7 Powerful Tactics to Use Facebook for Competitor Analysis

Selling on Facebook is becoming increasingly competitive, making it essential to find ways to attract your competitor’s customers in order to secure your position on the “throne.” So how can you acquire fans from a competitor’s fanpage without being noticed? How can you view your competitor’s ads? We will guide you through methods to capture your competitor’s customer base and increase the number of customers for your shop.

There’s a saying: “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will win every battle.” The business world is like a battlefield. As online business competition on Facebook grows fiercer, you need unique strategies to stay ahead. If your competitors are also selling on Facebook, studying their business strategies will help you surpass them.

Below are some methods to attract your competitor’s customers on Facebook—or, more precisely, a few “tactical tricks” to lure their fans to your side. However, rest assured that these tactics are not illegal, unethical, or morally questionable.

1. Capturing Competitor’s Customers on Facebook Using Graph API

The first “hacking” trick is using Facebook’s Graph API, which allows you to view the basic data settings of any Facebook page.

Suppose you are in the process of setting up your own fanpage. You might not be sure which categories to include or what information to fill in. By finding your competitor’s fanpage and adding their username or page ID to the end of the URL http://graph.facebook.com/, you can see all their basic details in one screen—without even having to like their page!

Ví dụ, nếu bạn điền username fanpage của nhà hàng Chipotle vào URL đó, bạn sẽ nhận được kết quả như sau:

• URL fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/chipotle

For fanpage URLs that do not have a simple custom username, you can just enter the fanpage ID instead of the username. The fanpage ID consists of 15 digits found at the end of the page URL in the format:
http://facebook.com/pages/page-title/123456789012345/

You can explore more applications of this on the Graph API page. This tool allows you to retrieve basic information about events, groups, apps, status updates, photo albums, and much more. Essentially, anything that is not private can be accessed.

2. Understanding the Strength of Your Competitors on Facebook

When it comes to competition, the first thing everyone wants to know is whether their competitor is using a particular tool and how they are using it.

Facebook provides a simple interface called link.getStats in the developer section, which gives you basic statistics on the popularity of any domain on Facebook.

For example, if you want to check how popular Southwest.com is on Facebook, simply enter southwest.com and click on Call Method to get the following results:

This result shows the number of likes and shares for their root domain, along with other interesting data.

You can also enter your competitor’s fanpage URL into the Test Console to obtain some basic popularity statistics about their fanpage.

Note: You must access their fanpage directly and copy the URL from your browser. If you try to retrieve data using http://www.facebook.com/southwest, no results will be returned. However, if you use http://www.facebook.com/Southwest, you will get data—simply because of the capital “S” in “Southwest.” This is a powerful trick for gathering competitor information that you probably never knew!

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3. What Did Your Competitor Do to Get More Page Likes?

One of the best ways to increase Facebook likes is by offering something for free through a feature known as a reveal tab or fan gate.

For example, Red Bull discovered that extreme sports videos attract more likes to their page. With 21 million fans, they proved this strategy works! If your competitor has a similar tab promising valuable content in exchange for likes—and they have a massive fan base—you should consider applying this strategy to your own fanpage.

4. See What Your Competitor’s Fans Like & Dislike About Their Brand

One of the best things about Facebook fanpages is that most information is public. In many cases, you don’t even need to like the page to see what people are saying—just visit the timeline and ignore any welcome/reveal tabs.

To analyze your competitor’s audience:
🔹 Go to their timeline to see posts from the brand and their fans in chronological order.
🔹 Read updates to understand what fans love about the brand.
🔹 Observe posts about products, services, and interactions like status updates, images, and videos.

This insight can inspire your strategy and help you determine how to engage your audience effectively.

However, seeing what fans love also means seeing what they hate. Surprisingly, many people like a page just to complain about its products or services.

This presents a valuable opportunity:
➡ Identify weaknesses in your competitor’s brand.
➡ Improve those areas in your own business.
➡ Attract dissatisfied customers from your competitor to your page!

5. Learn How to Handle Criticism

Whenever you see negative comments on your competitor’s fanpage, you might feel relieved—unless you’ve struggled with negative feedback on your own page.

In that case, study how your competitor responds to criticism. Their handling of customer complaints can teach you valuable lessons on crisis management and customer service.

6. Track All Your Competitors in One Place

One of the smartest ways to monitor your competitors on Facebook is by using RSS feeds. This allows you to track all their status updates in your preferred RSS reader without having to like their page or visit multiple pages frequently.

To create an RSS feed:
1️⃣ Find the page ID of your competitor’s fanpage.
2️⃣ Replace [page ID] in this URL:
🔗 https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=[page ID]&format=rss20
3️⃣ Use this URL in any RSS reader (e.g., Google Reader).

📌 Pros: You get real-time updates on their content strategy, promotions, and campaigns without them knowing.
📌 Cons: The RSS feed only shows updates posted by the page itself, not posts from fans.

Even with this limitation, RSS tracking remains a powerful method to analyze a competitor’s marketing strategy without regularly checking their page.

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7. Advertise to Your Competitor’s Fans

This might feel like a sneaky tactic, but many brands successfully leverage it—so it’s worth considering.

Imagine your biggest competitor is facing a public crisis:
🚨 A web hosting company suffers a major server outage.
🚗 A car manufacturer issues a massive recall.
🍽️ A restaurant experiences a food poisoning outbreak.

Now, what if you could place an ad right in front of their frustrated customers, offering a better alternative?

For example:
✅ Web hosting company → Advertise a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
✅ Car manufacturer → Highlight that your brand has the fewest recalls.
✅ Restaurant → Showcase your 5-star food safety rating.

💡 The good news? You can do exactly that using Facebook Ads. The platform allows you to target specific demographics, including fans of your competitors’ pages.

By monitoring your competitor’s fan reactions, you can strike at the right moment and turn their unhappy customers into your loyal fans!

The best part is that you can also target your ads to the fans of your competitor’s fanpage using Precise Interests!

When you enter a brand, Facebook will estimate the number of people you can reach (assuming you have selected a country). You can even add multiple brands and competitors to each ad.

In the increasingly crowded marketplace of Facebook, you cannot ignore strategies to attract customers from competitors. However, these methods must be ethical, legal, and, most importantly, discreet to avoid detection.

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