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A bit of competition can bring out the best in people. On social, a Facebook competitor analysis can bring out the best in your brand.

Successful marketers know that decisions aren't made with owned analytics alone-routine competitive analyses are essential for getting the full picture.

Using Facebook data to bolster your competitive intelligence can provide you with the insights needed to zig where others zag. It's no wonder Facebook is the most-used platform by marketers worldwide.

If you're ready to engage in some good old-fashioned competitive sleuthing, you're in the right place. Here's everything you need to know to start monitoring your competition on Facebook.

What is a Facebook competitor analysis?

A Facebook competitive analysis is the process of evaluating your competitor's Facebook activity for benchmarking data. These reports also provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor's social media strategy overall.

Conducting a Facebook competitor analysis involves reporting on key brand growth and engagement metrics for your brand and its rivals. It also requires a closer look at your competitors' posting habits, content formats and how their audience engages with their posts. Your team can use this social data to set a baseline for audience growth, publishing and engagement goals.

These findings can help you define what it means to offer superior content and service on social media, increasing the business impact of your presence on the network.

Why should you do a Facebook competitive analysis?

When conducting a social media competitive analysis, make Facebook your top priority. According to Sprout's 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report, 83% of social users have a Facebook profile, and nearly half (44%) interact with brand content on the network at least once a day.

All of these little interactions compounded over time make Facebook a goldmine of strategic insights. If that's not enough, here are some other reasons to consider.

Establish more relevant KPIs

Competitive benchmarking on Facebook can take the guesswork out of goal setting.

For example, say you're trying to set a new engagement goal. Looking at your historical data can help you set an achievable target, but without competitive insights, you risk setting goals that aren't in line with industry standards.

Your Facebook competitor analysis can motivate you to aim higher with your social content while keeping your strategy attainable and actionable.

Identify content gaps

Competitive analyses can illuminate cracks in your content strategy while supplying the information needed to fill them.

For instance, an oral health care brand conducting a Facebook competitive analysis might notice that Quip incorporates month-long observances into their content strategy. This provides an endless stream of social media content creation ideas that tap into trending topics.

Since these posts do well from an engagement standpoint, that brand may consider how they can put their own unique spin on similar events.

Create better content for your followers

Coming up with new content ideas is a top challenge for many social media marketers.

Industry data can provide valuable insights during brainstorming sessions, helping you generate smarter, more relevant content ideas for each social platform. That's where your Facebook competitor analysis comes in.

The analysis will help you identify your rival's content themes. As you notice them, ask yourself how your brand might approach something similar. What would you do differently? What opportunities are they not taking advantage of?

Eventually, you'll come up with a unique piece of inspired content that stands independently from its source material.

Understand the strength of customer service efforts

Consumers are also more likely to turn to Facebook for customer care compared to any other channel-especially Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers.

A quantitative and qualitative review of your competitor's Facebook pages can help you clearly define what they are and aren't getting in terms of customer service. This will show you exactly what it takes to gain a competitive edge on social.

Facebook competitive analysis tools will help you keep a pulse on what your audience expects from brands on the network. Eventually, you'll find ways to one-up their service offerings, cementing your spot as the brand people turn to for a better customer experience.

Learn from your competitors' strategies

A Facebook competitive analysis gives you a clear snapshot of what's working-and what's not-for your top competitors.

By digging into their content, engagement metrics and audience interactions, you can pinpoint winning strategies, like the best posting frequency, content formats that get the most traction and the optimal times to post.

This data helps you refine your content strategy, adopt what works and avoid common pitfalls, so your brand stands out. Plus, it gives you a deeper understanding of how competitors are positioning themselves, helping you stay ahead with more strategic differentiation.

How to conduct a Facebook competitor analysis

Let's go over our top tips for executing a Facebook competitive analysis effectively.

1. Identify your Facebook competitors

Before conducting your competitive analysis, narrow in on three to four key competitors on Facebook. Tracking every single competitor big and small can quickly become an unwieldy task. Instead, aim for an even representation of direct, indirect and aspirational competitors.

This is a good time to talk to your sales team and customers about which competitors helped them make their decisions. This will help you understand your position in the market and improve your approach.

2. Gather your data

Once you've confirmed your target competitors, it's time to gather your data. While this process can be time-consuming, especially in competitive industries, thorough insights lead to more informed strategies.

Use a social media analytics tool to streamline your approach to tracking competitor metrics. If you're using Sprout, you can even dig into data at the post level to figure out what content formats and themes are resonating most with the audiences of individual competitors.

Remember, this isn't a one-time task. To stay ahead, it's crucial to update your analysis quarterly or biannually, aligning with your overall social media reporting.

3. Analyze your competitors Facebook presence

Competitive intelligence involves both quantitative and qualitative insights. To gain the most comprehensive understanding of your competitors' social channels, you need to explore how they present themselves across each platform.

Start your analysis by asking these three key questions:

• How active are your competitors? Examining their posting frequency can reveal insights into their content and customer care strategies, as well as potential gaps you can exploit.
• What types of content do they share? Review each competitor's last 10 posts and determine the percentage that are promotional, such as calls to action for sign-ups or purchases.
• What is their brand persona? Identify the different brand voices your competitors use and evaluate how effectively they resonate with their audience.

4. Use a tool to conduct a Facebook competitor analysis

According to Sprout's Social Media Productivity Report, 63% of social marketers agree manual tasks prevent them from doing high impact work. Social media analytics and listening tools are essential for conducting a Facebook competitor analysis while balancing the other duties of your role.

These tools offer valuable data-driven insights, such as engagement rates and follower growth, which help you objectively evaluate competitor performance and spot trends. Social listening tools also track audience sentiment toward competitors, providing richer qualitative insights that reveal how well they engage their audience and where they may be falling short.

5. Identify areas of improvement

The insights from your competitor analysis can reveal strategic opportunities to help your brand outpace the competition. Focus on doubling down on what's working well and closing any gaps that may be allowing competitors to get ahead.

Use these findings to develop a clear action plan, and share it with your team to gain their support and collaboration. Engaging your colleagues in this process not only fosters teamwork but also ensures everyone is aligned in driving the brand forward.

6. Create a Facebook competitor analysis report

Numbers are nothing without the right context.

For example, what if one of your competitors ran an enticing social media contest during your reporting period? That would definitely have an impact on either their engagement or audience growth. If your report lacks that context, it can result in an unfair assessment of your team's performance.

Use storytelling to give your data meaning. Include the "why" behind your most interesting numbers so that your teammates understand the full story behind the report as well. This social media market research worksheet will help you explain what's really driving competitor performance in 90 minutes or less.

Get the worksheet

How to analyze competitors on Facebook with Sprout

You could do some of this research manually, but Sprout will make the process much more efficient. Sprout's Facebook Competitors Report lets you track metrics for any Facebook page to compare them against your own. Here's how to use it:

Step 1: Set your filters

Use the Filter Menu to customize the data you want to see in your report.

You'll find three different filters within the menu: Pages, Competitor Pages and Date Range.

• Use Pages to select which owned Facebook pages you'd like to include in the report.
• Use Competitor Pages to manage and select competitor Facebook pages
• Use the Date Range date picker to select a time period for your report.

Step 2: Check the summary

The top widget in the Facebook Competitor Report is a summary table. This features averages of key metrics including Fans, Public Engagements and Public Engagements per Post.

Use the trends highlighted in the summary as starting points for your competitive investigation. For example, if you notice that your fan average is lagging behind, that may be the first item to review and cover in your report.

Step 3: Dig into the numbers

You'll find three different chart widgets in the Facebook Competitor Report:

• The Audience Growth chart shows how your audience grew compared to your competitors' during the selected time period.
• The Publishing Behavior chart shows the different types of posts you and your competitors published during the selected time period.
• The Engagement chart evaluates how people are engaging with posts based on publish date.

Each of these charts goes deeper into the high-level metrics available in the Summary table. They also provide averages of each metric for both owned and competitor Facebook pages. Use this information to benchmark your performance against your competitors' averages.

Step 4: Review post-level data

Use the Top Posts widget to review the most popular posts published during your selected time period.

The Top Posts widget will help you analyze published content across all competitors to understand what's resonating within your shared audience. As you review the data, stay on the lookout for qualitative trends as well. What type of visuals and messaging drive the most engagement? Are there any topics people seem particularly excited about?

Understanding these trends will come in handy during your next brainstorm.

Step 5: Share findings

There are a few different ways you can distribute your report from Sprout.

If you'd like to limit the number of disparate files floating around people's inbox, try the link sharing option. This will allow you to share reports with multiple stakeholders regardless of whether they have a Sprout account or not.

Top Facebook competitive analysis tools

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social provides social media marketers with a well-rounded perspective on competitors' performance across various platforms and data points.

With Sprout's range of competitive reports, you can evaluate and enhance your social strategy using valuable metrics from Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and more. Sprout's suite of competitive intelligence tools enables teams to see what your competitors are posting and compare your growth to the profiles you are monitoring.

Through Sprout's Premium Analytics, you gain in-depth insights into your social platforms, accompanied by customizable interactive charts and graphs tailored to your objectives. If you want to discover how to use Sprout for analyzing your Facebook competitors, sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

2. Socialinsider

Socialinsider is another social media management tool that offers several different features-including Facebook competitor analysis reporting.

Marketers use Socialinsider to monitor metrics like views, engagement, follower growth and more, while also giving them access to information like historical content trends and top-performing content. The platform also helps users get competitive insights at the campaign level, so you can study specific plays in competitor strategies.

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch offers data analytics for consumer intelligence and social media management, including competitive benchmarking for Facebook and X.

These tools allow users to monitor their competitors' social media output, while tracking all mentions of specific competitors across the web. Reports can be exported and shared via Excel, PowerPoint, PDF file or through the Brandwatch API.

May the best brand win

A Facebook competitor analysis can be exactly what you need to level up on the network. Understanding where their strengths and weaknesses lie is the first step to understanding how to outperform them on social.

Compiling that data takes a lot of work, especially when analyzing multiple competitors. Sprout Social can eliminate all the data collection work so you can focus on planning your next steps. Sign up for a trial today to test out the Facebook Competitor Report free for 30 days.

Ronnie Gomez

Ronnie Gomez is a Senior Content Strategist at Sprout Social where she writes to help social professionals learn and grow at every stage of their careers. When she's not writing, she's reading or looking for Chicago's next best place to get a vanilla oat milk latte.

Read all articlesby Ronnie Gomez