Have you ever wanted to find out what your competition is doing on Facebook? Not just what they’re posting but a sneaky look at how they’re performing? Well, we have news for you.  

You can track and find out all their secrets (including the exact emails they send) through a tactic that we call – Reverse Engineering  your competitors ads strategy in digital marketing.  

Now, we’re not gonna preach how good artists borrow and great artists steal (though that’s some wisdom from Mr. Picasso). We tend to have a different approach and believe success leaves clues! And being a master of any field means learning from the ones who have done it before you. In this case which means – making educated inferences on what works, what doesn’t and how it can be done better, based upon your competitor’s campaigns performances.  

And in this blog we’re going to tell you how exactly to do that and  walk you through a step-by-step process for how to Reverse Engineer your competitor’s Facebook Ads strategy. So, slow down on the scrolling and let’s dive into the details! 

What’s Reverse Engineering 

First, let’s start by looking at what the term really means.  

Although quite self explanatory, Reverse Engineering is the act of analyzing an existing system, process, or structure (whether it be a marketing system or the structure of a website) and using the knowledge gained from that analysis to recreate a duplicate or similar system. It’s a standardized audit that shows you what your competitor is doing in terms of traffic, testing, segmenting, and even your competitor’s potential budget. 

And it’s important because, your competitor (especially if they have been investing in ads for longer than you) might have optimized their Facebook Ads strategy throughout time, and they might have strategies in place that you might want to apply yourself.  

It’s done in the Facebook Ads Library and you want to do it as soon as possible, ideally when you start your business or Facebook Advertising. Because the faster you get an idea of who you’re competing against, the better. And after that, you should be monitoring your competitor’s moves at least once a month.  

We’ve created a detailed step-by-step process of reverse engineering your competitors’ FB Ads strategy, dividing it in 3 major divisions. Let’s take a detailed look into them.  

Check How Important Social Media Traffic Is To Your Competitor’s Strategy 

1. First of all, head over to SimilarWeb  

2. Now enter your competitor’s website on the search box above 

Now, if you get the message below you won’t have the information you need on SimilarWeb—in that case, just skip to the next step. What this message means is, it’s likely, either your competitor is not driving too much traffic to their website (from Facebook Ads or any other channel) or your competitor started very recently. 

3. Scroll down to ‘Traffic Sources’ and check the % of your competitor’s traffic is driven by social media. Remember, all social media traffic is aggregated here, organic and paid 

4. Now scroll down a bit further down to ‘Social’ and check the percentage of ‘Social’ traffic that comes specifically from Facebook: 

This will aggregate both organic and paid traffic. In most cases, organic social doesn’t drive a substantial amount of traffic though, so usually, you can safely assume that the largest portion of that is paid. 

5. With this, you can estimate the % of overall traffic that your competitor gets from Facebook by multiplying the two percentages. For example:  

1. SimilarWeb: Percentage of traffic from social: 25%  

2. SimilarWeb: Percentage of social traffic from Facebook: 50%  

3. Calculation: Percentage of Facebook traffic of overall traffic sources of your competitor: 50%*25% = ~ 12.5% of your competitor’s traffic comes from Facebook. 

Now that’s very convenient, isn’t it?  

List Out Every Ad Your Competitor Is Running On Facebook 

1. Start by going to Facebook’s Ad Library 

2. Search for your competitor’s Facebook Page:  

3. On the top right corner, you’ll be able to learn how many people are managing/working on the competitor’s page and from which locations: 

Here, if you only see one person managing the page chances are your competitor is doing it all by themselves, instead of having their ads being managed professionally. Conversely, if your competitor has a lot of people managing the page, it indicates that social media (be it organic or paid) is a channel where a lot of resources are being allocated. 

4. You will now be able to see all the ads that your competitor is currently running, there is a lot of information that can be derived from this list. 

Results: The number of results will tell you about your competitor’s potential budget, how much your competitor is testing and segmenting each of their Ads .Testing multiple ads requires a budget to be allocated towards those ads. And if your competitor has a very high number of ads, chances are they are allocating a quite a significant budget to Facebook Ads. 

5. Click on your competitor’s ad to see the landing pages they are using: 

6. Check the landing page URL, sometimes it contains information about your competitor’s campaigns (in UTM parameters or similar). Check here for example.    

7. Check the placements your competitor is using on its ads: 

8. Then check if your competitor is using Dynamic Creative Ads:  

9. You can also check if your competitor is running political ads by clicking “Issues, Electoral or Political”. In some rare instances, non-political ads get classified as such, so even if  you’re sure they’re not, it’s always worth checking that tab. 

If they are running political ads:  

i. Click “See Ad Details”:   

ii. You will immediately get access to:  

1. Ad Spend 

2. Reach 

3. Impressions 

4. Demographics  

5. Geographic Data 

This data relates to that specific ad, but it gives you extremely valuable insights into your competitor’s overall Facebook Ads strategy. 

Summarize Your Findings Into an Audit Report 

At this point, you should have a comprehensive statistic of what’s working in this market with your competitor. Now you need to create an audit report based on all these findings. You may consider summarizing these based on-  

1. Importance:  How important is Facebook as a traffic source for them? 

2. Page Managers: How many people are managing their page? Where are they from? 

3. Ads Volume: How many ads are they currently running?  

4. Countries: How many countries are they currently targeting and which countries?  

5. Recurring CTAs: What do their ads promote at each stage of the funnel? Sometimes you won’t be lucky enough to find the funnel stages on your competitors UTMs, so you’ll need to make a few assumptions here. 

6. Promotions: Do they run sales or promotions frequently? What do they offer? 

7. Content: Do they promote content on Facebook Ads? What kind of content? 

8. Split-Tests: Are they running obvious split-tests on their ads? In order to be able to identify split-tests, you will want to look at their ads and identify groups of ads that share a lot of similarities but only one or two small differences while having been launched on the same day. For example, the brand Headspace seems to be running split-tests with different videos using the same voice-over but different graphics. 

9. Formats and Placements: Are they running ads specially designed for specific platforms? (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Mobile, Desktop)  

10. Landing Pages: Which landing pages are they driving traffic to? Which ones are the most recurring? 

11. Creative Type: What kind of creatives do they typically use?  

12. Products: Which products are they promoting the most (if it’s multi-product)? 

13. If they are running political ads . If they do,  

1. What’s their typical audience?  

2. What’s the average budget per ad?  

And there it is! You now have a comprehensive overview of your competitor’s Facebook Ad strategy, that you can leverage to increase your chances at success. 

Remember, please don’t start copy-pasting things and doing exactly what that competitor(s) are doing. The idea of this exercise is to see what’s been done before and to let that inspire you to think differently about making better and educated decisions on ad creative, copy, content offers and campaigns.  

Start analyzing your competitors. Find out their experience following the path laid out by them to make it better for you and than before. You might be surprised at what you could’ve easily missed, and it could prove to be very profitable.