Every business wants to see massive growth, right? Reaching the right audience for your company is crucial in creating that growth and success in your marketing efforts. However, finding the right audience isn't effectively done by guessing what types of consumers may be interested in your product or service. So, what if you could use an essential tool you already have to create an audience more likely to be interested in what you offer?

Yes, that's right, a tool that you already have. Your current customers!

What makes up the core of your already-built customer base? With Look-Alike Analysis, also known as Look-alike Modeling, you can discover this answer and use the characteristics of your current customers to find potential ones that match their attributes.

Interested in learning more about your customers so you can target an audience that matches them? We have everything you need to know about Look-Alike Analysis so you can create real success and massive growth in your next marketing campaign.

What is Look-Alike Analysis?

Look-Alike Analysis—also known as Look-Alike Mailing, Look-Alike Modeling, or Look-Alike Reporting—is an analytical tactic used for marketing campaigns. It uses the data from your current customers. It analyzes it to determine the key characteristics that make up your most successful customers. This technique then locates new records of potential customers based on your best customers. This analysis then creates a report of a look-alike audience of consumers who match the same key attributes.

Essentially, Look-Alike Analysis finds and creates a list of an audience who "look like" and have identical actions and interests as your ideal and most profitable clientele.

How Do Look-Alike Reports Work?

To create a Look-Alike Audience, your print and marketing provider needs to analyze your current customers to determine which customer datasets matter most to your business. Depending on your desired marketing outcome—if you want to reach consumers through a national or local campaign—this could be from 1,000 customer records for a small area, 3,000 for a broader location, or at least 5,000-10,000 for a national reach. That may sound like a lot of data to analyze, but the more data that can be processed, the more accurate your new audience list will be in matching your most valuable customers.

These customer records represent the kinds of people interested in your product or service and will determine your target audience. This includes consumers with similar demographics, incomes, behavioral attributes, current life events, buying activity, and other characteristics.

What Are the Benefits of Look-Alike Modeling?

The main benefit of Look-Alike Analysis is that it allows you to reach an audience you have a better chance of converting into customers. This is because the types of customers you already have are the exact type of new audience you want to reach.

Not convinced? Suppose your current customer base is interested in your product or service. In that case, an individual with the same key attributes and demographic characteristics as your customers will also be interested. Suppose your analysis shows that most of your customers are married middle-aged women, have a household income of around 100k, have at least one child present in their home, and show interest in high-end vehicles. In that case, that is the audience you want to reach. That is what Look-Alike Analysis does. You can target an audience with the same demographics, incomes, interests, and more as your best clientele.

Not only do the benefits of Look-Alike Analysis or Look-Alike Modeling include reaching a more accurately targeted audience, but it also saves you money.

This marketing technique saves you money by providing access to an audience more likely to be interested in your company. By gaining this access, you eliminate the wasted time and money spent on marketing efforts that reach an audience in which the majority is simply uninterested.

How Does Look-Alike Analysis Help with Business Growth?

Imagine your most valuable customer, who opens every marketing email, engages with every catalog in your direct mail marketing campaigns, makes frequent purchases, or wrote a great review about the services you provide. Now imagine reaching 100s or 1000s of consumers who are just like this customer. Your business sales would exceed your goals and your business growth would be astronomical!

That is exactly what Look-Alike Analysis does.

Let's look at an example. If your company is looking to promote a new deal on their health food meal subscription and you decide to mail out postcards to 3,000 households that are made up of married couples who are interested in healthy eating, you may get impressive results! But, you may also only get 50 new customers. Now, take a look at the data making up your current and best customers through Look-Alike Modeling. You may find that most of your existing customers are married couples interested in healthy eating but do not have children present, live in or are close to the city, and have a household income of 50k-100k.

Suppose you mail to 3,000 of those households who match those exact credentials. In that case, you're looking at a more filtered and targeted audience who match the same characteristics as your best clientele. Thus turning your previous 50 new customers into 500-2,000 new customers.

With Look-Alike Analysis, businesses can take advantage of the data they already have to grow their customer base and business into something much larger. Interested in learning more or want to get started on your Look-Alike Report? Click below to visit and explore our Look-Alike Analysis page and talk with one of Look-Alike experts today!