How to Use LinkedIn Ads to Spy on Your Competitors for Insights

Did you know that you can see what LinkedIn Ads your competitors are running? You don’t even have to be in their target audience. Here’s how and what you can do to get an edge:

How to View Competitors’ LinkedIn Ads

Viewing your competitors’ ads is easy. Simply search for your competitors’ company by name in LinkedIn’s search bar, then click to view their Company Page.

From there, click Posts. Here you can see all your competitors’ content published to their page. But you can take this a step further by clicking on the Ads button.

This will allow you to see what Sponsored Content Ads your competitors’ have been running within the last 6 months.

If you click the three dots in the top right corner of the ad, you get a dropdown menu, of which one of the options is to copy the link to the post.

Copying and pasting that link into a new tab will allow you to not only view the ad, but also see all those who have engaged with it (reacted, commented, shared).

Implications of Viewing Competitors’ LinkedIn Ads

So what? What can you do with this information? You might already have some ideas. Here are some more you may or may not have considered:

See What Your Competitors Are Saying

This one is obvious, but viewing competitors’ ads can be an opportunity to analyze their messaging. You might even find this helpful in crafting your own messaging or gaining inspiration for creative assets, like imagery and video.

However, keep in mind that your competitors are conducting tests, just like you are. So don’t be in a hurry to copy any tactics you see them do, as they may or may not actually be successful.

That said, it’s never a bad thing to be educated and can ultimately provide you with insight on ways you can improve your own LinkedIn Ads efforts.

See What Your Competitors Are Offering

In tandem with the previous section, viewing competitors’ ads can also give insight into what they’re offering. This can help you know what kinds of offers to create and promote in response.

Again, that’s not necessarily an excuse to copy what your competitors are offering, but you can use this information to make strategic decisions on where to take your own LinkedIn Ads efforts.

Target Competitor Engagers with an Outbound Strategy

As mentioned previously, copying and pasting the link to the ad in a new tab allows you to see people that have engaged with that ad. If they’re not yet sold on your competitors, use this as an opportunity to win them over.

You can do so by creating a list of engagers as part of an outbound strategy. At the very least, you can view those people’s profiles and send them a LinkedIn message or connection request.

Gain Inspiration From Other Companies (Not Your Competitors)

Not only is this a useful strategy for conducting competitive research, but it’s also helpful in analyzing any company’s ads. If there’s a particular brand you’re fond of, try analyzing their LinkedIn Ads for inspiration into crafting your own.

We recently came across an amazing ad from Gong. For our full analysis on the ad and what advertisers can learn from it, check out this blog post.

Final Thoughts

B2B marketers use LinkedIn Ads to reach their target audience with pinpoint accuracy. Rarely do they think to spy on how their competitors are using them. We hope this tip was insightful for you as you seek to improve your own LinkedIn Ads efforts!

What other little-known LinkedIn Ads tips and tricks do you like to use? Comment below!

PS: You could pour in the massive amounts of time and money required to learn, optimize, and scale LinkedIn Ads on your own. Or you could pass it off to an expert with 12 years and $150M+ of experience in the platform.

Our data-driven approach to ads management, combined with our proprietary tools, allow us to confidently optimize and scale your LinkedIn Ads faster and more efficiently than any other agency, in-house team, or digital ads hire.

Interested? Consider booking a discovery call with us. We’d absolutely love the chance to get to work with you!

Written by Eric Jones