The Most Cost-Effective Performance Marketing For Fintech In Gulf [Case Study]
As the year winds down a lot of businesses will be looking over the last quarter with grim faces. The pandemic has been kind to very few, and most industries have suffered great financial loss in 2020. The industries that were partially, or fully digitized, fared better than most. Amazon is a prime example. However, digital marketing is used by almost every business out there. There are many companies out there that create Facebook pages and graphic images of their companies before they even open shop. Digital real estate is just as precious as the real deal. So if everyone is promoting their goods and services on the same platforms, why is it that digital marketing doesn’t work the same for everyone?
Marketing has always been data-driven and the age of big data has made it much easier to measure brand reach and rate of conversion on every single ad. Performance marketing is the optimization of digital ad campaigns so that the marketing budget is used in the most efficient way possible. Performance marketing is low risk, makes tracking performance per ad easy, and is ROI focused.
The people at BuyAnyInsurance.com thought to take this a little bit further. BuyAnyInsruance.com is a Dubai based insurance comparison website. It hosts some of the best insurance providers in the UAE and runs ads across many platforms. The competition in the insurance market is tough. The UAE is a unique market. It is populated by local Arabs with their unique tastes, as well as ex-pats from South Asia, Europe, and many other places of the world whose needs and demands are very different from the UAE nationals. So it was interesting to see how performance marketing can be used to measure ROI for such a diverse populace.
As the weeks went by we noticed that ads we ran across a few platforms produced the most leads. The rate of conversion on others was low to negligent. I believe companies operating in the UAE would like to know which platforms had the most lead generation so they focus mainly on those.
Marketing to the Intent
Google is listed in the Webster dictionary as a verb. To Google is to “obtain information about something or someone on the World Wide Web.” It essentially describes a search engine but there are over 140 search engines on the web; there are generic search engines and specialized engines that only focus on specifics such as pet care, medicine, or even bikes. But Google is king. And why is that? Google’s search engine results pages (SERP) are based on data gathered from its users to figure out their search intent. By employing SEO rules companies can tap into this and manipulate it into the top ten list. With Google’s reach and how many people use it as a primary source of looking for stuff on the cluttered web; this is a great place to be. Hardly anyone goes on to the next page on Google anymore because their search is optimized to deliver exactly what they want.
But is it effective in generating leads?
We need to keep a constant check on trending keywords and optimizing our content accordingly but it pays off. At an average cost of $1–2 per click in Google Ads, this isn’t a bad deal. Yes, companies have to keep their end of the bargain and keep working on their SEO. But overall we find that Google search intent is one of the best marketing resources to place your money on.
Testing New Adtech
Snapchat is very popular in the UAE, especially amongst the UAE nationals. It isn’t restricted to the younger demographic. The ideal customer for BuyAnyInsurance.com is between 26–40. These are prime Snapchat users. It is important to know your audience and which platforms they use more frequently to gauge which will be most effective to market on.
The language was another surprise factor. I am my team found that they got more responses to ads in the Arabic language. We’ve seen more engagement with our Arabic content than the English one. This is probably due to the lack of competition in Arabic content online. English content is at a point of saturation. Snapchat ads help us engage with a larger audience directly. The rate of conversion and ROI on Snapchat is very high.
Personalized Marketing
Interesting data came to light on how differently nationals and ex-pats engage with ads on social media. As mentioned before, BuyAnyInsurance.com focused primarily on English content for a long while before shifting focus to Arabic language ads. The English Facebook page had about 30% engagement and lead generation. The Arabic Facebook page, once launched, spiked their engagement and lead generation up to 70%. Now they started personalizing their ad campaigns according to the way their target audience engaged with the ads.
From the leads generated per ad, a clear pattern appeared. More South Asian ex-pats click on ads and are more likely to be diverted to a landing page than Arab nationals. So the Swipe Up ads, and CTA buttons don’t always work for an Arabic audience. They are more likely to schedule a call and give their lead in Facebook inboxes, comment sections, or Instagram DMs. Buyers from India and Pakistan need more information in their ads, are more willing to browse the landing page and website but not keen on sharing lead information. The data allows us to build these personality traits but it doesn’t mean they are written in stone; of course, every individual is different. What it does is allow us to build cost-effective marketing campaigns according to the demographic we are targeting.
Testing Advertising Objectives
There are many types of ads on Facebook, and to be honest they can be a little confusing. Which one do you choose? Which one is most effective? What matters is the objective you choose. You will find that the two most popular objectives on Facebook are Traffic and Conversion. Choosing the wrong objective can be a waste of your time and money because at the end of the day you won’t be getting out of the ad campaign what you wanted.
I and my team found that the conversion objective worked best for them. They were able to degenerate more leads and ROI on conversion ads than any other ads they ran on Facebook. Traffic is nice, but if it doesn’t convert the clicks into leads and sales, it has little point.
This is not to say that only conversion objective ads work on Facebook. But what it does clarify is that any company looking to advertise on Facebook successfully needs to know what its objectives are and what it seeks to achieve from the ad campaign. The options for ad optimization on Facebook are plenty, but if you don’t know how to use them they will be of little help.
Optimization Window
So you’ve decided on the Facebook ad objective; you’ve mounted the campaign and are reaping the conversions and leads. Now what? Now you wait for the optimization window. The optimization window is the period of time where your ad campaign has had as much of an impact as it could and is now getting stale. The window allows you enough time to optimize the content, change SEO, or tweak the graphics so it can go out into the world to generate more leads.
Ads can be optimized and edited, and they should be. The optimization window allows you to observe the engagement numbers and tweak changes while there is still enough interest in the campaign. It is a real-time edit on your campaign which can potentially save you on cost, and earn you more leads making the ROI on the ad exponentially better than it would have been in the optimization window had not been employed.
So there you have it. As the pandemic continues and companies look to reduce costs, performance marketing should be utilized to ensure that it is cost-effective and efficient.
