A lookalike audience (sometimes called a similar audience) is an ad platform-generated group of new people who “resemble” your best customers or website visitors, built by modeling a source list (your “seed”) and finding more users likely to behave the same way.
Here’s the simple version: you give the platform a high-quality starting point (like past purchasers, booked appointment leads, or people who reached your thank-you page), and the platform uses its own signals to find more people who match that pattern. For Orlando businesses, it’s one of the fastest ways to scale beyond remarketing without guessing interests one by one, especially when you already have conversion data and want more of the same. This approach shows up inside most paid media stacks we manage through our PPC services, because it can expand reach while staying anchored to what already drives revenue.
| Platform term | What it means in practice | Current note |
|---|---|---|
| Meta “Lookalike Audience” | Builds a new audience similar to a source (customer list, pixel events, engagement) and lets you pick how close vs how large the audience should be (commonly shown as 1% to 10%). | Still widely used for prospecting when the seed is strong. |
| TikTok “Lookalike Audience” | Creates a modeled audience based on a custom audience source (site visitors, leads, purchasers, app activity) to reach new users with shared traits. | Common for eCommerce and lead gen. |
| Google “Similar audiences” | Used to be Google’s lookalike-style targeting based on remarketing lists. | Google stopped generating and supporting Similar audiences in 2023; newer Google campaigns rely more on audience signals and automated expansion features instead. |
| LinkedIn “Lookalike audiences” | Previously modeled audiences based on matched lists or website audiences. | LinkedIn discontinued Lookalike audiences in 2024. |
What makes lookalikes work (or fall flat) is the seed quality. A seed built from “any visitor” is usually weaker than a seed built from “people who submitted a form,” “called from the site,” “booked,” or “purchased.” In practical terms, we like seeds tied to a clear business result: for a dental office, completed appointment requests or high-intent pages (like Invisalign consult or emergency dentist); for a law firm, qualified case evaluations; for pest control, booked inspections or confirmed service requests.
Two guardrails matter for local businesses: (1) keep your geography tight. A lookalike can be amazing, but if your service area is Orlando, Winter Park, Lake Mary, or Kissimmee, you still need location targeting so budget doesn’t drift into places you don’t serve. (2) pick one goal per audience. If you want booked calls, build the seed around call leads or booked forms, not general engagement.
If you’re comparing this to keyword or intent targeting, think of lookalikes as “people-based” discovery instead of “query-based” discovery. The best campaigns usually blend both: keywords and intent capture demand that already exists, while lookalikes help you find more of the right people earlier in the decision cycle. If you want the intent side explained in plain English, our FAQ on search intent and its main types pairs well with this concept.
If you tell us what you sell and what counts as a “win” (call, form, purchase, booked appointment), we can tell you the best seed to start with and where lookalikes belong in your funnel without wasting spend.
