Curiosity Killed the Competitor's Facebook Ads

Don't lie, you’ve done it. We have all crept up on someone. We have all done our own “research” on someone or something. We are a curious species. Curiosity is how we have excelled as human beings and how we will continue to do so in the future. Curiosity may have “killed the cat” but they also say “satisfaction brought it back”. Sometimes we need to see what others are doing, not to copy them, but to create something even better. This is especially true in the healthcare business world.

Recently, Facebook provided some transparency for the public to see a business’s page ads. So, who should be concerned? Your business should, for starters. Perhaps your competitor's page is rocking it. High follower count, high engagement...everything you would like to see on your own business page. They must be doing something right. It could be that they have started creating paid social ads and now is your chance to find out.

There is no doubt about it, paid social ads work. Don’t believe me? Check out this beautiful increase in website visits for a healthcare manufacturer below. The gray was before a paid ad launch, the red is after. It also increased the follower count dramatically while it ran. That’s the power of social ads, baby.

So, how can you use your competitor's ad examples to benefit your own ads? Good question. First, go take a look. You can easily check this by going to their page and clicking on Info and Ads (bottom left on desktop). What do you see? Are your competitors even running ads? If they aren’t, even better, you are already a step ahead. Create your ad, get it up and running and watch your traffic increase. Need some assistance or inspiration for creating one? You can find a ton of great information online. HubSpot provides a lot of this info. Here is a good one on getting started with a Facebook ad strategy. Or reach out to KBK and we can always help.

If they do have an ad or multiple ads and a well-performing page, analyze the ad.

• What does it say?
• Does it stand out to you? If so, what makes it stand out?
• Is there an image or multiple images?
• Does it look professional?
• Is it full of text or short and sweet?
• Who are they targeting and what are they putting their ad dollars behind? Gaining followers? Advertising their service offerings?
• How many ads do they have running at once?

Find out what their end goal is. Analyze the ad as much as you can to get an idea of what it is that may be working for them and go back and come up with an even better strategy. This may take some time and testing. Let your ad run and make small tweaks so that you can see what is working and what is not. Then change it up as needed.

Don’t feel bad about it, your competitors are looking at what you are doing, so why wouldn’t you do the same?