How to View Your Competitors’ LinkedIn Ads

Ever wanted to see what the competition is doing on LinkedIn? You might be following their posts and other activity, but did you know that it’s also possible to keep track of their ads? What’s more, it’s actually quite easy to do. Whether you’re just intrigued or want to improve your AI marketing tool and strategy, we’re going to show you how you can get started today.

Why Look at Competitor Ads on LinkedIn?

Before we start looking at potential tools, you might first wonder why you want to look at the ads of your competitors in the first place. In truth, there are a few different motivations (don’t worry, none of them are going to encourage you to copy the competition!).

1. Compare Strategies

First of all, you might just want to compare your own strategy with those of your competitors. Before you start to panic, this is entirely normal. In fact, it’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. The business world is cutthroat, and those who don’t adapt are left behind. By looking at the ads of competitors, you can determine whether you’re following a similar strategy, or an entirely different one.

Which is better? That depends. If you’re seeing similar ads to your own, this suggests that you understand the audience well because you’re not the only one trying certain techniques. If you’re seeing something entirely different, before jumping to any conclusions, we recommend first considering potential reasons as to why this is the case. Are they aiming for a slightly different target market?

If the competitor is doing completely different ads, and they’re enjoying much more success than your own campaigns, then it could be time to reconsider your own strategy.

2. Check Tone and Message

Some businesses simply want to know whether they have the right tone for LinkedIn. Especially for those new to advertising on the platform, coming from Facebook/Instagram sometimes requires an adjustment period. LinkedIn is seen as a more professional platform, and some advertisers will want to know if they’re on the right track with their messaging, language, tone, and personality.

Getting this wrong in the modern age has the potential to break an ad campaign, so there’s nothing wrong with looking at the competitors for this purpose. If you’re going to check your tone and message, remember your audience and how it may differ from the audience of your competitors.

3. Update Your Landing Pages

Not every ad campaign on LinkedIn will have the aim of sending people to a landing page, but if this is your goal, then researching your competitors’ landing page may yield valuable insight. What are they like? Are they similar to your own? Does the business use a generic landing page for all keywords or have a tailored page for each?

4. Identify Keyword Opportunities

Another reason to check the ads of competitors is that you can actually identify new keyword opportunities. Have you ever felt suspicious when everybody at your table orders the same thing off the menu while you were planning to order something else? There’s a sense of — ‘oh, they all seem to know something I don’t’. It’s the same with keywords; some simple ad monitoring helps you to notice when several competitors are using a keyword that hasn’t made its way into your strategy.

After spotting a recurring keyword, perform your own research and see whether it would add value to your strategy. Again, we would never encourage you to just copy the competition because it might be that you’ve already tried the keyword and it didn’t really work. However, there’s also nothing wrong with checking keywords you aren’t using and evaluating their potential.

5. Compare Features

Lastly, we mentioned that you can compare strategies, but you can also compare the individual features of the strategy. What formats are they running? Do they rely on a couple of ads or do they have dozens set up? Looking at the number of active ads will tell you how much they tend to invest in campaigns. For example, those with over 50 ads are probably spending lots of time on the platform. On the other hand, those with no updates for three months aren’t putting in much time at all.

Furthermore, you can look at creatives and images. Do they create text-based ads or image-based ads? Is it working?

As you can see, there are lots of benefits of looking at competitors’ ads on LinkedIn. With this in mind, the next thing you need to know is how to do it.

Checking Competitors’ Ads — Step-by-Step Instructions

We have some bad news — LinkedIn isn’t quite as popular as Facebook and other advertising platforms which means that you’re limited in the ways you can check competitors’ ads. If you want to do the same on Facebook, you have the Facebook Ad Library as well as many great tools that send email alerts when competitors take certain actions on their ad account. On LinkedIn, we’re slightly more restricted in the way we see this data.

Now the good news — LinkedIn followed the lead of Facebook and has recently implemented a feature that allows all users to see the ad campaigns of businesses. Therefore, you don’t need to download a special tool or pay a fee to get started. Instead, simply follow the instructions below:

• Type the name of a competitor into the search bar at the top of the screen
• Click on the company page
• Look on the left-hand side and you should see Home, About, Jobs, Life, People, and Ads
• Click on Ads

Even if you’re not in the audience of the ads, you’ll see a list of ads that the company has created within the previous six months. If you don’t see anything, this means that the business hasn’t created an ad campaign in the last six months. If you see a lot of ads, this means that the business is very busy and that you have a competitor on LinkedIn.

What about engagement? If you’re just using this feature for the first time, you won’t automatically see engagement because this isn’t activated by default. To learn more about engagement, look to the right-hand side of the ad and you’ll see three dots at the top. Click here and select ‘Copy link to post’. By doing this, you’re able to visit the real LinkedIn post to get an idea of views, reactions, comments, and more.

If you’re going to monitor competitor ads in this way, we have a couple of pointers. First, use a desktop. This isn’t a recommendation; this is actually a requirement because the feature isn’t available on tablets or mobile devices. Only when you’re on a desktop device will you see the Ad tab appear on the left-hand side of the page.

Second, take your time and look through the individual ads from the business. It’s one thing to see what ads the competition is producing, but this doesn’t mean much if you aren’t looking at engagement. Without checking, you might be influenced by an ad that hasn’t generated any engagement for the business rather than the ones that actually have. By digging a little deeper, you learn more about what works and what doesn’t with the audience.

Choosing Which Competitors to Monitor

Now that you’ve learned how to monitor the ads of competitors on LinkedIn, what businesses should you actually choose for this process? First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure that the business has a similar audience to your own. Therefore, it’s best to start with a direct competitor. This way, you’re confident that anything you learn from the research is directly applicable to your own marketing strategy.

If your goal is to improve landing pages and find keyword opportunities, looking at a business too far away from your own market is a waste of time. They do what’s right for their target market, and you need to do what’s right for your own.

Sometimes, you might have no option but to assess businesses that operate in a slightly different market. If this is the case, keep that in mind when generating actionable insights. For example, you may be able to use similar creatives while adjusting the message for your own audience. Make sure that any change you introduce has been considered for your own audience above all else.

Summary

It’s now possible to view your competitors’ ads on LinkedIn. Although we would never recommend directly copying the competition (since nothing good comes of this strategy), you can learn some valuable things from the practice. Whether you’re focusing on landing pages and keywords or your voice as an advertiser, everything you need is available within the LinkedIn platform. Just click onto a business page, look to the left-hand side, click on Ads and get started.