How to Build More Targeted Lookalike Audiences With Metadata

Hey I’m Andrew Harder, Sr. Paid Media Manager and I’m Cristal Marquez, Paid Media Manager at Webex Events (formerly Socio).

We run Paid Media at Webex Events, the leading event management platform that powers immersive & intuitive virtual, hybrid, and in-person events.

Driving net new leads is an important initiative for us and we needed a way to generate new leads outside of our targeted audiences for low cost. 

Using Lookalike audiences we were able to accomplish just that!

Lookalikes can be hit or miss depending on your target audience but it’s definitely worth testing. 

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How It Works

1. Create your Facebook/LinkedIn lookalike audiences natively.
2. Once matched, pull your lookalike audiences into Metadata.
3. Next build your audience groups in Metadata with location or other criteria (if audience size permits). 
4. Finally, create your campaign and add your Facebook/LinkedIn audience groups for targeting. 

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The Playbook

Create your Facebook/LinkedIn lookalike audiences natively

The most important thing for having success with Lookalikes and driving qualified leads is the source audience you’re building off of.

We’ve found the following to be the most effective source audiences:

• Deals in Pipeline
• Closed Won Opportunities

Important to note = these should be contact lists with email addresses. 

Here’s how to create your lookalike audience natively. 

For LinkedIn, head over to Plan → Audiences → Create Audience → Lookalike

Select your source audience (ex: Deals in Pipeline) and click create. 

For Facebook, head over to: 

Advertise → Audiences → Create Audience → Lookalike Audience

From here complete following Lookalike audience settings: 

• Lookalike source = recommended deals in pipeline or closed won opps
• Audience location = whatever is relevant for your audience
• Audience size = don’t recommend anything past 2% for quality

Select ‘Create Audience’ and wait 24-48HRs for your audiences to match.

Once complete you’re ready for the next step!

Pull your lookalike audiences into Metadata 

With the Lookalikes audiences created and matched now you’ll need to pull them into the Metadata platform. 

In Metadata head over to:

Audiences → Add New Audience →  Retargeting/Lookalike (Facebook/LinkedIn)

Select the audience type and pull in the lookalike audiences you created in step 1.

Repeat for each channel.

Build your audience groups in Metadata with location criteria

With all your lookalike audiences in Metadata, now you’ll need to group them with a Firmographic Native audience so you can target specific countries.

Firmographic Native audiences are essentially the same thing as building an audience within the Facebook or LinkedIn ads manager. 

In Metadata head over to:

Audiences → Add New Audience → Firmographic Native (Facebook/LinkedIn)

Build one Firmographic Native audience per channel with your target location for your lookalike campaigns.

Facebook example:

LinkedIn example:

Locations are MANDATORY as you want to guarantee visibility in certain locations.

With your Native Firmographic audiences complete, head over to:

Audiences → Audience Groups

Create a Facebook/LinkedIn audience group and combine your Firmographic Native audience filter with all relevant lookalike audiences created in Step 1.

This will create an AND statement. 

For example: 

User must be from United States or Canada AND apart of your lookalike.

Without the Firmographic Native filter you’re going to potentially target people outside of your relevant region so it’s critical that you create the audience group.

Create your campaign and add your Facebook/LinkedIn audience groups for targeting 

Finally, with your lookalike audience groups created you’re all set!

Create your draft campaign and add them for targeting. 

Make to sure to also remember to add exclusions as well.

If we have a 1% LAL of closed won deals and 1% LAL of oppen opps we’ll want to exclude them from each other to prevent targeting overlap. 

Offers such as free templates, checklists, and guides have worked well with this playbook. 

Once you know the lookalike audiences that perform well you can consider combining them together via an audience group to create a larger audience for scaling in the future. 

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The Results

Leveraging lookalike audiences we were able to generate the following results:

• 1,417 leads, $10.48 CPL
• 24 MQLs, $618 CPMQL
• 6 triggered opportunities

If you want to scale Lead Gen give this a shot!