

Note: To create a lookalike audience, you must have a source audience of at least 100 people, that Facebook can use to find prospects similar to your source audience.

The bigger your source audience is, the better is the lookalike audience you’ll create.

However, having 1000 people on your source audience can usually drive great results.

To follow along with this step-by-step guide, start by having the Scalify app open on another tab, click on Scale from the sidebar.

Or click on the button below 👇️

1. Generate Traffic Lookalike Audiences

1. Choose a Facebook Pixel

Select the Facebook Pixel you want to use to collect audience data from.

2. Select an Offer (Optional)

Select an offer (or multiple offers) to decide which products or landing pages to collect Pixel data from.

Skip this step if you prefer to use all your Pixel data.

3. Choose Website Traffic Events

Select a website traffic event that you want to be the source of your lookalike audience. You can also choose to select all website event.

  • View Content (VC): Visitors who viewed a specific product, multiple products, or a web page
  • Add To Cart (ATC): Prospects who added a specific product or multiple products to cart
  • Initiated Checkout (IC): Prospects who added products to cart and reached the checkout phase
  • Added Payment Info: Prospects who reached the checkout phase and added their payment info
  • Purchase: Customers who purchased a specific product or multiple products
  • Leads
  • Complete Registration: Prospects who completed a registration to an offering on your website
  • Add To Wishlist: Prospects who added a specific product or multiple products to a wishlist
  • Donate: Prospects who placed donations through your website
  • Schedule: Prospects who scheduled a meeting through your website
  • Start Trial: Prospects who started a trial of your subscription-based business
  • Submit Application: Individuals who submitted an application through your website
  • Search: Prospects who used the search bar on your website to find products
  • Customize Product: Prospects who used the customize option on your website to edit products
  • Subscribe: Prospects who subscribed to a newsletter or an offering on your website
  • Contact: Prospects who clicked on the contact option on your website

4. Traffic Lookalike Audiences Settings

  1. Select the countries you want to target with your lookalike audiences
  2. Choose the number of lookalike audiences and their demographic percentage
  3. Customize demographic percentage
  4. Optional: Create a separate lookalike audience for each country
  5. Optional: Add a prefix to the audience name for better organization

Once you’re done setting up your lookalike audiences, click Next.

2. Set up a Campaign (Optional)

You can choose to carry on the creation of your traffic lookalike audiences or you can launch a new campaign for them.

To launch a new campaign for your lookalike audiences, please follow the steps below:

Set Traffic Lookalike Audiences Campaign

  1. Select your campaign’s objective: Conversions, Traffic, Post Engagement, Video Views, Reach, or Brand Awareness
  2. On the campaign settings section, type your campaign a name and optionally, enable Campaign Budget Optimization using the toggle
  3. Choose a daily or lifetime budget for your campaign and enter the amount you’d like to spend
  4. 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 the current setup as a template.

Click Next when you’re done.

Set Ad Set Settings

To set up your ad sets settings follow the steps below:

1. General

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

Note: The set of settings you’ll see in the General tab depends on if you enable Campaign Budget Optimization.

  1. Choose the Facebook Pixel that you’d like to track and optimize with from the drop-down. You can also create a new one by clicking on New Facebook Pixel
  2. Choose a conversion event to optimize for using the drop-down. You can also create a new custom conversion that is specific to your business by clicking on New Custom Conversion.
  3. Set the schedule you’d like your ads to run on by enabling the Start Date toggle, then enter the time and date you want your campaign to start. By leaving the toggle turned off, your campaign will run immediately
  4. Set when the campaign ends by enabling the End Date toggle, then enter the time and date you want your campaign to stop delivering. By leaving the toggle turned off, your campaign will continue running until you disable it manually

Note: Your campaign will launch at the start date of your ad account’s time zone.

Now, if you enabled Campaign Budget Optimization in the previous step, 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. 

Note: The same steps apply if you chose to create new ad sets in an existing ad campaign. Your new ad sets will follow the budget settings of the campaign you chose.

Click Next when you’re done.

2. Locations

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

  1. In the Include section, start by selecting from the drop-down the living situation of your prospects
  2. In the search bar type the name of the locations you want to target or browse the suggestions
  3. Use the Exclude bar to eliminate people living in certain locations from viewing your ads
  4. Use the Languages section to type the name of the languages your prospects speak or browse the suggestions.

Note: By leaving the languages section on default, you’ll be targeting people who speak all languages.

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

Once you’re done adding all variations you want to target, click Next.

3. Age/Gender

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

  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. If you want to split test your prospects by age groups, make sure to select the age range in years using this drop-down. If you don’t want to split test your audience by age, you can leave this on default
  4. In the Genders drop-down, you can 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 on the on the corner of the variation you want to eliminate. 

Click on Next to proceed to the placements tab.

4. Placements

On the Placements tab, select the placements you want your ads to be shown on.

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

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

Click on Next to continue.

5. Optimization

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

  1. Choose 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 Your Ads

The Ad Creatives tab is where you can:

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

1. Create new ad creatives from scratch 

1. Facebook page

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

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.

3. Media

Now, in the Media tab, you can select:

  • All Media tab to use images and videos from offers and previous ads.
  • Current Offer tab to use creatives from the Offer you launched your campaign with.
  • Upload tab to import images and videos from your laptop.
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 an Offer, its URL will automatically set as the default redirecting URL for your ads. Make sure to edit the display link to your preference.

5. CTA

On the CTA tab, you can add the call to action button you want your ads to display:

  • Sign Up
  • Shop Now
  • Contact Us
  • Download
  • Subscribe
  • Listen Now
  • Watch More
  • Book Now
  • Apply Now
  • Learn More
  • Play Game
  • Get Offer
  • Get Quote
  • Get Showtimes
  • Visit Instagram Profile
  • Send Message

You can also add multiple ones to split test.

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.

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 your Offer

  1. From the left sidebar, click on Offer’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 your 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 on 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. Scalify will sync the ad sets you have in the campaign you chose. 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. After clicking the Search button, Scalify then will display your post. Select it by enabling this toggle.

Click Next and continue to the Review tab.

3. Review Your Traffic Lookalike Audiences 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 task summary.

4. Launch!

The launch tab is where you can:

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

1. Choose Website Traffic Lookalike Audiences Campaign Structure

Automatically set up your ad campaign structure to be:

All ads inside each ad set variation, to allow Facebook to automatically optimize your ad delivery.

Or

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

  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, Scalify 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 or Ad Sets

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

If you’re ready to enable your campaign or ad sets as soon as they’re created by Scalify, then make sure to tick Enable Created Campaign or Enable Created Ad Sets.

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

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