How To Use Google Ads Lookalike Audiences

How to use Look Alike audiences to find new prospects?

This new article from our blog dedicated to SEA and Google Ads, we will address the subject of similar audiences, and how it is possible to take advantage of them for the distribution of your campaigns via specific targeting on the online advertising network at CPC.

With classic Google Ads by keywords, which is the best known if you are just starting out, you limit your audience for the purpose of conversion to people who already know what they want and who carry out specific and targeted searches. How to find people who are potentially interested in your products or services without knowing it via targeted advertisements? How to use this tool provided.

What is the definition of a lookalike audience?

A similar audience, also called the Look alike audience , is a group of people who have a resemblance to the usual users of your brand, site, etc. By studying the characteristics of your company's regular customers using numerous criteria (age, gender, geographical location, habits, centers of interest, behaviors, browsing history, etc. it is possible to establish one or more standard profiles of individuals resembling your customers already identified within the purchase cycle of your Google Ads campaigns.

Advertisers provide a source of audience data to an advertising network which then matches them with other users, with the goal of finding new audiences that most closely resemble the characteristics of the source audience data .

The theory behind lookalikes is that groups of people who exhibit certain characteristics or perform certain actions will tend to exhibit certain common traits that may identify them. This tool is an acquisition and conversion lever not to be overlooked for your online CPC advertising.

How do look-alike audiences apply to Google Ads?

With remarketing ("retargeting") , you use Google's search engine and display to show ads to people who have already visited your site. With Lookalike Audiences, you can go one step further and target people who behave online like people on your remarketing list .

This allows you to circumvent one of the biggest problems with display: relevance.

Thus you will be able to broaden your prospecting , no longer to people who are specifically looking for your products, but to offer them spontaneously to a panel of Internet users with the same characteristics as your usual customers and who may also be interested in your products. A good way to complement other types of Google Ads campaigns and increase performance by targeting users with the same characteristics.

Google Ads will therefore use your classic visitor lists created for remarketing campaigns, analyze them and determine a lookalike audience associated with these original lists.

What types of sources can we use?

• Similar to remarketing lists: Either in relation to a list of your visitors, built according to their user journey.
• Similar to lists of users who have watched a video: Either according to a list of users from your YouTube channel or some of your videos.
• Similar to customer mailing lists: Either based on a customer list that you have imported. These lists are only usable on YouTube and Gmail.

According to Google, for example, they can improve performance by up to 60% more impressions, 48% more clicks, and 41% more conversions. See how to reduce the costs of a Google Ads campaign.

For each user, the impact and relevance of this prospecting model should be measured on a case-by-case basis.

What is the difference with the classic Display Network?

When setting up a typical Google Ads Display Network campaign, you're essentially guessing where to display your ads. You have some control over how your ads appear by telling Google Ads to target specific websites or categories of sites. The targeting remains broad and you only target places of passage and not Internet users in particular.

The Display nevertheless remains a space filled with very good traffic opportunities to increase its notoriety and its sales.

Coupling Look Alike with display is an excellent way to combine the two marketing interests. You don't have to guess which sites or categories of sites match your audience. They allow you to target your ideal audience directly on the display, on any site.

How to use Look Alike audiences on Google Ads?

Your sources must have a minimum history: Google Ads will only be able to start finding similar audiences from a certain number of profiles present in your source lists (500 profiles). In general, the more information Google Ads receives, the more detailed analyzes it will be able to perform.

They are ideal for prospecting: they are generally more precise than targeting based on centers of interest alone or demographic data.

Create Look Alikes from already targeted audiences: Creating a lookalike audience from ordinary visitors to your site will have less impact than targeting those who look like real customers or people who have abandoned a shopping cart. The better your target source, the better your lookalike audience will be.

Multiply and test different distribution sources: create different audiences to serve as sources for similar ones. So you can compare the performance of each and refine your strategies.

Set different bids for these targets: depending on the returns you get, you can allow yourself to combine different bids if this is useful. If they convert twice as much, you can, at equal cost per acquisition, double your bids to obtain, for example, a better ranking or more traffic.

Lookalike audiences on the search engine and Google Shopping: the feature is not reserved for Display and can be applied to the Google search engine and Shopping campaigns on e-commerce sites.

Should I use Lookalike Audiences?

Most advertisers do not use them for their campaigns , or without any real relevant strategy and quickly give up.

By no longer limiting yourself to people looking for specific keywords on the search engine, you broaden your prospecting fields significantly and potentially obtain much more substantial market access . Look Alikes allow you to use your previous visit history to discover new customers who may be interested in your services and products.

For your traffic acquisition campaign, combining paid search, display and the lookalike audience tool can strongly impact the growth prospects generated by paid advertising and reduce the purchase cycle by targeting a group of potential customers who may be at a more advanced stage of consideration.

If you want to implement these types of strategies for your business, our Google Ads advertising experts are available to discuss them concretely and work on optimizing your Google Ads campaigns.