How To STEAL Customers From Competitors (with Facebook Ads)

0:00There's a little known trick that you can use to work out exactly who your competitors are targeting with their Facebook ads, and you can obviously then target the same people, and you could undercut them on price, offer something slightly better, and draw those potential customers to your business instead. So, to show you exactly how this works, I prepared some Facebook ads. I've simply just gone through my Facebook feed and just grabbed a whole bunch and opened new tabs, and we're going to walk through them. These are ads that have been served to me, and you'll be able to see exactly what I'm talking about here, and you'll be able

0:25to see it for different examples as well. So, this first one here is from Google Ads very simply, and this was served to me with their classic, you know, spend 400, get 400 lb free credit. If I click on these three little dots in the top right-hand side, and then select why am I seeing this ad, we have some really, really interesting information in here. So, the first thing it says here is Google Ads wants to reach people like you who may have, and then it says shown an interest in, and there's a whole bunch of options. So, if I click on this, we can see the exact interest

0:52targeting options that the Google Ads page is using when they are running their Facebook ad campaigns, and that's why I've been served this ad. So, the interest they're using are search engine optimization, web search engine, web analytics, and social media examiner, and that's really, really interesting information because of course, if you've got a competitor, particularly if they've been advertising for a while, you know they're successful, they're doing well on the platform, you can see exactly who they are targeting, and as I said, you could target the same people, undercut them on price, try and draw those customers to you instead. And if I just come out of this section, we can

1:21also find some other interesting information like those are the interest they're targeting, but they're also got their age range set between 21 and 64, really useful information. Primary location in the UK doesn't mean they're not advertising elsewhere as well, but I'm seeing that because I'm based in the UK, okay? But, let's have a look at some other examples, too. So, here we've got another one from content creator. If I click on the same thing in the process, we can see that they don't have any detailed targeting options selected, no

1:43interest, behaviors, anything like that. They're just targeting 18 and older, which means they are using open targeting, otherwise known as broad targeting. Again, a really useful piece of information to have, right? Let's have a look at another example. Here we've got an uh another business that an ad that's popped up that's being served to me. If I click on why am I seeing this ad, we can see that I'm seeing this ad because, if I click here, I watched a video from this page, e-commerce conversion something, I don't recognize

2:08it, and therefore I am being retargeted. So, they've created a custom audience out of video viewers on Facebook, and then they're retargeting those people. Now, that's very interesting that Facebook gives you that information. So, if you find that ads being shown to you, click through, you see something similar, that you're being retargeted, you can see that that's part of this business's Facebook advertising strategy. It's part of their sales funnel is to retarget, and Facebook here will tell you, by the way, if you're being retargeted based on a video you've watched, or whether you visited their website, or a number of different of the

2:38retargeting options that are available. So, you can sort of deduce from that what they're doing, um and potentially look to replicate not just their targeting options, but perhaps elements of their sales funnel as well. Let's take a look at another option here. Um if I go ahead and click on why am I seeing this ad, we can see that this one, once again, is doing open targeting, really good, useful information. If I click on one here, and click on why am I seeing this ad, I brought this one up cuz it's slightly different. They're doing open targeting, there's no interest, no behavior, no detailed targeting options, but they

3:07have selected language criteria in their targeting options, which you can do. So, they're only targeting people that are 18 over in UK, but also um have communicated in English. So, they've got some language criteria in there. Really, really useful information that you can find in here. Now, there's a few other things I want to highlight whilst we're here, right? So, firstly, you can hide ads from a particular advertiser. You can see here, what can you do? I could click the hide button, and then I will no longer see any ads from this advertiser. And that's really important for us to be aware of as advertisers because you don't want to

3:39annoy your potential audience too much. You don't want your frequency to go through the roof. You don't want to use ads that are really annoying, they're just designed to grab people's attention because some people are going to come in and click hide. And when they do, A, they're not going to see your ads, and B, more importantly, that's a big signal to Meta that people aren't liking your ads. If you're getting quite a lot of hides, that's going to result in higher CPMs, higher costs, worse results. So, just be aware that this is a way that your audience can give feedback to Meta about your ads. You don't want them to

4:09give negative feedback. One other thing I want to mention in this section cuz it's really interesting. If we jump back over to the Google option, which is the one here, um if I close this down, you'll see that this is the Google ad. If I open this back up again and click into the interests that they're targeting, you can see beneath it we've got manage your ad topics. So, if I click on this here, now we can see, I'm just going to add see more here. Um these are all the sort of interests, the categories that I've been put in as a user. Now, what you're

4:39seeing here is that most of these are accurate. They are actually things that you're interested in, but not all, and that's an important thing to be aware of as an advertiser. So, if I scroll through to give you an example, like of course I've got things in here about Mark Zuckerberg and education and coaching and digital marketing. I mean, these are things that I'm obviously interested in, right? But, you're also going to have some things in here like hip hop. I mean, I'm just not really into music, full stop. So, that shouldn't be in there. That's an incorrect categorization. Now, I could be shown an ad from a business that's

5:08looking to advertise to people that are interested in hip hop, and I would be presented that ad, and it just wouldn't work cuz I wouldn't be interested, and that would be a waste of their money. So, what does this mean for us as advertisers? It means that interests and things like that aren't 100% accurate, and it's why Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns often improve in performance over time because the targeting options aren't completely accurate. When you first set up your campaign, you're not going to be getting the right people completely, as you can see from examples here for me like hip hop, which is incorrect. It means that Meta still

5:38needs to work out who best to advertise to within the targeting options that you select, and over time as the campaign optimizes, you're likely to see an improvement in performance. So, if you're interested you come in and check this out, obviously it's not necessary, just thought it was an interesting point to quickly highlight. Now, you may have realized that this technique for working out who your competitors are targeting only works if you, as a user, are being served their ads. Now, there's a good chance that you will be because it's the sort of stuff that you're interested in, you interact with online, and Meta's able to track that. So, most people do

6:07see ads come up from their competitors. I certainly do, but we don't want to rely on that. And there is a technique you can use to sort of force this. I'm going to share in a second. Before I do, I just want to quickly mention about our done-for-you Facebook and Instagram advertising services. If you want my company to create, manage, and optimize your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, that's a service that we offer. If you're interested in finding out more, the best thing to do is to book a free call with one of my team members. There is a link in the video description below that will take you to

6:32a page where you can just book a slot directly into a calendar. These are free 30-minute calls, no obligation, but it'd be really good to have a chat and find out more about your business, see if we might be able to help. You can ask us all the questions you might have about our service and what we charge and all that sort of stuff, and hopefully we get

6:45a chance to work together. So, how do you increase the percentage chance that you will be served your competitors' ads on Facebook and Instagram in order to be able to do this, use this technique? Well, the way to guarantee it most likely is just to visit your competitor's website, and then you're probably going to be retargeted. But, that's not that useful because then you're only going to be able to see within that ad information that you are being retargeted because you visited their website. What you want to find out is also what interests they're targeting, are they using open targeting, things like that. And if you're being retargeted, you won't get

7:15that information. So, what I would recommend you do instead is search for things within Facebook, take a look at Facebook groups, take a look at Facebook pages that are very closely related to your competitors, but not actually their specific pages. So, let's say for example, you sell natural dog food, like raw dog food. That that's the product that you sell. I would be looking for

7:35Facebook groups to do with that topic. Go ahead and join those. Go ahead and interact with those. That will very quickly get you reclassified as interested in that if you're not already, um and you'll start seeing ads from the businesses that are targeting people that are interested in that, most likely your competitors. You can take a look at Facebook pages that don't actually do it for your competitors cuz then you'll be retargeted, but that are very similar. So, if you got a list of five to 10 competitors that you'd love to get some of their customers, you think your product or service is better, go and have a look at pages that are

8:05very similar. You can simply just search for this sort of stuff in Facebook, go ahead and click through, make sure you don't click on your competitors, click on the other one, spend a bit of time there, and I think there's a very good chance you'll start seeing their ads because Meta picks up on that activity and serves you ads based on those actions. This technique gets even more powerful when you combine it with researching the actual ads and sales funnels that your competitors are using, not just their targeting options. You can do that with a free tool called the Facebook ad library, and I show you

8:33exactly how to do it, the best way to do it in this video here. And if you could combine knowing exactly who your competitors are targeting with the ads that they're using and modeling from those ads, that's as close as you'll ever get to a guarantee of success with Facebook ads and Instagram ads, so I

8:47strongly recommend you check this out.