With Meta's advertising solutions, some of which are powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the bank also leverages the social media platform's collective reach of 3.9 billion monthly active people to identify and target the customers best suited to their services to obtain more personalized results. and profitable marketing strategies.
Targeted approach to driving customer acquisition
Meta allows Standard Chartered Bank to not only personalize messages to different customer segments, but also target and discover new audiences that the bank may not have considered.
"This cross-industry approach ensures that our marketing efforts are more efficient and effective in driving customer engagement and ultimately increasing customer acquisition," said Haymans Fung, MD, chief marketing officer at CPBB, global partnership marketing for Hong Kong and director of Standard Chartered Bank.
"We are strategically focused on social media users who align with our entire suite of retail banking products, including foreign exchange, credit cards, personal finance and wealth management."
A data-driven approach to campaign optimization
According to Sunny Ko, Meta's head of industry in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the bank and Meta have been testing A/B advertising solutions since the partnership was formed to improve the bank's marketing strategy.
This ongoing partnership allows the bank to continually evaluate and improve the effectiveness of its advertising campaigns, he said.
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method used in online advertising to compare two versions of a website, email, or ad to determine which works best.
This test takes a variety of formats, including ads with photos from previous days and ads with links. Recently, video ads and Meta Advantage products have also been included in the test.
Launched in 2022, Meta Advantage is a suite of products that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize campaign results. This allows ads to be personalized, linking them to the right people at the right time, providing greater efficiency for digital marketers and helping them save time and money.
According to Fung, retail banks often run multiple campaigns with different objectives and expected results.
From a digital marketing perspective, campaigns are typically designed with a specific goal in mind, such as increasing brand awareness, increasing website traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales.
To achieve these objectives, Standard Chartered Bank's marketing team in Hong Kong typically uses a combination of channels, messages and tactics tailored to the specific objectives of each campaign.
Generating high quality leads
When acquiring personal loan and credit card leads, one of the main goals is to generate high-quality leads with good conversion rates. In this context, Fung's use of Meta proved to be very effective.
An example is the bank's recent campaign in collaboration with Cathay Pacific. The partnership resulted in a significant increase in credit card applications: the bank received 3.1 times more applications compared to the previous campaign.
During a successful credit card promotional campaign, the bank saw a 40% increase in orders. In another targeted loan application campaign, the bank achieved an 8% increase in applications and a 13% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA).
Apart from adopting always-on advertising solutions on Meta platforms, the bank has also adopted best-of-breed solutions to drive customer awareness and attention.
Top-of-funnel advertising refers to messages that reach users before they are aware of the marketer's brand, product, or service.
On the creative side, the bank has taken a mobile-first approach, prioritizing short, bite-sized videos known as Reels. This strategy consistently delivers excellent performance results while maintaining a consistent cost per acquisition (CPA).
In a recent brand-building campaign, the bank featured Cantonese pop star Jay Fung in a video. According to Haymans Fung, Instagram has proven to be a very effective platform for these types of campaigns.
He also noted that textual content on Facebook can be more informative and searchable, while Instagram tends to feature visually appealing content for branding purposes.
“We also actively use Meta's lead generation solution to generate, nurture and drive leads through the marketing channel. This includes advertising, corporate messages and retargeting messages.”
Because of the different campaign objectives, Ko said the Meta team always knew that, given the diversity of the bank's activities, one marketing campaign could be very different from another. "That's why we always start by identifying your business problems and goals and strategizing from there," he said.
Maximize Marketing ROI with Data Analytics
Fung also highlighted the importance of learning from each campaign. This includes evaluating the effectiveness of content, channel selection, and target audience segmentation.
To address these needs, Meta's powerful data analytics capabilities provide a valuable advantage to bank marketing teams. They can evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign and optimize advertising investment.
“Our digital marketing team often attends workshops with the Meta team to learn about their latest features and products. We also have the ability to customize the strategy to fit our specific needs and objectives,” Fung said.
To gain insights into the short- and long-term return on investment (ROI) each marketing channel can generate for a bank's business, Meta worked with the bank to conduct a marketing mix model (MMM) analysis.
The results are calibrated and used for marketing budget allocation and annual planning. MMM analysis provides a more holistic approach to budget planning by using a data-driven approach to identify potential channel imbalances caused by different attribution systems.
Harness the power of data with AI-powered marketing
In the future, AI is expected to have a significant impact on targeted digital marketing. According to Ko, “AI is an important investment for our company and one of the opportunities we see to provide discovery engines for individuals and deliver value to businesses.”
"We have significantly increased our investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning at Meta compared to last year, with the majority of that investment going into advertising."
Ko said Meta is currently developing advanced commerce systems to offer a seamless customer journey through various digital tools such as advertising, community tools, messaging and more.
