Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase
2011 | Silver | Best Use of Digital Search
Advertiser: Unilever Malaysia Brand: CIMB 2G2BT SEM Creative Agency: Branded3 Credits: Tan Soon Liang (Digital Director), Ruby Subramaniam (Junior Digital Planner Yeo Li Ying (Trainee Digital Planner), Wong Tse San (Client Services Director), Joanne Yau (Media Director), Yvonne Lee (Senior Media Planner), Suraiya Abdul Samad (Asst. General Manager, CIMB Bank)
Challenge
All banks involved in Search Engine Marketing are bidding for the same pool of finance- related keywords. Competition is fierce and average bids keep increasing between 20%–30%. How can we avoid paying highly overpriced Cost- Per-Clicks (CPC), and yet effectively reach out to customers who are searching for us?
Solution
We crafted a revolutionary digital search segmentation funnel. A “never before” strategy allowed us to identify a user’s current state in the digital purchase cycle based on the keywords they use. We analyzed and allocated 14,605 keywords into the five cycles; awareness, affinity, consideration, preference and action. Thus, the campaign structure was designed by user behavior terms and not by the typical categories listing strategy used for every traditional search campaign.
Execution
Customized messaging for every path within the funnel and real-time optimization to drive high levels of click-throughs: 1. Awareness: Broad terms e.g. savings, loans, deposits. 2. Affinity: Lifestyle keywords e.g. smartphone, condo, car. 3. Consideration: Competitive keywords e.g. compare term deposits, best savings interest rates, Citibank. 4. Preference: Highlighting key strengths e.g. CIMB exchange rate, CIMB unit trust, CIMB Investsave. 5. Action: Immediacy to convert e.g. CIMB Bank branch, CIMB customer service, CIMB Bank contact.
Results
Average CPC reduced by 67%. This resulted in 87,518 more clicks for the campaign, exceeding targets by 89%! The industry average Click-Through-Rate is 2% – 3%. This campaign achieved 13.8%. Top text ad position was consistently maintained. Our digital search segmentation funnel worked brilliantly.
