Goal of Facebook ads:
Reverse-engineer the Facebook Ads approach of your rivals.
Ideal outcome: Having a standardized audit that reveals what your rival is doing on Facebook.
There are no prerequisites or criteria.
Why it is significant: It is possible that your opponent has improved his Facebook Ads strategy over time (especially if he has been investing in ads for longer than you), and he may have put methods in place that you might wish to use yourself.
Where it is done: On Facebook Ads Library.
When to complete this: As soon as you can, ideally when you launch your business or Facebook advertising. Following that, you ought to keep track of your rival’s actions at least once a month.
Who does this: This is done by the person in charge of Facebook advertising.
Check the strategic importance of social media traffic for your competition
- Please visit Similar Web.
- Use the search box above to enter the website of a rival.
Note: You will not have the necessary information on Similar Web if you receive the notification below; in that case, move on to the next chapter. This message can help you determine whether your opponent is just getting started or does not have a lot of traffic coming from Facebook ads or any other source to his website.
3. Check what percentage of your competitors’ traffic is generated by social media by scrolling down to “Traffic Sources” Remember that both organic and paid social media traffic is combined here.
4. Continue to scroll down to “Social,” where you can see the percentage of “Social” traffic that originates exclusively from Facebook:
Note: It should be noted that both free and sponsored traffic will be combined. The majority of the time, however, sponsored traffic predominates because organic social rarely generates a sizable volume of traffic.
5. By multiplying the two percentages, you can use this information to determine the percentage of overall traffic that your competition receives from Facebook.
Example:
- Similar Web: 25% of traffic comes from social media
- Similar Web: 50% of social traffic comes from Facebook.
- Calculation: What percentage of your competitor’s traffic originates from Facebook compared to all of their other traffic sources: 50% x 25% Equals 12.5%.
List every Facebook ads that your rival is running
- Visit Facebook’s Ad Library and look for the Facebook page of a rival.
- You can see in the upper right corner how many people are overseeing/working on the competitor’s page and from where:
Note: If there is only one individual in charge of the page, it is likely that your opponent is handling his own ads rather than having them professionally managed. On the other hand, it is a sign that social media (whether organic or bought) is a channel where a lot of resources are being spent if your competition has a large staff administering the page.
- Now that you can view every advertisement that your rival is currently running, you can gather a lot of useful information.
Results: Your competitor’s testing and segmentation levels, as well as any prospective expenditure, can be determined by the number of results. If your competition has a lot of advertising, there is a good likelihood they are spending a lot of money on Facebook ads. It is necessary to set aside money for testing several ads.
- To see the landing pages your competitors are utilizing, click on their advertisement:
- Check the URL of the landing page because it may contain information about the campaigns of your rivals (in UTM parameters or something similar):
For instance, visit Monday at ft/designers?utm source=facebookutm medium=cpc&utm campaign=us-conversion-interests-broad&utm banner=fbm SilosDesign designers Free.
- Look at the placements your rival is employing in their advertisements:
- Verify whether your rival is utilizing dynamic creative ads:
8. Click “Issues, Electoral or Political” to see if your rival is conducting political advertisements.
Note: Even if you are certain the advertising you are looking at are not political in nature, it is always a good idea to double-check that tab.
If you run political Facebook ads
- click “See Ad Details”:
- You will have immediate access to:
a. Ad Spend
b. Reach
c. Impressions
d. Demographic
e. Information
f. Geographic Information
This information relates to that particular ad, but it also provides you with really useful information about your competitors’ overall Facebook Ads strategy.
Put your conclusions in an audit report
–Facebook traffic importance:
How crucial is Facebook to their traffic strategy?
Example:
Website: Wish
Comment: Since Facebook accounts for 95% of their traffic, 10% of their traffic is social, or around 9.5% of their traffic. They receive an estimated 150 million visits each month, Facebook believes 14 million of them.
Managers of pages: How many individuals are in charge of their page? From where are they?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
Comment: The majority of the 33 persons who manage their page are Americans. Probably a team of experts manages their ads.
Ad Volume:
What number of advertisements are now airing?
Countries: How many and which nations are they presently aiming for?
Recurring CTAs: At each level of the funnel, what are their advertising promoting?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
CTA for Leads:
Register for Headspace for Free Get a free 30-day trial of Headspace Plus here Paid Users: Share the Love (Give a Friend 30 Days) / Get some fresh air (Meditate now)
The funnel stages on your rivals’ UTMs might not always be visible, therefore you will occasionally need to rely on assumptions.
Promotions: How regularly do they hold sales or promotions? How do they provide?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
Comment: Facebook Ads are not currently running any promotions.
Content: Do they use Facebook Ads to promote content? What sort of information?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
Comment: To understand more about the advantages of meditation, they are pushing 5-minute meditation videos and blog postings.
Split-Tests: Are they clearly conducting split-tests on their advertisements?
You should take a close look at their advertising to find groups of ads that are very similar but have just one or two minor variances and were introduced on the same day in order to be able to spot split-tests.
Example:
Headspace as a name
Observation: It appears like they are testing different videos with the same voice-over but different images.
Formats and Placements:
Do they use advertisements that are specifically made for a given platform? (For instance, Facebook, Instagram, mobile, and desktop)
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
They do not appear to be segmenting by placement or platform.
Landing Pages: Which landing pages are they directing visitors to? Which ones keep coming up the most?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
Comment: Although some of their advertisements lead to their site (https://www.headspace.com), it appears that the majority of their traffic is coming from the App Store/Google Play URL (https://apps.apple.com/app/id493145008).
What types of creatives do they generally employ?
Brand: Headspace, for instance.
Comment: All commercials that are now playing are videos. 9:16 and 1:1 both.
Items: If there are multiple products, which ones are they advertising the most?
What is their normal audience if they are doing political advertisements?
What is the typical advertising budget?
That’s it! You now have a thorough understanding of your rivals’ Facebook advertising approach.
