When social media platforms were developed, the primary intention was to help people connect with others around them. However, over the years these platforms have developed into profound tools for marketing one’s business. It is interesting to note that these platforms have not only evolved as a marketing ground but also as a battlefield wherein brands compete to win the attention of the customers.
Marketing and the resultant competition have only increased over the years, especially with the increase in e-commerce. Hence, it has become all the more important to trace the activities of your competitors that sell the same range of products to the same target audience.
Since information is much more public on these platforms, it will be easier for people and brands to have access to the important details about the plans of your competitors. This article will focus on Facebook and explore the ways in which brands can analyse and infer information from their competitors through this platform. It has to be noted that these ways can be looked up by budding brands as well so as to learn and develop their own marketing strategies.
1. Befriending the Competitor
2. Following Competitor’s Ads
3. Advertising at the Right Place
4. Analysing Content Engagement
5. Following the Comments of the Competitor
6. Analysing Sources of Traffic
7. Using the Right Tools
1. Befriending the Competitor
One of the first and the smallest yet most important thing to do when you try to spy on your competitor through Facebook is to ensure that you follow all of their pages, groups and accounts. Not only that, these online outlets should be visited regularly to keep in touch with any kind of updates.
Social media platforms being as democratic as they can be, paves way for excellent competition analysis through the amount of information it puts out there in one way or the other.
Following them can be a great way of getting ahead of your competitor or reducing the impact of campaigns that would have been groundbreaking if not for a similar intervention by the others.
2. Following Competitor’s Ads
It is well-known that over the years Facebook has evolved as an important advertisement platform. Being someone who wants to follow up on the functionalities of their competitors in this digital platform, it is important to dig deeper into this than just watching them.
In such a situation you can use the options like “Why am I seeing this ” on the sides of every ad in order to understand more about the competitor’s target audience and other intentions.
By getting details about the target audience or the target location one can curate a detailed counter-plan by paying close attention to the details that you might have missed in your own campaigns. For example, if there is a location that the competitor has focused on that you haven’t, this can be an opportunity to include the new place in your campaign.
3. Advertising at the Right Place
It is not just enough to follow the ways in which the competitor engages with Facebook for marketing. Developing counter strategies and executing them is also a part of this constant spying.
Details of the followers of the competitor can be obtained directly from the page. It will be beneficial to advertise to the followers of competitors. Keeping up with the followers of your competitor not only helps you focus on a specific audience but will also increase the chance of them switching to your brand.
4. Analysing Content Engagement
One of the biggest game-changer when it comes to digital media marketing is the impact of content engagement. Anybody can create content publicising or promoting their own company. However, as long as there is no content engagement or viral content, the entire act becomes futile.
Analysing the content engagement statistics of your competitor is an excellent way to keep up with them. Sites like Facebook’s Top Posts help you break down the details of content engagement including their organic reach. Following successful patterns and trends within the page of competitors can be a great way of adapting and improvising your own strategies.
5. Following the Comments of the Competitor
Understanding how the competitors negotiate through the concerns and opinions of customers is an efficient way of making sense of their marketing patterns. Each content that one posts on Facebook have a provision to accept comments.
Additionally, unlike on Twitter, one can easily follow a single comment to do a thorough follow-up on Facebook. Hence following the comments that deal with the queries and concerns of the customer will significantly help in understanding the prevalent practices in the competitor’s firm. It is indeed a good way to learn and adapt to hitherto unnoticed things.
6. Analysing Sources of Traffic
Finding the root cause of everything that is happening is the best way to tackle any situation. This goes a long way in the case of analysing competition as well. It is quite natural that every company spends a certain amount of money and makes sure that their ads reach more places especially when organic traffic dies down. However, it is always important to understand where their traffic comes from.
You can use various tools like SimilarWeb for this purpose. While doing this analysis, make sure to target the most popular pages of the competitors for efficient results.
7. Using the Right Tools
As digital marketing thrived, various online tools were also introduced to make the process of competition analysis easier. They, in many cases, get the news or ads in front of you instead of you having to go and hunt for them in the feed. Here are a few of them
AdSpyder
AdSpyder helps you to spy on your competitor’s ads on all the platforms. It can help you to track your competitor’s Ad campaign on Facebook. You can know what is working for your competitor and which is their winning ads.
AdEspresso
This tool has over 15,000 advertisements fed into it which can be retrieved through keywords, industry or goals. It helps you greatly to narrow down your searches and enhance your focus.
Moat
They provide you with high impact creatives on Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat etc to ensure that the user never misses a single update by the competitor. It helps you in providing valuable insights.
Zapier
This app is integrated with Facebook and has been helpful ever since. All you need to do is to make an account with them and choose your preferences. It provides you with important insights that inform the user exactly about the functionalities in the Facebook page of the competitor
Graph Tips
It is yet another site that helps the user with a lot of information about their competitor. Unlike other tools, this one also helps in getting to know what the competitor is up to outside their own page.
Ansh Mehrey
Conclusion
Competitor analysis is indeed a great way of streamlining the strategies of one’s own firm. However, it is also necessary to keep in mind the ethics of privacy and consent while using various forms of data.
FAQs
How can I spy on competitors on Facebook?
Follow competitor’s ads, Analyze the traffic of your competitors, and Use the right spying tools.
How do I track traffic on my competitor?
SimilarWeb is a great analytics tool that’ll help you track your competitor’s traffic.
What is Facebook transparency?
Facebook Transparency is a feature by Facebook that lets you view the complete information about the ad on any page.
