VK advertising: finding new customers with lookalike audiences

VK offers a powerful acquisition tool: lookalike audiences. It finds people whose behaviour and characteristics resemble your best existing customers. This can improve targeted advertising by reaching a more relevant audience. Here is how to set up, optimise and test different lookalike sources in VK.

Lookalike audiences: what and why

Lookalike audiences use VKontakte's algorithms to find new users whose profiles and behaviour resemble those in a seed list. That list can include customers, followers, website visitors or other people valuable to your business.

The main aim of lookalikes is acquiring new prospective customers, more likely to be interested because they resemble your best customers. This allows you to:

• Reduce acquisition cost (CPA): More relevant audiences support conversion.
• Expand reach among relevant people: Find people your usual targeting may not reach.
• Improve customer loyalty: Similar users help build a community interested in the offer.

VK lookalike audience setup

Creating a VKontakte lookalike audience is straightforward:

1. Prepare the source audience: The seed can be VK user IDs, a CSV of customer emails or phone numbers, website retargeting visitors, or VK lead-form contacts. A larger, higher-quality source supports a more accurate lookalike audience. Important: The source list should contain at least 1,000 users for a quality lookalike audience.
2. Open the Audiences section in your VK advertising account.
3. Click Create audience and select Look-alike.
4. Choose the source audience: Select your prepared list or an existing retargeting audience.
5. Set the lookalike audience size: VK offers sizes from 1% to 10%. A 1-2% audience is closer to the seed list but smaller; 5-10% extends reach with potentially less precision. Start smaller when relevance matters most.
6. Choose the search region: Define the audience's location.
7. Click Create audience. Lookalike generation can take time.

Optimise lookalike audiences

Optimise the lookalike audience after creation:

• Segment seed audiences: Instead of one broad customer database, segment by spend, product category or recency. Build separate lookalike audiences from each group to target different prospects more precisely.
• Use different sources: Test lookalikes from buyers, website visitors and subscribers. Compare results to identify promising sources.
• Refresh source audiences: Refresh customer lists and other sources to keep lookalikes relevant.
• Exclude existing audiences: Exclude existing customers and unwanted segments to avoid duplication and irrelevant impressions.

Testing lookalike audience sources

Effective lookalikes require ongoing tests of different approaches:

• Test lookalike sizes: Start at 1-2% and expand while monitoring performance.
• Compare lookalikes from different sources: Run parallel lookalike campaigns using customer segments or sources such as website, CRM and lead forms. Compare performance to identify the strongest sources.
• Combine lookalikes with other controls: Combine lookalikes with interest, demographic and behaviour filters to refine the audience further.
• A/B tests of creative and offers: Even relevant audiences need different ads and offers tested to find the best response.

Conclusion

VKontakte lookalike audiences help find people resembling your best customers. Good setup, ongoing optimisation and testing different sources can improve advertising performance and support business results.

If you need help with lookalike setup or want more from VKontakte advertising, submit your enquiry on our website! Our specialists help navigate the details and build a tailored strategy.