1. Build a Facebook ad slide file.

Sliding files are places where you can gather information about your competitors' Facebook ads to get inspiration for your next campaign.

Use Evernote to create a sliding file.

To set up a sliding file with Evernote, create a label called "swipefile" in your notebook. For every Facebook ad you like, add a new comment about the ad and request a swipefile tag.

Evernote allows you to create shortcuts for tags, so you can save time by setting shortcuts to swipefile tags. You can click this tab and browse all the Facebook ads you've saved whenever you need it.

Create a sliding file using Airtable or Google Form.

When conducting competitor research, the most important insight comes from the way you can identify trends and take advantage of your competitors' blind spots. To do this effectively, use Google Form, Excel or Airtable, to track their Facebook ads in a spreadsheet.

Airtable is a great way to track competitor ads because it allows you to switch between libraries, spreadsheets, and other views.

2. View a competitor's Facebook ads through a business page or Facebook ad library.

Facebook has released an ad transparency tool that allows users to view ads currently running on their Facebook pages. This public information can help you better understand the type of campaigns your competitors are running and their strategic goals.

Savvy advertisers, of course, may deliberately run "old cars" (old-fashioned and inconsequential ads) on the campaign trail if they suspect that their competitors are watching closely. However, if you track this information regularly (at least once a month), you can start identifying trends and changes in your policies that are serving your ads.

To view a competitor's ads, open the Facebook ad library and search for their brand name.

If they run ads in multiple locations, you'll see a drop-down list that lets you optimize your ads by location. This helps you identify the regions that competitors are interested in and the new countries or regions they are targeting.

3. Get Facebook Ad Targeting Insights "Why did I see this ad?" "

If you're following a competitor's Facebook page, when you see their ads in your reading feed, you can get more insights from Why I see it.

To access this feature, click the three dot icons in the top right corner of the competitor's ad in the news feed. From the pop-up menu, select Why do I see this ad? "。

4. Analyze competitors' top social media traffic sources.

With The Web analytics tool, SimilarWeb, you can see how your competitors' traffic comes from social media.

While Facebook drives the most social media traffic, the platform accounts for only about 1 percent of its total traffic. Based on this data, you can assume that Asana's Facebook advertising budget is lower than other marketing channels. This may indicate that there are blind spots in their marketing strategy, or that they simply don't see a significant return on investment from previous Facebook activities.

5. Analyze Google campaigns using SpyFu and Ahrefs.

Facebook ads don't work on islands. To better understand your competitors' ad spend, you can use tools like SpyFu and Ahrefs.

With Ahrefs, you can view all pay-per-click (PPC) keywords that your competitors target. Ahrefs also provides you with estimated search volumes, cost-per-click (CPC) and traffic statistics.

If you look closely, you'll see that 99% of the clicks are organic. So while it looks like the company is spending far more on Google advertising than Facebook ads, one of its main marketing goals may be SEO-centric.

6. Analyze the best-performing Facebook content of your competitors.

In addition to viewing competitors' paid channels, analyze their organic content to gain a deeper understanding of their overall marketing strategy. I recommend doing this analysis at least once a month so that you can identify trends and changes over time.

Don't forget the comments on the Facebook post and community tab on your Facebook page, which may be a gold mine for finding the most common complaints and support issues. If you know that your competitor spent a recent major server outage and you have "best-in-class" website uptime and server performance, you might be promoting a 99% uptime Facebook campaign to beat your competitors.