Section Three
Competitive Analysis Creative Strategy for Facebook Ads
According to Facebook, this is what you need to start creating Facebook ads:
- Your business goal—the reason you’re running the ad
- An understanding of who you want to reach
- A daily or lifetime budget for your ad
- Photos or videos to feature in your ad
Let’s walk through each of these, and talk about the strategy behind them. The decisions you make at this strategic level of your advertising will make or break the success of your ads. So while this might seem like background work, please: Don’t skip this step. Your smartest competitors won’t.
Why Competitive Analysis and Player Profiles are Worth Your Time
Creating great ads in 2020 requires a blend of data analysis, psychology, and technical skill. But ultimately it all comes down to knowing your audience inside out.
One of the most interesting advertising developments in 2019 was the emergence of “player profiles” – customer profile mockups that define what drives different types of game players to play certain games.
These new customer and player analyses are based on the concept of horizontal segmentation, which has been used in consumer goods for decades. Basically, it’s a way to tailor games, advertising creative, and even product development to specific, high-value market segments, thus generating more revenue and happier players and customers.
We have a detailed that’s worth the read. And while this might seem like extra work for you and your team, we’ve found that most of the top advertisers are already using player profiles in their creative strategy and development. So it’s extra work, sure – but it generates better ROAS.
One other essential best practice for creative strategy is competitive analysis. We’ve written about competitive analysis in detail, but don’t just read about it: Do it.
Even if you only do a competitive analysis for a few hours, and it’s done with just a few screenshots and some links and pasted ad copy in a spreadsheet, that’s enough to make a difference. It will teach you which ads your competitors are running. Analyzed well, that information can also tell you which messaging is working well for your audience and what you should be testing in your own ads.
Competitive analysis probably only second to creative testing on our list of things advertisers should do more of. If you’ve got any spare time, we highly recommend you do more of it.
