Improve Your Facebook Ad Results Using Use Competitor Research

There are lots of ingredients that go into setting up a successful Facebook Ad campaign, and sometimes it can take a long time to figure out the right blend to get the results you want.

Tony Robbins says “Success leaves clues” and he’s right.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time you set up a new marketing campaign, and there is no harm in checking out what your competition is doing to get some inspiration.

In this post I am going to share two of my favourite hacks for checking out the competition, to see what they are doing and how that can help to improve the results of your Facebook Ad campaigns.

Before I start, a caveat – I do not in any way endorse blatant copying of other people’s work.  That’s unethical, out of integrity and just plain wrong.

However, there is no harm whatsoever in seeking inspiration if you are hitting a creative brick wall, or if you can’t figure out which audience you want to target.  This is nothing other than good old market research.

Let’s dive a little deeper into these two competitor research hacks.

1. The Facebook Ad Library

The Ad Library was introduced by Facebook as a transparency tool – to give people more information about the ads they are seeing in their timeline.

It’s also an incredibly effective way of checking out what other people in your niche are doing with their ads.

• What kind of creative are they using – images?  Videos?  Carousels?

• How long is the copy in their ads?

• What type of language are they using?

• What headlines are they using?

You can even click through from the ads and check out their landing pages.  There is a wealth of research information available to you through this one tool alone.

So how do you get started?  Simple.  Click the following link and you’ll be taken to the Ad Library:

​https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/

The first thing you will see is the Ad Library home page, where you can choose the country that the ads are running in, the type of ad and a search box for the name of the advertiser.

Choose the country that is most relevant to you – the one where you are planning on running your ads is a good starting point.

For the Ad category, I usually choose “All Ads” but if you want to get more specific on the other options listed, choose one of those.

Then type in the name of the advertiser you want to research.  In this example, I will choose Amy Porterfield as her target audience is very similar to mine, so her ads could prove to be a good source of inspiration.

On the following page, I am shown all of the ads that Amy is currently running.

At the top of the page, there is some useful information, and it also shows approximately how many ads are running – currently around 230.

Then below this, are all of the ads that are currently running, listed in order of date.

Top Tip: Ads that have been running for longer are likely running for a reason – they are working.  Top advertisers don’t run ads that don’t yield results, so be sure to check out some of those older ads too, and not just the latest ones.

For the purpose of demonstration, let’s look at the 3 most recent ads at the top of the page.  You have the opportunity here to break these down, look at the individual component parts that make up the ad, and do a little analysis.

Here are some questions to consider asking yourself around each component:

Creative:

• What type of creative are they using (image, video, slide show, carousel etc.) – in this case, these ads are all using still images
  
• What is appealing about this creative?  I like the use of colours here – these ads will really “pop” in the newsfeed – and remember, the goal of the creative is to stop the scroll and capture the attention of the user.  So that’s a box ticked for me.

Copy:

• Are they using long or short form copy?  Tip – if you click on the copy, it will expand out to show you the entire ad
  
• How is the copy structured?  Are they using bullet points, emojis etc.?
  
• What kind of language are they using, what keywords are jumping out?

Remember, those ads at the top of the page haven’t been running for very long (at the time of writing, these were published yesterday) – so for a better insight, you might want to scroll down and check out ads that have been running for longer.

When you find an ad that you really like, you can click on See Ad Details and it will take you further into that ad on a new page.

This is where you can see the headline and call to action button (see red border in the image below):

Ask yourself some more questions about these components of the ad too…

Headline:

• What format does the headline take (statement, question etc.)
  
• Does it feel compelling?

Call to action button:

• What CTA are they using?

Also, in this detailed view, the links will work and any videos will play, so you can dive deeper into the funnel by visiting the landing page, and – if they are using video – check out exactly how:

• How long is the video
  
• What style is it (talking to camera, or something different)

The Facebook Ad library is a fantastic resource to check out ads and funnels, you can use it to really understand how others are marketing their products and services.  In our agency, we share this tool with many of our clients and they love it – I hope you do too!

2. Target your competitors audiences

This hack focuses more on targeting – what kinds of audience are your competitors showing their ads to?

Why is this important?  As I mentioned earlier – Success Leaves Clues.  If your competitors are running ads to a specific audience that can give you ideas on who you should be targeting.

It’s also really easy because you don’t need to look any further than your own Facebook and Instagram feeds.  Simple!

If you regularly interact with your competition’s content, then you will likely see their ads coming up in your feed.  How do you do this?

• Visit their websites and landing pages
• Check out their Facebook page or Instagram feed and engage there
• Watch their videos
• Get on their email list

Once you start to do this consistently, the ads will start to show up.  When they do, it’s easy to see who they are targeting – here’s how.

Notice – in the screenshots I am doing this on my MacBook Pro, but you can also do this on your mobile app too.

Here’s an ad from Hubspot Academy, and I’ve clicked on the three dots in the top right corner, the drop down menu appears and I’m going to click on “Why am I seeing this ad?”

When I click that, Facebook provides me with lots of useful information:

At the top, I can see the kind of targeting that is being used:

• Similarities to their customers means they are using a lookalike audience
• Aged 22 and older – this can help me with the age demographic
• Primary location in the United Kingdom – where they are targeting

Here’s another example:

When I dig deeper into this ad from Landbot, I get the following info shared:

This is SUPER useful.

I can see here that they are targeting people who are interested in Online advertising, Web design and more – and when I click on that line, I can go deeper still:

Here I can see a more comprehensive list of the interests that were used – THAT is incredibly useful information.  I’d recommend doing this research for as many of your competitor ads as possible, and then creating a list of the interests that you find that you think are going to be relevant to your ads.

I can also remove myself from any of those interests too, if they aren’t relevant to me.  That’s really useful as I can make sure that I only see hyper-relevant ads in the future.

Now I can take this information, and use it as a consideration point when I am building out audiences to show my own ads to.

There’s one more tip I want to share with you today – how you can see (and edit) which interests are assigned to your user profile.

In the above screenshot you would simply click on the “Review all of your interests” link at the bottom and you’ll be taken to a screen like this:

You can edit the interests shown on the screen, or click See All Interests, and then a list of every single interest that Facebook has linked to your profile will appear, and you can remove those that aren’t relevant.

Facebook users each have their own individual profile and the interests form part of that – this is how Facebook targets users with ads based on interests.  So everyone who has Russell Brunson as an interest associated with their profile, will be in the potential audience for an advertiser who is running ads to an interest-based audience targeting Russell Brunson.

Knowing which type of ad is going to work best for your audience, and finding the right audience to show those ads to, can be a huge task.  These two hacks will give you an incredible advantage and get you off to a really strong start, and help you to have hugely successful campaigns.
If you’re thinking of working with a Facebook Ad agency to help you get incredible results for your business, we could be a great fit for you.  If you’d like to find out more, apply to have a discovery call with me and my team by clicking here.