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Become a Stealthy Facebook™ Ads Spy

Rule number one. Before launching any social media marketing campaign, do your background checks. Conduct thorough research into your own audience and analyse the results of any previous social media ads. Jumping in, feet-first and without a snorkel, means your social media efforts will go completely underwater.

Rule number two. Conduct more background checks. This time on your competitors’ Facebook™ ads, to decipher where they’ve been successful and where they’ve flopped.

Rule number three. Get the first two rules right and make sure you’ve got no excuses when it comes to executing your own Facebook™ campaign.

Designing Facebook™ ads is so much more than the copy, images and layout. It’s an art and a science, so using data-backed research is the best way to ensure your ad reaches the right people at the right time. A good place to start is to work out how well your competitor’s ads are performing and whether they’re directing your potential customers the wrong way.

Tools to Spy on your Competitors’ Facebook™ Ads

Researching the Facebook™ ads of similar businesses can provide you with all the ammo you need to conduct a killer social marketing campaign. The process can help you identify new opportunities and gather fresh ideas, validate your idea based on whether it’s worked in the past, and avoid making the same mistakes that other businesses made.

All without having to invest any dollars into a risky Facebook™ advertising strategy.

So, go all Sherlock Holmes and trail your competitors’ tracks with some of the best Facebook™ ads spy tactics.

1. Using Facebook™ Itself

When you head to your news feed, the second item is usually an advert. You can discover more about how the social media platform targets audiences by tapping into the logistics of why that advert showed up on your particular feed.

Head to the top-right corner of the ad and click the arrow icon. Then, go to Why am I seeing this? This will take you to a page of your interests, so you can uncover how your competitors are using ad targeting.

The results could offer you some great insight for your own audience targeting methods. To get a glimpse into your competitors’ remarketing campaigns, visit their websites and then head back to Facebook™ to see their remarketing ads.

2. AdEspresso

Stuck for ideas on how to create an attention-grabbing Facebook™ ad? AdEspresso is the free tool from Hootsuite that can gives you access to previous ads in your industry, based on your search filters.

Type a search term and then narrow down results by industries, attributes, placements and objectives. So, whether you want to put an ad out there for sales, to convert or just to raise awareness, you can take a look at how other advertisers have achieved those goals.

3. Don’t Forget the Landing Pages

Often, the reason that a perfectly good Facebook™ ad doesn’t get the results you want is because it leads to a poor landing page. To be a top Facebook™ ads spy, it’s best to uncover where your competitors’ ads direct users to.

When you get there, there are a few things you should be looking out for.

1. What is your competitor’s UVP (Unique Value Proposition)? That is their strongest selling point – is it the same as yours? What should your landing page focus on?
2. Are they using good landing page practices? Is it heavy or light in text, and does this work? Are they using call-to-actions that you should be using?
3. Are they offering any deals? If they’re giving special offers exclusively to the Facebook™ community, maybe that’s something you should be doing, too.

4. Instant Access to Your Competitors’ A/B tests

This is where it gets good. While your competitor is carrying out A/B testing of their landing pages, you can get instant access to what they’re doing and whether they’re doing much to actually increase conversions.

Stillio is the tool for that. It automatically captures your chosen screenshots at time intervals of your selection. With these screenshots, you can grab winning variations that could work within your own website. Fancy that design, UVP or headline idea? Go ahead and take it, but just be sure to adapt it to your brand.

You can also use this tool to track a competitors’ Facebook™ page, so if they boost a post or remove it, you’ll know what’s working for them.

5. Fanpage Karma

Fanpage Karma is your new best friend and partner-in-crime when it comes to seeking information about your competitors’ Facebook™ performance. This tool can help you gather key data to make comparisons between pages and trends to gain some inspiration.

Gain insight into which posts are receiving the most engagement. According to Facebook™, engagement like comments and shares signify the most valuable type of posts, and are the ones that will get right of way with the news feed algorithm updates.

Use Fanpage Karma to examine the best times to post, which tone of voice works, and which topics spark the most conversations.

Time to Design

Now that you’ve done your research, you should be ready to design your ad to make it stand out above the rest. Use your findings to make good social media marketing choices:

” Show your customer what they’re missing. See which useful features your competitors are lacking – are their values or customer service out of sync? Then address the gap with your own product and see how you can bring up your solution within the context of a Facebook™ad.
” Take inspiration. A competitor ad analysis should have brought up a collection of ads, some of which work, some don’t. Incorporate some of your favourite aspects but spin them so they’re unique to your brand. Don’t lose sight of the objectives of your campaign and create a design around that.
” Make your solution clear. Use of colour can demonstrate your values and solutions. For example, opting for green shows you’re an eco-friendly brand. Images, placement and text all combine to add that magic to your marketing.

An Impressive Facebook™ Ads Spy

Spend time on research to avoid wasting money on ads that don’t do their job. When you partner with a social marketing agency like Impressive, we can go undercover for you to discover what your competitors are doing, both on Facebook™ and on their website.

Ready to launch a strategy that’s backed up by pure solid research? Feel confident when you invest your dollars into social media marketing and receive maximum ROI.

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