Akbank: Making The Most Of The Facebook Pixel

You can’t ignore it anymore - Facebook Ads is the new best way to reach more of your potential customers and it’s here to stay. Print advertising is good, but it doesn’t allow you to specifically target and appeal to your desired audience in a bespoke manner. Nor does it let you track the effectiveness of your adverts - which is critical ensuring that you’re marketing budget is being used efficiently. 
Plus this is where your customers spend most of their time now, as 28% of their time is spent on a social network, particularly on their mobiles. This is a huge chunk of their day and therefore provides a big opportunity for you to reach out and connect with them. 
This potential was spotted by Turkish bank, Akbank. They used Facebook mobile app ads to promote their loan personal products which saw them reach an average of over 500 customer conversions per day in the month-long campaign.
Akbank is one of the largest in Turkey. As of 2017, it had revenues of nearly £1.8bn. It has 840 branches across Turkey whilst employing 14,000 people. Serving of 15 million customers through its branches, ATMs, app and digital channels, as a result, it’s certainly a big player in the Turkish Banking Sector.

Why did Akbank use Facebook Ads?

A direct mobile app is a great way to establish long term retention with customers as they’re are more likely to stick with the brand that’s easily accessible on their phone. However, it’s one thing to have an app on your customer’s phone, but getting them to utilise it in a way that you want them to is where the real challenge lies. Akbank wanted to increase the number of people applying for personal loans through their Direkt Mobile App.
The main goal of their campaign, therefore, was to increase the sale of their loan products. To achieve this, Akbank created an ad campaign on Facebook specifically designed to encourage customers to download the Akbank Direkt mobile app and apply for a personal loan.
If you attended one of our latest workshops you’d have heard us highlight the importance of the Facebook Pixel to your marketing efforts, and the potential it has to find and target the right audience for your business. 
Akbank saw the benefit of this as they used it to identify people most likely to qualify for and take out a loan. After installing the Facebook pixel on their website, Akbank was able to capture an anonymised list of Facebook users that visited their personal loan pages. These people were more likely to take out a personal loan and so they could be remarketed to with relevant ads on their Facebook news feeds and other places.
Being able to segment their customers and profile them based on their mobile app usage, activity and behaviours was a huge advantage for Akbank as it helped them to understand exactly the type of person they were targeting. What’s more, Data from App Event optimisation was also factored in, this allowed Akbank to track the performance of the app and how people use it. Facebook’s core audience targeting allowed Akbank to find potential customers that have a high credit score as they’d be more likely to be accepted for a personal loan, whilst avoiding those that have already been assessed and declined.
Akbank is a shining example of how to use Facebook’s targeting tools to run an effective and impactful campaign. The results from the duration of April 3 - 21, 2017 are listed below:

• 15% of personal loans granted by the bank during the campaign (including via branches, call centres and digital channels) originated with Facebook ads

• 45% of approved loan applications made via the Akbank Direct mobile app originated with Facebook ads

• 70% lower cost per loan compared to other performance marketing channels

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Are you interested in seeing what Facebook Ads could do for your business? At Gather Social, we’re experts at utilising social media to drive more traffic and increase awareness for companies across many different industries. Get in contact today!