LinkedIn advertising can help you generate leads, drive website traffic and build brand awareness. But guess what! You can build better ads by snooping to see what your competitors are doing. Just think of all the data you’ll get!
You can check and analyze your competitors’ keywords and ad copy. Your competitors’ ad content can reveal so many secrets, like what emotional ? language are they using and what CTA’s have worked best for them. Then tweak your own copy and see what happens!
Over recent years ad platforms have made advertisers’ information more transparent. This is because of increasing concerns over privacy. Now you can see all the ads that each LinkedIn pages use.
The Ads tab will help you research and provide you with a wealth of insight into your competitors’ strategies. If you’re a B2B marketer then LinkedIn is the place to be and the place to advertise.
Everyone will be able to see your ads too. But who cares! Look at it as one competitor helping another build their brand ?
Viewing a Page’s Ads
It’s so easy to view ads on a specific page.
Here’s how:
- Go to the competitors’ page you want to snoop around on. (It almost feels like you’re doing something bad, but you’re not!)
- Find the “Ads” tab on the left.
- You’ll see a list of ads connected to that page.
The ads you’ll see will start with the latest created showing at the top. If an ad was recently paused or completed they may also show up in the “Ads” tab. So not everything you’ll find will be active. But it’s still good to gather all the information you can from all the ads, or as many as you can.
LinkedIn will also list ads that were shown to at least one person in the past 6 months.
What Can You Learn From Your Competitors’ LinkedIn Advertising?
As mentioned above, there is a storehouse of information you can glean and model from researching your competitors’ tactics and strategies.
How Much Effort Are They Putting Into Ads?
Knowing how much effort your competitors are putting into their LinkedIn advertising will give you some great insights ?
If you check their Ads tab and there are no ads showing up, well obviously they haven’t been advertising in the past 6 months. Now you have a bit of an advantage over them. Start advertising and get ahead of the game!
But, on the other hand, if you see 100 ads showing up, this shows that your competitors are using a large amount of ad spend on LinkedIn. And you have some big competition now. Study those ads and see what insights you can glean.
Figure Out What Formats They’re Using!
There are several different ad formats you can use on LinkedIn. Maybe your competition is focusing on one format more than another. You need to know what’s working for them. Because when you know what’s working for them, it’s a good idea to try it out yourself.
With advertising, you can get really granular with audience targeting. This helps you reach people and companies that matter to you. As you study the competition you begin to see how they reach potential customers and it gives you a good idea of how you can do the same.
Here is a list of the popular formats:
- Sponsored Content: Promotes the content you already have on your LinkedIn page. This allows you to share more about your business and send people to a landing page.
- Direct Sponsored Content: You don’t need to create posts on your page for this one.
- Sponsored InMail: Drives leads and engagement by sending messages right to LinkedIn inboxes.
- Text Ads: Great for brand awareness. These ads are used with images and text. Easy to test too! ?
- Dynamic Ads: Use to generate leads and enable downloads.
- Lead Gen Forms: The benefit of these forms is the user doesn’t have to leave the platform to fill them out (can be used with sponsored content and sponsored InMail).
Another benefit about Lead Gen Forms you should know, is that they will automatically fill out the information they have on file for the users, making it so easy for users to complete and submit the forms.
Find out which tactics are working the best for your competition! If they’re using more Lead Gen Forms than anything else, it’s worth trying that tactic yourself ?
Review The Images And Copy
This is a great way to get lots of ideas for your own images and ad copy. Text ads, by the way, are only shown on desktop and on the right-hand side of the page.
As far as research goes, look at the type of images and text the competition uses. Are the images colourful, bland, generic, branded, have people in them, or just products? What captures your eye?
Do they show their product in action? How do they make their products more attractive?
Now for the text! Study the benefits other people list on their ads. This can help you hone in on what benefits you should be listing for your products. How do they word their ads? Are they compelling? Do they make you want to opt-in for whatever they’re giving away?
How do they use images and text on their lead gen forms?
There are so many ideas to work with when it comes to finding the most compelling images and copy that you can then mimic for your ideal customers ?
What’s Getting The Most Engagement?
Engagement is probably the most important metric you want to study. Content is what people engage with. If you find that certain types of content gain more engagement than others, it’s something you want to incorporate into your own ads ?
Unfortunately, you can’t view comments or interactions from the ads section. But there is a roundabout way to see it all!
Here’s how:
- Click the 3 dots at the upper right of a post.
- Select “Copy link to post.”
- Paste this link into your browser.
- You can now view the actual post with all its engagement.
This is a great way to find out what topics people are interested in and engaging with. Use these topics to write your next blog post or maybe even an e-book, as well as in your ads. Another great tactic is to use the exact words people are saying about a problem they have with a certain topic. You can use those words in your landing pages and freebies too! ?
Now that you know how much you can learn from your competition, start by making a list of at least 10 of the top competitors in your niche. Then you may want to start a spreadsheet to write down all the information you gather and study it to see what you can use for yourself with your LinkedIn advertising. This information is priceless really. It provides you with the right kind of help and direction any marketer would want.
If you’re a B2B marketer, you know that using LinkedIn advertising is indispensable. Use ads to generate new leads who will engage with you. Nurture the leads you already have until they are ready to take the next step in connecting with you and your freebies and products.
Which ad format will you use next?