Competitor Research Part three

Heeey there,

The weather is getting much nicer (I hope this applies to where you are too), the economy is getting weirder, artificial intelligence is taking over and we’ve only just started the 2020s.

Last week was pretty fitting for these crazy times.

I spent a week in Budapest with the team, and while my days were fueled by sleep deprivation, arcade room fun & alcohol, we ended up expanding our team by 2 (with 1 more awesome person in the pipeline).

While it might not seem like the best idea to hire new people while sleep-deprived…

I haven’t been, nor am I planning to hire people for exact positions. I’m not trying to assess whether someone fits a specific box, but rather if beyond technical skills they match the mindset and drive of me and my current team.

That said, don’t deprive yourselves of sleep. It is really bad for you.
Now back to marketing stuff 🤙

For 2 weeks now we’ve been covering a competitor research guide based on a 4 part guide I’ve written some years ago.

• Understanding your competition’s growth model » Part 1

• How to select the right competition for research » Part 2

• How to research the model & product of your competitors » Part 3

Plus a tutorial on getting free insights from your competitors

If you’ve missed out & would love to score some low-hanging fruit in your messaging, check out the following visual summaries:

• For scraping competitor research » this summary on the scrape&break method.

• For understanding growth models » check out this visual summary, we’ve created.

For researching the model & product » see last week’s carousel.

If you wouldn’t like to receive applicable marketing & business tips once a week, you can unsubscribe here.

However, if you find these insights valuable, the best way to support our work is by inviting your friends to become Dot Connecters and learn more about Connecting The Dots between marketing activities and financial goals.

Topic Of Today:

Facebook Competitor Research 🔎

As in most cases, with Facebook ads, the first step is to not just run some ads and hope something sticks.

An easy starting point is to research what your competitors are doing.

Not to copy-paste their ads or even their strategy, but to find insights from how they are using the platform to acquire leads.

These are the things you want to learn from your competitors running Facebook Ads 👇  

• How active are your competitors with Facebook as a platform (if at all)?

• What’s the communication angle they are using to convince leads?

• Are there any countries they are focussing on?

• Are they excluding countries from their campaigns?

• How much are they A/B testing on the platform?

• How are they building their Funnel to convert visitors into sales? [i.e. Are there distinct steps in how they build up their ads?]

• What kind of images are they using?

• How advanced is the marketing team in using UTM tags? [i.e. When you click on the ads, how does the URL build up?]

• What can we learn from the UTM tags used by the competitor to build our own funnel?

• How are your competitors using their Facebook Pixel to understand the maturity of their marketing team, the effort they spend on Facebook and how they use it to track conversions?

Let’s start at the beginning

How active are your competitors with Facebook ads (if at all)? 📊

There are a bunch of tools such as Adswiper or Adsova to figure out what kind of Facebook Campaigns your competitors are running depending on how advanced you want to deep-dive into them.

As a start however, I’d keep it simple.
To get a general overview of how your competitors are using Facebook Ads for free, take the following steps:

Step 1: Go to Facebook Ad Library
Go to the Facebook Ad Library, a comprehensive, searchable collection of all ads currently running across Facebook Products.

Step 2: Add competitors
Search for the competitors you want to research for your company. Set the specific country you are focusing on now [or “All”] and select “All ads”.

Step 3: Learn
Do a brief overview. Your goal here is to be able to see:

• How many Facebook ads your competitors are running at this exact moment?

• What the communication angle they are using to convince leads is?

• If there is a clear Funnel in how their ads are built up?

In the examples below, you’ll see the different angles and ad types Freshbooks is using to convince its prospects.

Enumerated Social Proofs like:

• 84% of FreshBooks users say they’ve gained a better understanding of their business. Ready to be one of them 🧐?

• Need an easy way to invoice? 94% of users say it's easy to get up and running on FreshBooks. Jump back in and see why 👀.

Easygoing approaches like:

• Would you rather get a rectal exam than do your accounting? Join 30+ million small businesses that have used FreshBooks.

• No honey badgers here. Join 30+ million small businesses that have used FreshBooks. Try it free today!

Emoji-filled versions like:

• 😟 <- Before FreshBooks
  🤩 <- After FreshBooks
  Log back into your account and send invoices that get you paid 18 days faster.

• 👋 Say goodbye to painless data entry
  🤝 Say hello to automatic receipt capture
  👉 Managing expenses has never been easier

And a lot more. With a lot of different creatives (images, videos etc.).

As you can see from the examples above, Freshbooks has been experimenting a lot on Facebook to figure out which type of messaging works for them.

Moving on. 💃

Are there any countries they are focusing on or excluding?🌍
The great thing about the Facebook Ads Library is the ability to filter based on countries.

Let’s say we want to figure out if our competitor is running ads in my little country of Belgium.

I just simply select it from the list, set “All ads” again, and run a new search.

You should now have an overview of the campaigns they are running in that country.

Now you can filter based on the country you want to target to see how active your competitors are, and whether they adapt their ads towards a specific country.

Now let’s dive a little deeper. 🤿

How advanced is the marketing team in using UTM tags?🔖

Here are a few points to help explain the importance of UTMs:

1. UTM tags allow you to track the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns: By adding unique UTM tags to different campaigns, you can track which campaigns are driving the most traffic and conversions.

2. UTM tags help you understand which channels are working best: By using different UTM tags for each channel (e.g. email, social media, paid advertising), you can see which channels are generating the most engagement and revenue.

3. UTM tags enable you to optimize your campaigns: With UTM tag data, you can see which campaigns and channels are performing well and adjust your strategy accordingly. This can help you make data-driven decisions to improve your marketing efforts.

4. UTM tags help you measure ROI: By tracking conversions and revenue generated by different campaigns, you can calculate the return on investment (ROI) for each campaign. This can help you prioritize your marketing budget and focus on campaigns that generate the most revenue.

Now let’s use that to our advantage.

The problem with seeing all these ads is simple.
They don’t provide us with context.

Are they using these ads to get people to the website or are they used to retarget people to sign up?

Let’s use the UTM tags to reverse engineer the funnel of our competitor.

Go to one of the images and either hover over the call to action » In this case the ‘Learn More’ button.

At the bottom of your screen, you’ll be able to see a link. 👆

Or click on it, in case it is not masked, you’ll be able to copy the entire URL with the UTM info.

Let’s see what the link can tell us about how competitors are using their Facebook ads.

If you look closer at the link, you can separate each tag to draw context from where the ad was shown and how to interpret it.

https://www.freshbooks.com/en-gb/?

● UTM_source= "Facebook"
The ad is shown on Facebook (obvious)
● UTM_medium= "paid social"
The ad is sponsored as “paid social” (another obvious choice for a paid Facebook ad would be CPC » cost per click)
● UTM_campaign= "uk_upgrades_facebook_mobile%2Fdesktop_display_obj-lifecycle_english_feb2022_ongoing"
The ad is part of a UK campaign they run both on mobile and desktop.  It also shows that it is a campaign that has been ongoing for a year now, so it is likely working well.
● UTM_content="Static_Accounting-CanBeEasy"
This is a way for the team to identify the content that was shown. Most of the time this is the name of the blog post, a headline or a visual used.

This adv. is likely aimed at people who are not actively looking for an accounting solution. Meaning people Top Of Funnel.

Let’s look at other Facebook ads they run. 🥸

https://www.freshbooks.com/en-gb/xero-vs-freshbooks?

This one has the UTM_term="competitive strategy"

with the UTM_content="Static_goodbyexero"

As you can see this is a direct comparison of Freshbooks’ services with a competitor.

It is likely aimed at people with more intent, who have perhaps searched for accounting software before.

Meaning, people in the Middle Of the FUnnel.

Where as this one:

https://www.freshbooks.com/en-gb/pricing?

Notice the UTM_term in this link? It says “directbuy”.

While the UTM_content="Video-15sec_Save550Hrs"

Meaning, that they aim these short video ads at an audience with intent, likely one that has been through multiple touchpoints and is more plausible to be ready to buy.

Or in other words, people at the Bottom Of the FUnnel.

In a matter of minutes, you can start picturing the funnel a competitor of yours is using to bring people to the website and target them to sign up.

This doesn’t mean you have to build the same exact funnel.

It just shows you how advanced your competitors are in running Facebook ads, what it takes to outperform them and how focused your competitor is on the channel.

Now you won’t always be this ‘lucky’. There are a lot of cases where your competitors aren’t using UTM tags in their campaigns.

For example, another player in the same field named Zervant is not running any FB ads at the moment.

Note:

Some UTMs don’t specify each element with the “utm_*=” tag. https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/inspiration/women-small-business-resource-guide/?cid=PSOC_US_Blog_IG_FindYourCommunity_WHM_Carousel_FreelanceSE » in this case for example, the elements are simply divided by underscores.

Paid Social, for USA, a blog content, advertised w/ a carousel etc.

Also, some companies won't use UTM's or hide their UTM parameters if they are a little more advanced with a GTM lookup table. But most companies just forget or are very inconsistent.

How to compile Facebook ads/posts from our competitors to build our own? 🗃️

So now that you have done your basic research on how your competitors are using Facebook ads » how do you start compiling them to build your own?

You can either do it manually or with an extension called SwipeKit.
This extension helps you build your funnel by spying on your competitor's funnel or assets they have online.

You can save the ads or posts your competitors are using with a click of a button.

Step 1: Install the extension
https://swipekit.app/
Step 2: Open up/head back to the Facebook Ad Library.
Step 3: Save ads that you like

Step 4: Open your Swipekit library to see the ads you’ve saved.

You can also filter by platform, brands, tags, categories and media type.

If however you can’t or don’t want to pay $30/month, you can start by screenshotting some ads, saving their links and putting them into Google Slides or Google Docs.

This way, you can start building up inspiration from your competitors in a couple of minutes to draw inspiration from or discuss with your team.

How are your competitors using their Meta Pixel to track conversions? 🐾

To run this analysis, you can use the  ‘Meta Pixel Helper’ extension without digging into the code of a website.

This way, you’ll understand how they are using their Meta Pixel to track key conversions and how advanced they are in using the platform.

The first obvious step is to see if they have a Meta Pixel installed on their website.

Go to your competitor’s website and see if a pixel pops up using the Pixel Helper.

Now let’s check their funnels.

People are risk-averse.
The risk-aversion theory states that people would rather “not lose” €5 than gain €5.

This is the exact same reason why most people don’t actually book a demo with your company straight away.

They want to do the proper research because they might be ‘losing’ time by jumping on that call with you.

This is why Marketers build funnels.
Our goal is to make sure to lower the risk for people:
starting a trial, buying your product or jumping on a demo with you.

This is why you always have to start your research with the first touch in the funnel your competitor has built.

In the exercise above we have seen one of the ways Freshbooks initiates their funnel is by promoting a free trial.

However, they also have assets like ebooks and blog posts as part of their funnel.

Head over to a competitor’s Resource page to see if a pixel fires when you engage with a blog (this could be reading an article in-depth or spending X amount of time on the page).

Next, have a look if the company has an ebook or Side Project [something specifically created for lead gen] in place.
Head over to their ebook landing page, download the ebook and check the Meta Pixel.

When done right, there should be a pixel fired under the name ‘lead’ or anything that tells Meta that a conversion happened.

In this example when you download an ebook from Freshbooks the pixel “ContentLead” fires.

Now you know your competitor is tracking leads on Meta when an ebook is downloaded.

Depending on the business model, they may push to start a free trial, book a demo or buy.

Initiate the next step in the funnel to see if they track people on their way to becoming a customer. In the case of Freshbooks, this is when people show interest in signing up.

In this case, the ‘SignupPageView’ pixel fires.
Which tells the platform that a user showed interest in starting a trial.

Useful information when you want to start showing different ads based on the engagement on their website.

Now sign up, book a demo or make a small purchase to see if they can track conversions happening.

As you can see there is no pixel firing here...
This can happen because you can see in the domain
This is a subdomain where adding a pixel is hard.
They'll probably fire a pixel the moment people confirm the email.

You can go further in the funnel, but for now, this should give you an understanding of how advanced the company is in tracking conversions.

The best part?

You might arrive at the conclusion that Facebook isn’t the right platform for your company without spending a single dime on it.

LinkedIn posts worth reading this week:


1. How To Align Marketing & Sales

A very brief summary of potential touchpoints between sales and marketing.

2. Yet another AI post - BUT, it relates to our topic

A smart way of using AI to help your personalisation efforts in your outreach sequence.

3. Is Skynet taking over?

Are these folks signing an open letter out of fear of humanity...or as Sam Lebens points out in the comments, maybe just looking to buy some time against their competition?