How to Target Competitors' Audience on Instagram

Your competitors have already done the hard work of building an audience of people who want what you sell. This article breaks down exactly how you can strategically connect with those followers and turn them into your own loyal customers. We'll cover the organic engagement tactics, content analysis strategies, and smart advertising approaches you can start using today.

Why Your Competitor's Audience is a Goldmine

Targeting your competitors' audience on Instagram isn't about stealing followers - it's about connecting with a pre-qualified group of people. These users have already raised their hands and shown interest in the types of products, services, or content you offer. In many ways, your competitor has curated your ideal customer profile for you. By engaging with them, you aren't starting from scratch, you're joining a conversation that's already happening and showing them a new, compelling alternative (that’s you!). This approach is more efficient and often yields a higher return on effort than casting a wide, generic net in hopes of finding the right people.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Competitors

Before you can target an audience, you need a precise understanding of who your competitors actually are on Instagram. A shallow search won't cut it. Your goal is to find active, engaging accounts that share a similar target demographic.

Types of Competitors to Look For:

• Direct Competitors: These are the obvious ones. They sell a similar product or service to the same target market. If you sell hiking boots, another hiking boot company is your direct competitor.
• Indirect Competitors: They solve the same problem as you but with a different solution. For a hiking boot company, an indirect competitor could be a brand that sells trail-running sneakers or even all-terrain sandals. They are competing for the same customer's budget and attention for outdoor footwear.
• Aspirational Competitors: These are brands you admire in the same industry, who might be slightly larger or have a really strong community. Patagonia is an aspirational competitor for many smaller, sustainable outdoor brands. Their audience can be a great target as they're passionate about the industry's values.

What Makes a Competitor Worth Targeting?

Follower count is just a vanity metric. What you’re looking for is a genuinely engaged community. When you look at a potential competitor's profile, ask these questions:

• Is there a conversation in their comments? Look for real interactions between the brand and its followers, not just a string of emojis and spam. Are people asking questions? Are others responding? This is a sign of a healthy, interested audience.
• Who is in their tagged photos? Check their tagged posts to see actual customers using the product or service. This gives you a raw, unfiltered look at who their real audience is.
• How consistent is their engagement? Do some posts get 5,000 likes while others barely get 100? Wild swings can indicate they're hitting the "explore page" lottery or buying followers. You want competitors with steady, predictable engagement, which suggests a loyal, core following.

Step 2: Engage Directly (And Thoughtfully) with Their Audience

This is the most hands-on, organic strategy, but it can be incredibly effective when done right. Your goal is to get on the radar of your competitor’s most active followers in a genuine way. No spammy DMs or "Follow me!" comments.

The Human-to-Human Method

1. Find a recent post from your competitor. Don't pick a week-old post, choose one from the last 24 hours. The people commenting and liking are the most active on the platform right now.
2. Visit the profiles of the people who left thoughtful comments. Skip the people who just tossed out an emoji. Look for people who wrote a real sentence. When you land on their profile, check if their bio and recent posts align with your ideal customer.
3. Engage with their content. Now that you're on a potential customer's profile, here's what to do:
   • Like two or three of their recent photos that genuinely resonate with you.
   • Leave one thoughtful comment on their most recent post. This is the most important part. Your comment should be about them, not you.

Let's make this more concrete. Say you're a small-batch coffee roaster, and your competitor is a larger, well-known coffee brand. You see someone comment on their latest post: "Just restocked on my favorite espresso blend!" You click their profile, see they post a lot of latte art, and live in a city you ship to.

• Bad Comment: "Great shot! If you love coffee, check out our page!" (This is spammy and self-serving.)
• Good Comment: "That latte art is incredible! How did you get the foam so perfect? I'm always trying to up my game." (This is a genuine compliment and a question. It starts a conversation.)

This strategy builds awareness and reciprocity. People are naturally curious about who is liking and commenting on their posts, and a sincere interaction often earns you a curious look at your profile. Remember: Instagram has limits on how many actions (follows, likes, comments) you can take per hour. Keep it moderate to avoid your account being flagged. Aim for quality, not quantity.

Step 3: Analyze Their Winning Content and Innovate

Your competitors' top posts are free market research. They show you exactly what resonates with the audience you want to attract. Your job isn't to copy them, but to understand the formula and create your own, better version.

How to Spot Winning Content:

• Identify the format: Are their most successful posts Instagram Reels, aesthetic carousel posts, user-generated content, or informative infographics? The format is often as important as the topic.
• Identify the themes: Look for recurring topics. Does their audience love tutorials? Do they go crazy for behind-the-scenes glimpses of the business? Do relatable memes perform best?
• Read the captions: How are they writing their captions? Are they telling a story, asking a question to prompt engagement, or keeping it short and punchy? Pay attention to their call-to-actions.
• Dive into the comments: What questions are people asking in the comments of these top posts? Those unanswered questions are content goldmines for you. If people constantly ask, "How do you do that?" your next piece of content can be a Reel showing them exactly how.

For example, a skincare brand notices their competitor's most commented-on post is a carousel explaining the difference between Vitamin C serums. Instead of just making another carousel, they could create a short, engaging Reel where an esthetician breaks down the science in 30 seconds and shows a close-up of the product's texture. You take an idea that is proven to work and add more value or present it in a more dynamic way.

Step 4: Use Instagram Ads to Directly Target Their Audience

While organic methods are great for community-building, paid ads are the best way to accelerate your reach. Instagram's Ad Manager offers powerful tools to get your brand in front of your competitor's audience.

Targeting by Interest

Creating an audience on Instagram is where you can be surgical. While you can't type "followers of @competitor" and target them directly, you can get incredibly close with "Interest Targeting".

1. In your audience settings in Meta Ads Manager, go to the "Detailed Targeting" section.
2. Start typing the name of your competitor's brand. If they are large enough, they will appear as an "Interest".
3. By selecting this interest, you are telling Instagram to show your ad to people who have demonstrated an interest in or "liked" pages related to that competitor. This is an extremely powerful proxy for targeting their follower list.

Building Lookalike Audiences

Another powerful strategy is using Lookalike Audiences. If you have an existing customer base (even a small one), this is a go-to method.

• You can create a custom audience from sources like your own Engaged Instagram Followers, your customer email list, or people who have visited your website.
• Once you have a custom audience, you can ask Instagram to create a "Lookalike Audience." This is a new audience of people that share similar characteristics and behaviors to your existing customers.
• Because your current customers likely share many traits with your competitors' customers, this Lookalike Audience will almost certainly include a huge chunk of their followers.

A Quick Tip on Ad Creative

When running a competitor-targeted ad, your ad must immediately communicate your unique value. These users already follow a similar brand, so you need to give them a reason to pay attention to you. Can you address a pain point they have with the competitor? Offer a better price? Better quality? A unique feature? Be direct and clear about why they should give your brand a look.

Final Thoughts

Targeting your competitors' followers is an effective strategy that blends smart organic engagement, insightful content creation, and an optional boost from paid advertising. By identifying the right communities and engaging with them genuinely, you can consistently attract a pre-qualified audience to your profile and grow your brand with intention.

Putting these strategies into practice requires consistency and organization. When you're saving content ideas from competitor research, planning Reels, and scheduling posts, it’s easy for things to get messy. At Postbase, we built our tool around a clean, visual calendar to make planning and scheduling all of that content feel effortless. As you attract new followers from these efforts, our unified inbox helps you manage all the new comments and DMs in one place, so you can focus on building relationships without constantly switching between apps.