You're smart to look into what your competitors are doing on Facebook...
Finding a few successful ads from your competitors on Facebook is a promising place to start before running your own ads.
This will allow you to model your own ads in a similar way to help ensure your success on this platform.
The better your ads - the better you cost per lead - and ultimately the LESS money you'll spend in order to make MORE sales and grow your business.
When you find competitors Facebook ads that are working well, you'll be in a good position to create some killer ad campaigns that can work for you for months to come...
Let's get started...
Spying on Your Competitors Facebook Ads Gives Your Business Leverage
When you are affiliate marketing or selling products and services, the goal of spying on the Facebook competitors ad competition is not to plagiarize your competitor’s work.
The goal of spying on your competitors Facebook ads is for you to survey the landscape and get ad examples to, one, know what kinds of messages your audience is already being exposed to and two, what kinds of hooks and ideas are being presented by other marketers and competitors.
There are ultimately two ways to spy on your competitor's ads on Facebook…
- One - simply use Facebook's native advertising tools.…
- Two - using some third-party tools that can give you even more advertising ideas.
You will learn about both in this post, below.
Spying On Your Competitors Facebook Ads Within Facebook For Free
First you're going to learn about Facebook's free spy tool.
This tool was introduced in 2018 based on the feedback from the political advertising scandal of 2016.
Facebook's goal here was to make it abundantly clear what fan pages are running what ads. That's why it's free - so anyone can see what a Facebook Page is doing.
It's called the Facebook Ad Library...
Turns out this is a great tool for marketers so we can see what ads our competitors are currently running by looking into the respective Facebook page campaigns.
The challenge with this method (that is solved by the next method) is that you can only see what ads are currently running. so if an advertiser turned off their Facebook ads yesterday, it will no longer show up in this free tool.
But here's what's good about that...
With that said very few advertisers turn off ads that are working wonders, so this tool is my number one favorite free Facebook spy tool.
You can get a good understanding of what your competition is already spending money on to save yourself extensive competition research and begin advertising on Facebook a few steps ahead.
From the headlines to the copywriting and opt-in pages, spying on your competitor's Facebook ads is a smart move, granting you insight into the minds of your audience and your competitors.
You will be able to see problems that are trying to be solved and how they’re being approached.
If an ad has been running for a while and remains the same, you’ll know that ad is bringing success to your competition. I like to find adverts that:
- Have been running for over 3 months
- Have good engagement
- Have a good hook
- Have a strong call to action
- Have engaging imagery
- Provoke some type of emotion
Then you can model these successful ads, add in your own unique twist, and start your own $5 facebook ad campaign.
I’m going to walk you through a couple of ad examples and show you how to use this free Facebook ads spy tool.
Spying on your competitors Facebook with external advertising tools.
Third-party tools are able to scrape Facebook's advertising index and re-host the ads on their servers.
What this means is you can search a database of past advertisements that ran on Facebook from your competitors.
When this video was recorded, there were three tools covered… The addicted.io tool is no longer available... the other two tools mentioned in the video still work wonders to this day!
I want to stress how important it is to leverage all of the different research tools you have available to you.
We all get comfortable using our "favorite tools" but mixing things up and searching on different tools from time to time can open you up to brand-new ideas that can lead to new products, funnels, hooks, headlines, etc.
Most people do not do enough market research!
Which is crazy... Espcially if the main tool you're using is free of charge.
Do you see a correlation between this pattern and the fact that most people do not succeed online? I will let you be the judge.
Facebook Ad Examples From These Advertising Spy Tools
For each of these ad examples, We’ll be using Facebook.com and Clickbank.com to find and spy on your competitor’s Facebook Ads.
Clickbank is a great resource for an affiliate marketing funnel and one of the top tools to research your competitors.
Throughout each ad example, we’ll be approaching this as affiliate marketers, however, whether you’re determining what to sell, or building out your own funnel for your own information products, you can use this tool and approach the market research the same way across the board.
Go ahead and pull them up so you can follow along with me through the process. 🙂
Example #1 Organifi
For the first example click on the health and wellness tab inside of Clickbank on the left-hand side. What pops up as the most popular affiliate product is Organifi, a green juice.
Then you'll:
- Move over to Facebook,
- Type in Organifi.
- Open up their fan page and scroll down and click on the info and ads on the left-hand side.
This will show you all of their active ads. If you’re in the health and fitness niche, or maybe you’re doing blender reviews, or, who knows, maybe you are an affiliate for this product. But here you can see the ads that are currently running.
What you can do from here is just take a look at their hooks. See what kind of market their targeting and their use of copywriting.
One of their ads says “Aging is natural. It doesn’t have to hurt, But… as we get older we have a hard time moving freely without hurting.” Now since they post often, you may have to scroll down a while in order to find this particular ad however here’s what I want you to take away from it...
It's about targeting...
Who are they targeting with a hook like this? By analyzing their hook you know they are targeting the anti-aging market.
Remember that if they’re running this Facebook advertising, this campaign is working, or being tested against what is working so take a look at the words they’re using and how they’re approaching their audience.
Example #2 Doggy Dans
Go back to Clickbank.com. This time click on the advanced search to the right of the search bar.
For the category, pick home and garden. For the subcategory, choose animal care and pets.
Hit search. You’ll see Doggy Dans Online Trainer pops up as the most popular.
Go back to Facebook and again, type in Doggy Dans and find their fan page.
Scroll down, and look for "Page Transparency"... Then click on the the "See More" text... This will take you into the free Facebook Ad Library so you are able to see their current ads they are running.
Again, check out the call to action of this competitor, the problem they’re trying to solve and what they’re offering as a solution.
It's about a call to action...
If I’m part of this target market then in theory, their page will convince me to click and move forward.
This example is interesting because when you do click on that to learn more, their landing page is a quiz funnel. This may be something that you’d want to use as well, it just depends on what you're an affiliate for and how you want to approach it.
Example #3 PaleoHacks Cookbook
Go back to the advanced search inside of Clickbank. Choose cooking, food, and wine for the category.
Go down to Paleohacks Cookbook.
You’re going to now go back to Facebook and repeat the same process. Another thing to note is if there is multiple listings, pick the one with the most likes because remember, you want to see which ads of your competitors are working within a niche. The one with the most likes is going to give you the most valuable insight.
You can see the info and ads above on the left there and the learn more on the right. They’re using this dessert picture which is another key element to consider when you're crafting your Facebook ad.
How appealing are your images and how well do they portray the message you’re trying to get across? This is important, so being able to spy on your competitor advertising campaigns can help you to start getting your own inspiration of how you want to build and deliver your own unique ads.
Remember to always keep in mind:
- How the ad is structured
- The images they use
- Who is the target avatar they are speaking to?
- What type of offer are they running and why?
Example #4 Parenting & Families
This last one is for you mom bloggers out there or anyone in the parenting and families niche. Go back to Clickbank and choose the parenting and families category and hit search.
The most popular affiliate product is Children Learning Reading. Take this title and head back over to Facebook.
Something you’ll notice here is that this page is showing their reviews. As an affiliate marketer, you definitely want to choose products with good reviews showing your potential, promoting this product.
As you can see, the process is not hard at all. Your competitors are hiding their ads in plain sight for free! You just need to get into research mode and dig!
It’s the research portion of affiliate and internet marketing that we don't want to take the time to do... However promise you it's totally worth it! I just takes some effort to see it through. Again, competitors ads page's details are easy to look into. Just do it.
Reverse Engineering Your Competitor’s Advertisements
If you want to dive deeper and really get a better understanding your competitors of Facebook advertising in your niche, you can reverse engineer your competitor’s advertisements.
Please make use of the Ad Library to help find competitors. It's free and can work wonders.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an affiliate marketer, a local service provider, a content creator or you’re looking to go into a new niche, these tools will help you to get a better idea of what types of problems are looking to be solved and how you might approach it in your own unique way.
If you find competitors Facebook ads running over a consistent amount of time, you can be sure that they’re working and they’re making money off of them.
What about the big boys?
Successful brands like Brendon Burchard or Revolution Gold, for example, aren’t going to keep running ads that don’t bring them a positive ROI. They may not be your competitors, but they are still running Facebook ads that convert.
Taking it to the next level you can find their landing pages, then opt-in to their free offers to get an idea of the lead magnets their creating.
This is how they get your email address to really amp things up. And once they have an email address then they can in essence market to you for free over and over again.
If you want to you can also buy their products, check out how they present their upsells and at this point, you’re funnel hacking and can literally reverse engineer what these successful online businesses are doing.
Leverage the Research to Build Your Own Great Facebook Ads
Use the tools that I’ve talked about to spy on your competitor's Facebook ads, but don’t stop there.
There’s even more you can do to get to know your audience better and get a better understanding of what their needs, wants, and desires are in your niche.
Here’s a list of additional tools as a bonus for you:
- Check out the World’s Best Market Research Tool
- Learn How To Do Market Research For Your Internet Business
- Arm yourself against your competitors with Competition Research Made Easy
- Dive into How to Use Google Trends for Market Research
- Learn human psychology with Niche Ideas Based on Maslow’s Hierchy of Needs
As an internet marketer, it’s your job to solve problems. It’s also up to you to learn how to best communicate with your audience so your messages are clear, concise and enticing.
If you’re willing to grow in your knowledge and focus on your strengths and your unfair advantage, over time, you’ll find a winning strategy.
Other Social Media Ads
We all know the big players in the social media world:
- TicTok
- Snapchat
- Instagram (which is actually Facebook)
- And so on...
I'll discuss a couple here, but spoiler alert - most all are not worth your time.
Twitter ads in my opinion are close to worthless.
I mean, twitter ads might work in some industries, but personally I've never gotten them to work well.
You may discover a competitor using Twitter ads and want to dive into that world. Go ahead a see what you can get out of it. As for me, I haven't been able to have much success.
LInkedIn ads are also a way to look into competitors...
But again, I haven't been able to crack the LinkedIn advertising code - yet.
With Facebook there's just so much data you can use. I'd stay away from other social media platforms for now. Find a competitor or two that's killing with Facebook ads and stick to that.
Use the Best Tool to Win in the Advertisement Game
If your ad campaigns aren’t taking off or you were unsure of how to find Facebook advertisements that work, now you know it’s all about the research.
The more you learn, the more you have to build from.
Use the tools, do the research and step out of the market saturation myth by bringing your authentic self to the table.
Success doesn’t happen overnight.
Keep moving forward taking actions that will bring you closer to the lifestyle design you’re after while being of service to others.
I hope this was helpful, hit me up in the comments below if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to help.
Cheers!