It’s a safe bet that at least one of Facebook’s ever-growing 5 million advertisers is vying for the same customers as you. Even if they’re clueless, businesses like “Joe’s HVAC,” “Asics,” or even “exceptionallypungentcatnip.org” are taking up space that could be yours. What does this mean for you? If you’re not advertising on Facebook, potential customers (remember, Facebook has 2 billion users!) are becoming familiar with your competition instead. This is bad news for attracting new leads, especially when those potential customers are ready to buy.

Luckily, outshining your competitors on Facebook, its wildly popular Messenger app, and Instagram is easy - if you know the ropes. If you haven’t already, open a new tab and check out our infographic on Facebook advertising. It explains why Facebook ads are valuable and, more importantly, how to get started. Ready? Great! Let’s talk about how to leave your competitors in the dust with these 5 Facebook ad strategies.

#1. Target Your Competitors’ Biggest Fans

Think of competitor campaigns in Google Ads like checkers and Facebook ads like 3D chess. Google Ads competitor campaigns are simple to set up but often ineffective. Google’s system makes it difficult and expensive to rank for keywords where your Quality Score is low. Because you are not your competitors, your ad copy and landing pages will reflect that, resulting in a lower Quality Score for competitor keywords and brand terms. You can’t use their trademarked terms directly, so you have to get creative, which can hurt your click-through rate.

Unless your brand recognition is through the roof or your calls to action are so good they consistently get a ton of clicks, your expected click-through rate for competitor keywords will likely be “Average” at best. And if that’s the case, you probably don’t need to worry about competitor campaigns on Google Ads anyway - you’re already dominating the market! While Facebook doesn’t let you directly target fans of your competitors’ pages, you can target based on “interests.” Facebook determines interests by what people explicitly like and related topics. This means you can leverage brand loyalty to build your own brand awareness and, ultimately, sales. For example, let’s say you’re a craft brewer who wants customers who enjoy a good summer hefeweizen but haven’t moved past the six-packs at the gas station. In the “Detailed Targeting” section of your Ad Set, search for well-known craft breweries…

Targeting smaller, local competitors might not give you a large enough audience. Also, keep in mind that Facebook’s audience estimates can change depending on capitalization and whether you use a domain or brand name. The point is, you’ll need to experiment to get your competitor interest targeting right. Since we’re targeting well-established businesses, we have a large pool of interested Facebook users…

If you have a physical location, layer geographic targeting on top of your competitor-focused interest targeting to drive foot traffic. If you want to generate brand awareness, use one of Facebook’s creative ad formats to educate, impress, and inspire potential customers. The next time they’re at the store, they’ll walk right past that Boston Lager and grab your delicious Gose instead. For even more competitor audience targeting strategies, check out these blog posts:

• 3 Ways to Target Competitor Audiences on Paid Social (Without Facebook!)
• 3 Clever Ways to Target Your Competitors’ Audiences (Without Search Ads)
• 3 Creative (& Cheaper) Google Ads Alternatives for Competitor Targeting

#2. Reach Potential Customers First with Lookalike Audiences

New prospects can be found in many places.

Sometimes, they’re ready to buy immediately, like when they search for something specific like “buy men’s running shoes size 13.” But most of the time, it takes a bit of gentle persuasion (more on that later). Facebook Lookalike Audiences let you fast-track that persuasion process before your competitors even know these prospects exist. With Lookalikes, you use an existing audience and location to create a brand-new audience of people with similar demographics and interests. If your source audience is a list of recent website customers, the resulting Lookalike Audience will likely contain people who are almost ready to buy in your industry (or at least want to learn more). Your job is to convince them that your product is better than the competition. Reaching these potential customers before your competitors is a huge advantage. Let’s look at how to create your own lookalike audiences on Facebook.

Go to the “Audience” tab and select “Create Audience.” You’ll see options to create a lookalike audience or a custom audience. If you’re new to audience creation, you’ll need to choose “custom audience” first; this will be the foundation for your first lookalike! You can create custom audiences from:

• Customer lists (uploaded email addresses)
• Website traffic (if you have the Facebook Pixel installed)
• App activity (probably not relevant: ignore this one)
• Engagement (actions taken on Facebook or Instagram) For the most effective lookalike audience, stick to source audiences built from customer lists or website traffic from high-value pages only. These pages indicate a conversion or strong purchase intent, such as thank you pages and shopping cart confirmation pages. Once your source audience is set, select it from the “Source” dropdown in the “Create a Lookalike Audience” menu and enter your desired location in the “Location” field. Facebook will instantly estimate your lookalike audience size using this format…

This new lookalike audience represents the 1% of Facebook users in your chosen location who are most similar to your source audience. Combine this with interest, behavioral, and demographic targeting to pinpoint your perfect audience. From there, it’s all about having amazing creative! For the pros, you can fine-tune your lookalike audience by similarity to your source audience by clicking “Show Advanced Options.” This reveals additional options:

Imagine the leftmost range as an identical twin and the broader, rightmost subset as a distant relative. Both are more closely related to your source audience than a random Facebook user. Remember, larger lookalike audiences mean less similarity to your source. In this example, the 2% to 5% audience has over 6 million people. While your 1% audience might respond well to high-value offers like product demos, the larger group needs something introductory and should be remarketed to later. In either case, you’re advertising to people similar to your best customers, putting you ahead of the competition.

#3. Create a Powerful Facebook Ads Funnel

Every pay-per-click advertising strategy needs a funnel, regardless of the platform. Hitting someone who just did a basic, informational search with a “BUY NOW” or “Free Trial” offer is a surefire way to waste your budget and annoy potential customers.

Facebook lets you build a complete marketing funnel using its incredibly diverse targeting options (and many more not covered here). With this tool, you can create highly relevant ads and offers that outperform your competitors, even if they’re targeting the right audiences. Let’s say you sell software and have these constraints:

• 200,000 “prospects” with varying levels of interest
• $5,500 monthly Facebook advertising budget
• 70% average close rate (you’re onto something good!) Here’s how you might divide your strategy into three sections:

The top offer, a free trial, is for prospects who are completely new. While your trial is great and convinces some people to schedule a demo, most people either ignore your ads or click and leave immediately. We call this a Facebook ad fail. By creating a custom audience of those who start a free trial, you can target them with an offer to chat with sales. In this example, 50% of those prospects agree to a demo. With a 70% close rate after the demo, you get 35 new deals. Not bad, right? Hold that thought.

Instead of advertising a free trial to 200,000 people, offer them valuable content in exchange for their email addresses. The number of leads at the top of the funnel jumps significantly (from 100 to 500) because while a content download is less valuable to you, it’s more valuable to the prospect at this stage. Now, you can target those 500 leads—who now recognize your brand’s value—with a case study download. Finally, using another custom audience and compelling Facebook ads referencing the case study’s positive outcomes, you can offer a product demo. The number of leads at every stage is much higher than in the first example. Assuming an average sale of $2,600, this targeted, funnel-based approach that considers prospect readiness could generate an extra $54,000 in revenue.

While this example uses a software company, this customer-centric funnel model can work in any industry.

#4. Deliver Exceptional Customer Service with Facebook Messenger

David Marcus, the head of Messenger at Facebook, recently told Business Insider that “Conversations between users and companies inside Messenger have a 30% better return on investment than retargeting ads on the web.” That’s significant. Retargeting involves advertising to people already familiar with your brand, and Messenger offers even better results. Mind blown, right? Facebook Messenger ads let you create engaging customer experiences without lifting a finger. Thanks, AI! But how do Messenger ads work? It’s pretty straightforward. When someone clicks your ad in their newsfeed, it starts a “conversation” with your business, regardless of their device. You can use Messenger ads to…

Promote New Offers

or

Offer Discounts

Simply upload a friendly greeting message and clickable image to start engaging with prospects in a way that usually requires phone calls or in-person visits. Facebook Messenger Ads have enormous potential for customer service and sales, and they’re just getting started. Integrating them into your Facebook ad strategy now makes your brand feel more personal and responsive, something your competitors can’t match.

#5. Tap into Instagram’s Untapped B2B Potential

Instagram is a goldmine for consumer brands, and for good reason. It’s a platform for creative expression, with ad formats that work well for everything from product catalogs to engaging brand stories. It’s no surprise that most B2B companies shy away from it. But that’s good news for you.

Instead of comparing Instagram to search, think of it as Facebook’s version of display advertising. Use it to draw potential customers in with engaging visuals, then target them later with more focused Facebook ads based on their buying intent. Will Instagram ads ever be a consistent, direct source of conversions? Probably not. But they will give you another way to reach new customers. If your competitors aren’t using it (yet), you should be. Combine this with the targeting options and funnel concept discussed here, and you’ll be at the top of your game in no time!