Monitor LinkedIn ads from your competitors

Step-by-step Playbooks
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Business benefits

Gather business intelligence in your industry.

Pick an online platform to work in that supports spreadsheet or table layouts, like Evernote, Google Sheets, or Airtable.

This allows you to share the information you gather across your team or organization.

Create a spreadsheet with column headings for Competitor, LinkedIn page, Ad screenshot, Ad format, Ad purpose, Ad headline, Body copy, CTA, and Notes.

Identify your top competitors and add them to the Competitor column of your spreadsheet. Each competitor will need multiple rows.

If you’re not sure who your main competitors are:

  • Visit directories and feedback pages like Angi, Tripadvisor, Yelp, G2, and Amazon.
  • Google your products to check which brands rank on the first results page.
  • Talk to your customers or your sales team to learn more about popular alternatives to your products.
  • Use a competitor analysis tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, SpyFu, or BuzzSumo.

Look up each competitor on LinkedIn and go to their business page. Enter the URL in the LinkedIn page column.

Click Posts and then Ads.

LinkedIn lets you view:

  • All
  • Images
  • Videos
  • Articles
  • Documents
  • Ads.

By researching their ads you can find out whether they are launching or preparing to launch a new product, shifting to a content marketing strategy, or heavily highlighting testimonials.

Take a screenshot of notable ads using a browser extension like Lightshot and fill out the spreadsheet columns for each.

Store screenshots on a cloud drive like Google Drive or Dropbox Business and link to the screenshot in the spreadsheet.

To record videos, use extensions like Screen Recorder or Loom.

Include:

  • Ad format: images, videos, articles, documents, or ads.
  • Ad purpose: advertising a promotion, highlighting a feature, or announcing a new product.

For each ad, add your observations to the Notes column.

Answer questions like:

  • What is unique about the ad?
  • Is there a common theme and if so which one?
  • What emotions are being conveyed?
  • What language is used?

Include your team members, to get different point of views.

Use a paid ad monitoring tool like BigSpy or AdFind to get more information.

Brief your competitive intelligence team with the information you gathered.

It can also come in handy for analyzing your competitors’ content.

Repeat this process regularly, like once a quarter.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T18:05:17Z

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Hey @wolfgang.feger, thank you so much for submitting this playbook.

It looks like a great post. Playbooks have a very specific format so I will ask our lead editor @naomi_kramer to jump in and get this into format.

We will likely condense some stuff into the top layer step and perhaps have a small question or two.

Is this ok with you?

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Hi @hesh_fekry and @naomi_kramer

Fantastic news, awesome this is getting published. Please feel free to condense stuff and ask me all the questions you have. Happy to help any way I can :slight_smile:

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Thanks @wolfgang.feger ! I’ll let you know when I’ve finished the edits.

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Hi @wolfgang.feger – I’ve finished with the edits now! :partying_face:

I modified the steps to fit the playbook format, and rearranged a couple to streamline the process.

Please take a look and let me know if you’re happy with the edits, and if there’s anything that needs to be fixed.

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Wonderful, thank you @naomi_kramer I feel it’s all good to go. :star_struck: You did a wonderful job. Thanks again and enjoy the weekend.

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