Ways To Use Facebook Ad Library To Find & Beat Your Competitors

We always check out at least five competitors' ads before we launch our own campaigns.

The ads they run can provide us with a lot of information. We use this information to build and optimize our own ad campaigns so that we can beat our competition. 

We’ll show you how to find your competitors' Facebook ads, analyze them, and optimize your business to get the best results.

Let’s get into it.

Key Takeaways

• The Facebook Ad Library allows you to search for your competitor's ads by keyword or Facebook page.
• Facebook ad spy tools, like Dropship’s Ad Spot, show the ad’s engagement. So you know which ads are the best.
• You can analyze the ads in-depth to work out how to build better ads to beat your competition.
• You can also compare every other aspect of your business with those of your competitors. Then, optimize your business to beat your competition. 
• The Facebook Ad Library doesn’t show the ad’s budget, demographic, goals, or performance. 

What Is The Facebook Ad Library?

Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger are part of Meta. 

Meta has a library of all active ads, this is called the Meta Ad Library. But is commonly referred to as the Facebook Ad Library. 

The Meta Ad Library is a searchable database of every active ad run on these platforms. Its purpose is to facilitate transparency so people can get more information about the ads they are presented with while using a Meta platform.

It’s free, and anyone can search and view the active ads. You can search by keywords, phrases, location, and ad type. Then use the filters to narrow down the results. 

As an e-commerce seller or dropshipper, the Meta Ad Library is an incredible resource for finding and identifying your competition. And working out how to beat them.

In the next section, we’ll look at how to use the Meta Ad Library to do so.

Disclaimer: In this article, we’ll use Facebook Ad Library and Meta Ad Library interchangeably. Both refer to the Meta Ad Library. However, as it’s often referred to as the Facebook Ad Library, we have also used this term in the article.

How To Use Facebook Ad Library To Find And Beat Your Competition 

You can find your competition’s ads by searching the Facebook Ad Library or using an ad spy tool.

A lot of information is provided in a Facebook ad. Knowing how to dissect and analyze this information can help you determine what you need to do to beat your competition.

We’ll show you how to do this in detail. But if you don’t have time to read it all, here is a quick overview:

1. Find Your Competitor’s Facebook Ads - You can do this by searching the Facebook Ad Library or using an ad spy tool. To confirm you’ve found competition, you need to make sure the ads have high engagement and that the store is making sales.

2. Analyze Your Competition - Look at every component of successful ads and work out why it’s converting. You can also compare high-engagement ads with low-engagement ads to help you find what is and isn’t working.

3. Optimize Your Facebook Ads - Optimize and build better ads than your competitors. You can also optimize other aspects of your business to beat your competitors. 

Let’s explore each point in much more depth. 

1. Find Your Competitor's Facebook Ads on the Facebook Ad Library

Summary:

• The Facebook Ad Library is searchable. So, you can search by brand or keyword. 
• The Facebook Ad Library doesn’t show you the ad’s engagement.
• An ad spy tool allows you to search for your competition with more advanced filters than the Facebook Ad Library.
• Dropship’s Ad Spot tool shows you the ad’s engagement and how ads appear for the audience.
• We can look at a store’s sales to make a good guess as to whether the ad is converting.
• We want to make sure that we only collect ads from successful stores.

Firstly, we need to find our competition.

We’ll look at three methods to do this. Here is a quick overview of each one. 

• Search Facebook Ad Library - Enter keywords and phrases into the Meta Ad Library and use the results to find your competitors and their ads.
• Dropship’s Ad Spot Tool - Dropship’s Ad Spot tool is a searchable database of millions of Facebook ads. It has advanced filters that allow you to find your competition more easily than using the Facebook Ad Library. And it shows the ad’s engagement.
• Find Your Competition and Use Dropship’s Chrome Extension - Search Google or social media to find your competition. Then, visit their store and use Dropship’s free Chrome extension to see the ads the store is running and confirm that the store is making sales.

We’ll show you exactly how to use them to find your competitors.

Let’s get into it. 

Throughout this article, we’re going to use Sleep Mask as our example. You can then use our techniques to apply to your own products.

Search Facebook Ad Library 

As we saw, the Facebook Ad Library is a database of every ad run on the Meta platform. 

So, to find our competitors, we’ll search the ad library for businesses running ads on products similar to ours.

To search the Facebook Ad Library, follow these steps:

1. Open the Meta Ad Library.

2. Set the ad location. 

In this example, we’ll click All. But if you only want to find ads in a specific region, you can select that here.

3. Choose the ad category. 

We’ll select All Ads here.

4. Enter a phrase or keyword.

You can use quotations to search for exact phrases or multiple exact phrases. For example, we want to find Sleep Masks, so we’ll enter “Sleep Mask.” Facebook Ad Library will show all the ads that include the phrase Sleep Mask. 

If you want to add multiple exact phrases, you can add them in another set of quotation marks. E.g., “Sleep Mask” and “Noise Canceling.” This will show ads that include both phrases, but they could be in any order. E.g., Noise Canceling Sleep Mask or Sleep Mask with Noise Canceling.. etc. 

If you don’t have an exact phrase, you can search for keywords in quotations. E.g., “Sleep,” “Noise,” and “Mask.” This will show ads with these keywords but in any order. E.g., Noise Canceling Mask to Improve Sleep, etc.

Facebook Ad Library will offer advertiser suggestions based on your keywords. However, as we’re searching for our competitors, we won’t know the advertisers yet. Instead, we just want to search by keyword.

We recommend that you start searching by your main keyword, e.g., Sleep Mask. 

But, if the results are too broad, you might need to use more exact keywords.

5. Hit Enter. 

Facebook will now show us all the ads run on the Meta platform that include the phrase Sleep Mask.

The results are ordered by the launch date. This is great for finding our competition, as we want to find other sellers that are actively marketing and selling.

We can narrow down our results using the Filters button on the right-hand side. This allows us to filter the results by the following:

• Language - Search for an ad in a specific language.
• Advertiser - Select the business or Facebook page running the ad.
• Platform - Choose which platform the ad is run on. This includes Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. 
• Media Type - You can choose between images, memes, images and memes, videos, or no image or video.
• Active Status - Choose whether you want the ad to be active or inactive.
• Impressions by Date - Select a date range.

For this example, we won’t set any filters. But, depending on your business, you might need to.

To find our competition, we look at the following:

• Ads with products similar to ours
• Ads that have launched recently
• Brands that appear repeatedly in the results

For example, when we search Sleep Mask, three brands stand out. These are:

• DreamWrap Sleep

• Manta Sleep

• OMSleep

So, how do we know that these are our competition? 

Well, the Facebook Ad Library will show us the following ad information:

• Library ID
• Ad status
• Ad launch date
• Platform the ad is run on
• Advertiser
• Copy
• Image or video
• Call to action
• Call to action URL

Using this information, we can explore each advertiser's website and ad to see if the product is similar to ours, selling at a similar price point, and whether it’s targeted at a similar audience. 

Your product knowledge should tell you if this is a brand or product you would consider your competition.

Sadly, the Facebook Ad Library doesn’t show us the ad’s engagement or how it’s performing.

And if we don’t know whether the ad is receiving positive feedback or engagement, we won’t know if it's an ad we should try to compete with.

To confirm that an ad is a winner, we need to find its engagement. Dropship has an ad spy tool that shows you exactly how many interactions the ad has and allows you to see the ad as it appears on Facebook.

In addition to spying on the ad's engagement, Dropship also allows you to see any Shopify store’s sales. 

If the store is making sales, we can assume the ads are converting. This means we know the store is a competitor, so we can work out how to beat it.

Dropship's Ad Spot 

Dropship’s Ad Spot tool is similar to the Meta Ad Library. Both are searchable databases of ads. 

The Meta Ad Library includes all the active ads run on all Meta platforms. 

Dropship’s Ad Spot tool only has Facebook ads, and it might not have all of the ads, but it has millions. 

Dropship’s Ad Spot tool has some significant advantages over the Meta Ad Library. These are the following:

• More advanced search filters
• Can view ad engagement 
• Can see the ad as it appears on your audience’s Facebook page
• Links to Dropship’s other tools, so within two clicks, you can see if the marketing campaigns are generating sales.

These features are crucial to helping you find and beat your competition. 

But why? 

• See What Resonates with Audiences - Is the ad with a video receiving far more engagement than one with images? Does the ad with a Learn More call to action instead of Shop Now have a better response? Looking at engagement clearly shows us what audiences like and don’t like.
• Find Our Target Audience - We can find the profiles of everyone engaging with the ads. If the audience of your competitor's ads likes their products, then there is a high chance they’ll like yours, too. This can give you real insights into who to target your ads at and who your target market is.
• High Engagement Could Mean High Conversions - If an ad has a lot of engagement, then it is likely receiving a high number of sales. This isn’t always the case, but usually, it is a good indication.

To use Dropship’s Ad Spot, you need to sign up for Dropship. There is currently a risk-free 7-day trial. During the trial, you can test out the Ad Spot tool, find your competitors, and work out how to beat them. Then, if you finished with Dropship, simply cancel before the end of the trial. 

Once you’ve signed up and logged in, click Ad Spot from the left-hand menu.

Now, we need to search for the competition. There are a couple of ways to use the Ad Spot tool.

• Option 1 - You already found your competitors on the Facebook Ad Library, as we saw in the previous section. And you want to see the engagement your competitor’s ads have.
• Option 2 - Use the Ad Spot tool to find your competition.

Or you might want to use a combination of the two. 

Let’s start with option 1. You’ve found your competition using the Facebook Ad Library and want to see how the ads are performing. Let’s check out one of the businesses we found on Meta Ad Library, OMsleep.

To find these sellers on the Ad Spot tool, type the brand name into the Page Name box.

As you type, the Ad Spot tool will suggest the brand. Once it has appeared, click on it and hit Search.

Note: If it doesn’t appear, you can always type the full domain into the Domain Name box.

The Ad Spot tool will display the brand’s ads.

And, more importantly - the engagement!

The engagement is displayed beneath each ad. We can see the reactions and number of comments, shares, and views. 

Dropship also allows us to view the ad like the target audience would. From here, you can read the comments. 

You can see the Facebook profiles of those who have reacted and commented on the ad. This can help you identify who your competitors are targeting their ads at.

Repeat this process to find all your competitor's ads and view their engagement. We recommend doing this so you can compare and analyze them in depth (we’ll look at this in the Analyze section). This will help you optimize your business to beat your competition.

Now, let’s look at option 2. Option 2 is using Ad Spot to find your competition. This completely eliminates the need to search the Facebook Ad Library. This can save you a lot of time and effort.

To use the Ad Spot tool to find your competitors, follow these steps:

1. Type your product name, keyword, or phrase into the Ad Copy box. To enter multiple keywords or phrases, add a comma between phrases or keywords.

For example, to enter Sleep Mask, type the phrase and add a comma. To search Sleep and Mask, type Sleep and add a comma, then type Mask and add a comma.

You might want to start your search with just a keyword. 

But let's look at the other available filters. 

• Page Name/ID - As we saw when we searched for a brand, this is the Facebook page advertiser. You can enter the name of the advertiser, and Dropship will find suggestions for you to select.
• Domain Name - Type the domain of the advertiser or brand.
• Creative Type - Find ads that either use Video, Photo, Carousel or view all ads.
• Ad Engagement - Search for ads by the amount of engagement they have. This can help you find top-performing ads. You can search by reactions, shares, comments, and video length.
• Ad Creation Date - Find ads created on specific dates or during specific date ranges.
• Call to Action - Filter ads by their call to action button text. E.g., Shop Now, Learn More, etc.
• Website Provider - Look for ads for specific website providers. Most commonly, you will want to look for Shopify sellers as competition if you’re using Dropship. Dropship lets you spy on Shopify sellers' sales and revenue. This can give you in-depth data on your competition. You can also look at other website providers, like WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, and many more.
• Ad Copy Language - Search for ads in specific languages. You can choose this based on the location in which you sell your products.
• Domain TLD - Narrow down your results based on the TLD, e.g., .com, .co, .ca, etc.

2. Once you’ve entered your keywords and completed the other filters, click Search.

Ad Spot will then show all of the ads that match your criteria. 

By default, your results will be arranged with the newest ones first. But you can also sort by the following:

• Reactions
• Oldest
• Comments
• Shares
• Views

3. To find our biggest competition, we would do the following:

• Set the Ad Creation Date to a recent time frame. Usually, we would start with the last 30 days, but if the results are too broad, we would go for a shorter time frame. 
• Sort the results by likes, views, or comments.

We want to find ads that have been launched recently and have high positive engagement. 

Being able to sort the ads by engagement makes it super easy to find the stores that are converting. And that we want to compete with.

In this example, we see that the stores we found on Facebook Ad Library, Manta Sleep, and OMSleep are still appearing frequently. 

But there are some other stores that we might want to look at. These include Dore & Rose, Wonder Slumber, and Love Night Shift. 

If these stores are built on Shopify, we can also see if the stores are making sales. This gives us assurance that the ads are converting. 

We can do that with the Dropship Chrome extension.

Dropship's Chrome Extension 

We can use Dropship’s Chrome extension to see the sales of any Shopify store. If a store is making a high volume of sales, then we can consider them competition. 

We can also use the Chrome extension to access the Facebook Ad Library from any Shopify store easily.

These are the different ways of using Dropship’s Chrome extension with the Facebook Ad Library.

• Find our competitors on Google and open their stores. Then, use the Chrome extension to view their sales and find their ads on the Facebook Ad Library.

• Use the Facebook Ad Library to locate the ads (as seen in the first section). Then, use the Chrome extension to confirm that the ads are converting by spying on their sales.

• Use Dropship’s Ad Spot (as seen in the second section) to locate the ads. Then, use the Chrome extension to confirm that the ads are converting by spying on their sales.

Let’s get into it. 

1. Before you start, you need to download Dropship’s Chrome extension from the Chrome webstore. Once you’ve downloaded the extension, you can log in or sign up for a free trial. 

2. Now, you need to find your competition's store. 

• You can do this by Googling your keyword or searching social media for stores selling products similar to yours. 
• Or you may have already found them on the Meta Ad Library or Dropship’s Ad Spot, as we did earlier. 

Let’s start with a Google search for Sleep Mask.

Google shows us multiple sleep mask sellers. 

These include brands we found using the Facebook Ad Library and Dropship’s Ad Spot, including Manta and Dore & Rose. 

It also shows us some brands we didn’t find. Such as SnoozeBand and DrowsySleepCo. 

3. Open the website of one of your competitors. 

Let’s use Manta as an example. 

The Dropship banner should appear at the bottom of the page. If the banner doesn’t appear, the store you are researching might not be built on Shopify. Dropship can only spy on Shopify stores. So, if it’s not appearing, try another store.

4. Click Overview.

5. Look at the number of sales the store is making.

In this example, Manta has generated 4,937 sales and made $438,709.80 in revenue in the last seven days.

We already know Manta is running Facebook Ads as we found the brand through the Facebook Ad Library and Ad Spot tools. 

However, if you haven’t already found a brand’s ads, click the Ad Library button from the Chrome extension. This will show you the ads the store is running.

We’ve found our competition. The store is successfully running ads through Facebook and is generating a high volume of sales. 

Now, you can analyze the ads and work out how to beat them.

In this demo, we’ve only looked at one competitor. However, we recommend that you look at several. The more data you have on the competition, the more you can analyze. 

We recommend looking at between three and five other sellers.

2. Analyze Your Competition

Summary:

• Look at all aspects of your competitor’s ads for inspiration.
• Compare ads with high and low engagement to find what’s working and what isn’t.

Let’s go over what you need before we analyze the competition:

• You’ve found several stores that sell similar products to yours.
• The stores are running Facebook ads with high engagement.
• The stores are making a high volume of sales.

Now, we know who our competition is. We need to open their ads. 

We recommend doing this in both the Facebook Ad Library and Dropship’s Ad Spot. 

We like to have both open, as they give us different information. And the more information we have, the better our analysis will be.

Each ad is made up of five main components. These are:

• Copy
• Image, Carousel, or Video (or Creative)
• Call to Action Button
• Headline and Description
• Link

Let’s look at each component in more depth.

1. Copy

The copy is the main text in the ad. 

This is the text that your audience will read if your ad has grabbed their attention.

It needs to be short, simple, and easy to scan. The text should also help you connect with your audience and tell them why they need to buy your product.

Look at the following aspects of your competitor's ads:

• Keywords - Which keywords related to your niche are they using? Can you incorporate them into your ad? These will likely be words related to your product or persuasive keywords that encourage a customer to buy. In the Dore & Rose ad, they use the following product-related keywords: ‘Rest,’ ‘Sleep,’ ‘Healthy,’ and ‘Dermatologist-Approved.’ And these persuasive words to boost sales and entice customers: ‘Award-Winning,’ ‘Save,’ ‘Time-Limited,’ and ‘Risk-Free.’ 

• Offer - What is the ad offering? For example, in the Dore & Rose ad, they are offering a time-limited 30% off offer. A time-limited offer can push your audience to act now. 

• Text and Image Correlation - Your image draws attention with Facebook ads. Your offer on your image and your offer in your copy should connect. In the Dore & Rose example, the image has ‘Save up to 30%.’ This is then reinforced in the text with ‘Save 30% on every product..’

• Format - Your copy needs to be easy to scan. Your audience might not have time to read every word of your copy. But the key information should pop out. Dore & Rose use short and concise sentences to make the text easy to read. And the text is split into bullet points with emojis to help customers find the information they’re looking for.

• Style and Branding - Your ad needs to reinforce your brand identity. This can be done by using the same brand voice, tagline, etc. When a customer goes from your ad to your website, it should feel like one continuous journey. 

This keeps your brand consistent across all platforms. This can help your audience feel secure and increase your conversion rate.

Look at how your competitors incorporate their brand voice and tone into their copy. This could be a serious tone, humorous, friendly, etc. And work out how you can incorporate yours into your ads.

2. Image, Carousel, or Video

The creative is the main component of a Facebook ad. There are three options. These are:

• Image - Add a single image to your ad.
• Carousel - Add multiple images with multiple site links. This is a good way to showcase your catalog, and every link takes the customer to the individual product listing page.
• Video - Create a short video for your Facebook ad. It is estimated that video ads get up to six times more engagement than image ads [1].

The creative needs to grab your audience's attention immediately. 

We recommend that all the images and videos you upload are the following:

• Use the highest resolution 
• Clearly display your product or message
• In line with your brand identity. This could be with the colors you use or the message in the video.

The image or video can include text. The text can highlight your product's benefits and features, push an offer, or increase your social proof.

Let’s look at some examples.

Product Benefits and Features Example: In six words, Manta tells us exactly what the product is and what its benefits are in the image. We can see it's a Bluetooth Sleep Mask, but it also tells us it’s The Most Comfortable. Adding this benefit can help customers decide whether it’s the right sleep mask for them.

Offer Example: Reinforce the offer in your text in your image. Manta does this by including ‘10% OFF all Manta products’ at the top of the image.

This offer is also shown in the headline and description at the bottom of the ad. 

Manta also increases the appeal of the ad by making it seem personal to the reader. It does this by using the words ‘Exclusive’ and ‘Just For You.’ 

This can encourage customers to open the ad as they won’t want to miss out on the special deal.

Social Proof Example: This SnoozeBand ad uses social proof to help customers trust the product. 

In the bottom right-hand corner of the ad, they use a well-known newspaper’s Best Buy review. If a customer trusts The Independent, they are more likely to trust the brand, which can help increase conversions. 

3. Call to Action Button

The call to action button is in the bottom right-hand corner of the ad. 

It gives the audience the action they need to take to continue the journey with the brand.

The right call to action will encourage and inspire customers to take action. 

Facebook has pre-set call to action buttons. This means you can only select from one of the available call to action buttons rather than create your own.

If you’re creating a sales ad campaign, these are some of our favorite options:

• Order Now
• Shop Now
• Learn More
• Get Offer

All of the options are short and direct. They tell the audience the action to take.

Order Now and Shop Now also create a sense of urgency. The word Now encourages the audience to check out the offer immediately rather than waiting. 

4. Headline and Description

The headline and description are at the bottom of the ad. 

Facebook recommends that these sections be kept short. Using only 40 characters for the headline and 24 for the description.

They are usually the last thing your audience will see before choosing whether to click. So, they need to persuade the audience to take action.

We recommend doing one of the following:

• Reinforce your product's unique benefit or feature
• Push your exclusive offer
• Display your brand message

5. Link

The link is where your ad takes your customers when they click on the call to action button. 

This could either be your website homepage, product page, best-sellers, or any other page on your website.

These five things are the main aspects of the ad. 

The Facebook Ad Library and Dropship’s Ad Spot also provide us with other information about Facebook ads. Understanding this can help us better analyze our competition:

Multiple Versions

You may have seen on the Facebook Ad Library that some ads have the label ‘This Ad Has Multiple Versions.’

You can click on See Ad Details, and the Facebook Ad Library will show you versions of the ad.

However, the combination of text and images will vary as these are Dynamic Creative ads. Dynamic Creative Ads are when the advertiser uploads multiple ad components. Including headlines, copy, creative, and calls to action. 

Facebook then uses different component combinations for every person who sees the ad. This improves user experience and engagement to help increase ad performance.

Engagement

We already know that our competitor's ads are working, as we’ve confirmed the stores are making sales. 

But, if the store is running multiple ads, it’s good to compare their ads. To know which ads to compare, we look at ones launched at a similar time with drastically different engagement.

For example, OMSleep launched these two ads a week apart.

The ad launched on the 17th of January only has four reactions. In contrast, the ad launched on the 10th of January has 2.6k reactions.

This shows that the second ad is more engaging to an audience. So, we need to compare the ads and work out why. This can help us create the best ads for our own store.

Look at all the aspects of the ad that we mentioned above. This includes the headline, copy, image, and call to action button.

For example, maybe the ad with less engagement isn’t as relatable. It uses a first-class cabin as the background image and focuses on travel in the copy. 

Meanwhile, the ad with more engagement focuses more on sleeping better every night. And it includes details about free gifts. This might be more relatable and engaging to an audience, which is why it has significantly more engagement. 

Inactive Ads

The Facebook Ad Library shows us both active and inactive ads.

Active ads are when the ad is on and running. 

Inactive ads aren’t running, either because they’ve been completed or turned off.

We can look at inactive ads and try to work out why they are inactive. 

We want to find ones that we guess were turned off because they weren’t converting. 

If we find these ads, we can analyze them to work out what wasn’t working. So we don’t make the same mistakes ourselves.

For example, Dore & Rose launched three ads on the same date with the same copy, headline, and call to action. The difference between the appearance of the ads was the creative.

Two of the ads remain active, and one is now inactive.

As the creative is the clear differentiator between the ads, we can look at the three images and videos to work out what isn’t working in our niche. And what is.

This can help us create more effective and engaging ads.

3. Optimize Your Facebook Ads To Beat Your Competition 

You’ve checked out all of your competitor's ads and analyzed them in depth. So, you know what’s working and what isn’t.

It’s time to build your own Facebook ads or optimize your existing ones using everything you’ve learned. 

We’ve just looked at optimizing your Facebook ads to help you beat your competition. But that’s just the start.

You can also optimize every other aspect of your business using the information you’ve found from your competitor's Facebook ads. This includes:

Listing

• ‍Are you missing anything from your listing that your competitors have? Do you have enough photos to show the product effectively?
• Do you have a video showing how the product works? Does your title include the right keywords?
• Are the product benefits and features clear?
• Have you got reviews to boost your social proof?
• Can you add any tags to help encourage sales?
• These could be ‘Best Seller’ or ‘Selling Fast’ etc. Is your description clear and easy to scan? 

Look at your competitor’s listing and see what stands out. Look at the text they put in bold, the colors they use, the buttons and labels, and the layout. 

You want all of your customer's questions to be answered by your product listing. Add as much information as possible without overwhelming the customer or making the listing page look messy. 

For example, DreamWrap Sleep has all the vital information at the top of the listing. This includes a persuasive tag, benefits, and images. Then, as you scroll down, there is more detail in dropdown boxes.

Dropdown boxes make your listing page clear but also make it easy for customers to find the information they’re looking for.

‍

Shipping Options

How many shipping options do you offer compared to your competition? These could include free shipping, next-day delivery, etc. 

Marketplaces like Amazon have made customers expect fast and free delivery.

We recommend offering a free shipping option. To do this, you’ll likely need to consider your shipping cost in your product price. 

And for fast shipping, you might want to find a supplier with a fast processing time close to your customers. 

We also recommend using automation software. Automation software ensures no delay between the customer placing the order and your supplier receiving it. 

If you’re looking for an automation tool, we recommend AutoDS.

Price  

‍How does your price compare to your competitors? If your price is dramatically different, it might be affecting your sales.

If your price is much higher than your competition, customers will want to know what they’re paying extra for. Their expectations will also be high, and if your product doesn’t meet these expectations, you will end up with poor reviews and a high number of returns.

If your product price is a lot lower, customers might wonder why. They might think your product is poor quality or that your brand is a scam. Which could result in losing sales.

Finding the right price can be difficult. If you want help pricing your product, we have a complete guide on pricing. Including what to consider, how to calculate prices, how to analyze and experiment with prices, and pricing strategies.   

Product Quality  

How does your product compare to your competitor? You could order one of your competitor's products to see what the product quality is and compare it to your own. 

You want to compare your product with ones at similar price points that target the same audience. 

If your product is inferior, we recommend looking for a new supplier or speaking to your supplier about changing your product.

Returns Policy

‍Do you allow customers to return products for any reason? Do your competitors? 

If your competitors allow customers to return products and you don’t, customers will choose them over you. The security of being able to return a product if they don’t like it can drastically increase sales. 

Look at what your competitors are offering and see if you can offer the same or something better.

Payment Options

‍How many payment methods do you offer compared to your competitors? If you only offer one payment option, customers might leave the checkout even if they want to purchase your product because they don’t like your payment option.

We recommend offering standard credit and debit card payments. As well as payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. 

We also recommend that you add ‘buy now and pay later’ payment methods. These include Afterpay, Clearpay, and Klarna. 

All these payment options can help a customer feel secure checking out with you. And makes it very easy for customers to checkout, as usually, their details will be preloaded on one of the payment providers.

Shopify Payments and Stripe both allow you to offer these payment options.

Website Design and Layout  

How does your website compare to your competition? Is it as professional as theirs? Do you have a clear brand identity?

Do your competitors have a blog that is helping them generate traffic? Does your website work on mobile and desktop? Is your website easy to navigate? 

A professional-looking website will increase your credibility, improve your SEO rank, and improve a customer's experience with your brand. 

Social Media

Are you posting content frequently on social media? Is the content you’re posting getting as much engagement as your competitors? Can you improve your bio or update your profile photo? Are you posting the right content on the right platforms? 

Look at your competitors with a high social media following and engagement. Customers will often visit your social media to learn about your brand. If you post regularly, have high engagement, and interact with your customers, it can increase the likelihood of customers trusting you and buying.

Gift with Purchase  

‍What are your competitors offering that you aren’t? Do they have any bonus gifts to encourage sales? 

OM Sleep offers lifetime access to a meditation app when customers pre-order their sleep masks. This is the perfect add-on gift that compliments the product perfectly. It could be the thing that makes customers choose your competitors over you.‍

Apps

We can look at the apps our competitors are using with Dropship’s Chrome extension. Apps are a great way to improve and grow your business. This could include tools for increasing your listing, building pages, email marketing, reviews, upsells, stock counters, and more.

What Can't You Learn From Your Competitor's Facebook Ads 

We can’t uncover our audience’s Facebook ad budget, performance, goals, or target demographic and audience.

So, we’ll never know if an ad is truly converting. 

However, as we’ve seen in the article, we can make a pretty good guess based on the ad itself, its engagement, and the store’s sales.

Budget

We don’t know what budget the advertiser has set for their campaigns. Or whether they have an overall campaign budget or individual budget for each ad set. 

Performance 

You can’t find out how an ad is actually performing.

The article has shown us ways we can estimate whether it’s successful based on sales and engagement. However, we don’t know if it’s profitable or whether the sales are actually coming from the ad.

Goals

We don’t know what the intended purpose of your competitor's ad is. Or how big of a part Facebook ads play in the brand's overall marketing plan. 

The ad might generate 90% of all sales. Or it could just be used to increase brand awareness. 

Target Demographic and Audience

The Facebook Ad Library doesn’t tell us the audience that the advertiser is targeting. We don’t know the interests, gender, location, or any other demographics.

We can look at the users who comment or react to the ad to gather some information about the audience.

Frequently Asked Questions 

How Do I Find My Competitor's Target Audience? 

You can look at who engages with your competitor’s Facebook ads and who is following the brand on social media. This will give you a good insight into the customers they are targeting.

How Do I Advertise Against Competitors? 

Analyze your competitors' ads to see what’s working and what isn’t. Then, use all the best aspects to build better campaigns than your competitors. 

You can compare your product with your competition in your adverts. However, there are certain rules on comparative advertising. For example, you can’t make untruthful or misleading statements. 

How Can I Make My Facebook Ads More Effective? 

Look at all aspects of your ad. This includes the copy, creative, headline, call to action, and description. Then, compare your ads to other successful sellers in your niche. This can give you inspiration and ideas.

Also, consider making use of Facebook’s Dynamic Creative ads. Dynamic Creative mixes different ad components to help boost your ad’s performance.

Final Thoughts

This article should have shown you how to find your competition using the Facebook Ad Library. You can then use our tips to analyze the competition and optimize your business to beat them. 

Make sure to check out Dropship’s Ad Spot. It allows you to search for Facebook ads using more advanced filters than the Facebook Ad Library. It also shows you the ad’s engagement and how the ad appears to the audience. 

Try it for free with the 7-day free trial.