How to conduct a competitor analysis across META

Conducting a competitor analysis for Facebook ads is hard but possible. Start by identifying your competitors based on industry performance and your aspirations. Use tools like Unicorn Ads to find niche competitors. Utilise Facebook Ads Library to analyse creative aspects like hooks, visuals, and copy elements such as length, listicles, and emojis. Explore landing pages to understand the competitor's desired audience journey. Research and analyse consumer reviews of competitor brands to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, use the gathered information to refine your own ads and make them resonate with your target audience.

Think it’s near impossible to conduct a Facebook ads competitor analysis? Think again. Whilst it’s not as freeing as an organic competitor analysis, there are still ways and means. From utilising tools, to reviewing creative and copy, this article will prepare you for your next analysis.

Let’s start with the basics - who are your competitors? If you know who they are, then great; if not, let’s consider identifying these. Look at your industry:

• Who's performing well and not so well?
• Who do you aspire to be like?
• Can you narrow these down to your own business size?
• Are there any businesses of a larger size who are performing both well and not so well? (You’ll learn a lot from these too!)

Do a quick search on Google to see who ranks highly for your product or category
If you’re really struggling with where to start, Unicorn Ads could be a great place to identify your niche.

Who or what is Unicorn Ads?

Unicorn Ads is a fully accessible database, compiled of the top 1,000 Shopify stores that are running ads. Simply select your niche (there are 20 to choose from or search for your own) and browse through the results that are available, until you find a business that you feel resonates with your own and you can mark them as a competitor or a brand to keep an eye on.

This platform is great when you’re having a bit of a blocker moment and need to identify your competitor(s). But Facebook Ads Library is where the real magic (analysis) happens.

How to use Ads Library to your advantage

As easy as it is to look solely at creative for face value and the number of ads that are being run by a certain brand/competitor, the key to conducting a useful and informative competitor analysis is to look at the how. Touching first on the creative being used:

• Is there a hook?
• Statics or videos, or both?
• What type of creative asset is being used?
  • Imagery / graphic / lifestyle element / quotes?

Considering the above and analysing your findings, helps you to formulate different tactics. Providing you with motives to see what could possibly work for your own brand/product in addition to what you can do differently or even test.

Creative aside, copy is a great one to take notice of, always keep in mind the following, are the ads using:

• Long or short form content?
• Are listicles used?
• What’s the emoji usage like?

Asking questions such as the above can really help you to generate a solid idea on what you can be doing for your own ads. Again, the findings can help you to experiment to truly find and understand what your audience are looking for from an advertising campaign (without them even knowing it!).

You’ve looked at creative and textual content, what’s next?

The great thing about Facebook Ads Library is that once you’ve seen the ads at face value, you can click through to the landing page. You’ll see the exact journey that competitor/brand is wanting their (your) audience to take. Whilst it’s important to consider how you’re going to get your audience to the relevant landing page, you truly need to establish the next steps on the page too. Really consider what you want your audience to do, why you want them to do this, when they should take that action and finally, how you’re going to make that happen (side note: by providing a real great user experience and journey!).

Take a step further, research these brands and analyse their reviews. What are they doing well and not so well from a consumer perspective? It could be they lack on the customer service front, or the product isn’t as expected/portrayed in the ads. Review these and look to consider how you can use this to identify angles for your own ads.

From here you can strengthen your own analysis more, once you see what your competitors are doing, continue to ask yourself - “How can I use all this information to make my ads resonate with the target audience?”