One of the most useful capabilities of Facebook Targeting is the ability to create lookalike audiences. The Facebook Business Manager can use a wealth of information and sophisticated algorithms to generate an audience with similar attributes to your existing audience- in other words, an audience that looks like your audience.
When you create a lookalike audience, you can determine a few variables for the audience that’s created: lookalike percentage, gender, age, and location. These are useful to make your targeting more specific- for example, if you notice that women convert more than men for a specific funnel stage, you can create an audience of that gender, and see if it performs better.
Note that if you are based in the United States, you cannot select a location for your lookalike audience beyond the country- for example, if you choose an audience 1% (CA)- it will turn into 1% (US).
Facebook only allows you to create audiences with up to 10% lookalike percentage, while Madgicx lets you go up to 20%.
¶ How to bypass it
This location block for US users may seem like an obstacle, but there is a very easy fix: you can set up the location manually on the ad set level, and suffer no loss to your geographic targeting ability. Even though Facebook does not allow US-based users to create location-based lookalike audiences, it is still possible to edit the ad sets and add a location, same as any other ad set.
This might be a little more laborious than simply using the simple lookalike locations on Madgicx, but it can give your audience added flexibility: as you can use the same lookalike audience for multiple countries just by adjusting the location on the ad set level.
¶ The effect on Madgicx users
If you are a US-based Madgicx user, you would have an extra step when launching lookalike audiences through Madgicx. You would go to the ad sets you have created through Madgicx and click on Remove Location.
This would allow you to target specific locations using Madgicx audiences and get the best of all worlds.
If you have any questions or issues with lookalike location targeting, don’t hesitate to send us a message through the chat and we’ll be happy to help.