Knowing what your competitors are up to in the realm of social advertising can give you inspiration on messaging, creative, gaps, trends, differentiators, and more. Whether you decide to borrow from what your competitors are doing or identify what they’re not doing as an opportunity for your brand to grab attention (or some of both), knowledge can be a powerful tool in building your advertising campaigns.
Good news: you don’t need to spend money to get some rich insights into your competitors’ campaigns. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have a wealth of information that still flies under the radar for many marketing teams.
In this post, we’ll look at the competitive insights available in both platforms.
Facebook has two ways you can check for competitor ads: Facebook Ad Library and Facebook Page Transparency.
As the blurb on the top of the library page says, you can quickly access every single ad your competitors are running across Meta platforms. Just select your region, select “all ads,” and type in your competitor’s name to see what comes up (if nothing shows up, you know your competitor isn’t running any ads, which is valuable info in and of itself).
For ads with multiple versions, click the gray “See Ad Details” button to get a look at each.
You can access the page transparency feature by going to your competitors’ Facebook page. We’ll use Asana’s page as an example.
First, find the Page Transparency Section of the Facebook account, and click on See All.
Next, go to the Ads From This Page section, and click Go to Ad Library. If it’s empty, the company isn’t advertising at the time. However, if it’s not empty it’ll show you all current ads.
LinkedIn has one way to search for competitor ads, and it’s very straightforward.
First, go to Linkedin.com. Search for your competitor’s name in the search bar, and click on View Page.
Once you’re on the page, click on Posts > Ads.
What you do with the knowledge you’ve gained about your competitors’ creative and messaging is up to you. If you know you’re up against a bigger competitor and have differentiated pricing or features to offer, disruptive messaging and direct brand-name comparisons might work well (you can leverage their brand-name recognition to get attention). If you’re the market leader, you may simply use these features to gain awareness of your challengers’ tactics.
Whatever you plan to do, your understanding of the competitive landscape should only add depth to your marketing strategy. I recommend setting a regular cadence for checking on your competitors’ ads to make sure you’re picking up on trends as they emerge.
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