Building a strong digital marketing presence
Headquartered in Toronto, Scotiabank provides a full range of financial products, solutions, and advice to over 24 million retail and commercial customers across North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Asia-Pacific region.
When Scotiabank recently focused on building a strong online presence, the bank knew prospective customers were using digital media more than ever to identify financial services that fit their needs. In light of this, the team at Scotiabank understood the importance of a strong digital marketing presence, especially during a customer’s consideration phase.
The search for smarter bidding at scale
In its previous digital campaigns, Scotiabank was limited to fewer integrated platforms, but this time around the company decided to use Google Marketing Platform’s full stack. The team’s goal was to drive better performance with bid strategies and streamline the platforms used to manage accounts. Scotiabank immediately wanted to put the stack to the test after discovering how smart bidding strategies within Google Search Ads 360 — part of Google Marketing Platform — could use multiple conversion data points and provide the ability to scale.
The bank wanted to bid smarter in its credit card application process to optimize the overall number of applications, particularly those with a higher possibility of converting into a credit card purchase. To do this, Scotiabank worked with its Search Ads 360 team to design a formula column that took the “application start tag” and the “final credit card application tag” and weighed them according to their value. This custom formula column was then used as a conversion source for the bidding algorithm. The goal was to increase sales without increasing the budget by using a more sophisticated bidding strategy that focused on the strongest applications.
Seamless integration leads to testing and optimization
A key goal for Scotiabank was to become as connected as possible in its digital and offline media deployment and attribution. Search Ads 360 helped the company tie its search information to branch engagement and sales more effectively through the offline conversion tracking feature.
Scotiabank also activated the automated bid modifier setting, a Search Ads 360 smart bidding feature that helps bidders automatically set the right bid modifier for mobile, remarketing lists for search ads, and custom locations. As the company developed more confidence and trust in the algorithm, the Search Ads 360 account management team kept an eye on the campaign’s performance and provided strategic recommendations to further optimize the bids.
Saving time, increasing conversions, and looking toward the future
What started as a trial for Scotiabank turned into a company-wide initiative, with Search Ads 360 now used for the rest of the bank’s business. After only ten weeks, Scotiabank improved the application-to-transaction rate for its credit card business by 15.4%. Additionally, the bank improved its impression share lost due to rank by 78%, its average position by 33.3%, and its mobile transactions by 25.8%.
Scotiabank is now working with Search Ads 360 to capture additional signals, such as real-time application status. These will allow the company to bid even more granularly in its conversion process to find the most valuable prospects.
