#MarketingExcellenceAwards SG 2021 highlight: Singsaver reaps rewards with content investment

In recent years, personal finance platforms such as Singsaver have gained popularity among Singaporeans who look to such platforms for educational information on a range of finance topics, easy comparison tools, the ability to apply for financial products and the latest industry news. 

While Singsaver wanted to empower consumers to make smarter and better personal finance decisions, it faced stiff competition from major banks, investment platforms, insurance providers as well as comparison platforms including MoneySmart and Seedly. Hoping to increase top of mind awareness, Singsaver launched a six-month campaign to increase visibility and strengthen its brand statement among its target audience. The campaign impressed the judges and earned Singsaver a finalist position in the category of Excellence in Brand Awareness at MARKETING INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore 2021.

Challenge

In July 2020, Singsaver surveyed 1,205 Singaporeans on their awareness of personal finance platforms. Results showed that only 11% of the respondents had unprompted awareness of Singsaver. MoneySmart and local banks dominated Singaporeans’ top of mind awareness due to their longer presences in the industry. In addition, with most personal finance platforms offering similar solutions and services, Singsaver was not able to differentiate itself and stand out in the industry.

Singsaver needed a campaign that would not only create brand awareness among its target audience but also walk away feeling confident in their financial future with Singsaver’s content and tools.

Strategy

Singsaver understood that its key target audience, the Millennials, often had a bad reputation for being reckless spenders. However, Singsaver recognised that they face unique economic challenges. Many Millennials graduated around the Great Recession when unemployment was high and salaries were lower. Yet at their peak earning years, they once again face setbacks due to the pandemic. As a result, they have fallen behind on key milestones such as marriage and parenthood due to financial reasons. As Singsaver dug deeper into the financial habits and goals of its target audience, Singsaver realised that the Millennials were most interested in the following topics: 

1. Retirement planning
2. Growing personal wealth
3. Securing a financial future upon death 
4. Optimising savings accounts and investing in new opportunities 

These four topics formed Singsaver’s Financial Wellness Framework. With the aim of being Singapore’s most trusted financial platform among the Millennials, Singsaver targeted improvement across four key brand statements: Trustworthy, One-Stop Shop, Confidence and Impartiality.

To gain more trust from its target audience, Singsaver needed to build an informational hub for all Singaporeans’ financial needs and present it in a way that is easy to understand. The team identified three key tactics to educate the market:

1. Create relevant and interesting short form content series on Singsaver’s blog and Instagram that will be distributed through its email database and social media;
2. Build an interactive savings guide on its platform that customers have access to anytime they are in the Singsaver ecosystem; and
3. Launch a platform for Singaporeans to compare investment options, provide easy to understand educational content and push out exclusive sign-up rewards.

To reach the target audience effectively, the team planned to amplify its content through social and display advertising through targeted advertising. A content amplification feed which mapped content to audience interest and behaviour was also developed to ensure that its audiences were exposed to relevant ads.

Execution

Based on the Financial Wellness Framework, Singsaver created a content strategy of relevant content themes and pillars to become the most trusted one-stop shop in personal finance in Singapore with impartial content that gives readers confidence to make their own financial decisions.

Singsaver blog

Content on Singsaver’s blog had to cut through noise, be relatable to the audience and most importantly, be differentiated. To further awareness, Singsaver amplified this organically via Facebook and ran display ads to expand its audience. Blog content included investigative pieces that uncovered hidden expenses of different lifestyles, first person vox pops of real stories about money and unbiased reviews of financial products in the same category to list out pros and cons for readers to make their own informed decisions.   

Social media

With most personal finance platforms using Instagram to communicate with their audiences, Singsaver realised that its content had to be engaging enough to cut through clutter. The team designed a platform specific strategy to arm its target audience with practical financial solutions to daily money conundrums. The content covered issues that Millennials were concerned with such as: 

• Wedded Wednesday: Bite sized content on issues faced by couples in Singapore such as financial considerations when buying a BTO
• N$FW: Advice on how to increase income and manage salary
• Down to Finance: Debunking financial myths and financial hacks
• Retired or Just Tired: “Aunt Agony” styled posts based on crowd-sourced questions on Instagram Stories 
• To further amplify content on Instagram, a SG$7k spend was implemented to grow the audience by 75%.

Launch of Ultimate Savings Guide

The financial impact of the pandemic was a heavy blow to Millennials. Many who took part in Singsaver’s COVID 19 survey revealed that they were unable to grow their savings, faced pay cuts and job losses. 

To address these issues, Singsaver launched a definitive guide to financial survive the pandemic. The Ultimate Savings Guide for COVID-19 and beyond provided concrete steps on how to save, invest and multiply income efficiently. 

The guide was designed to be interactive and hosted on a microsite on SingSaver’s customer dashboard. Customers who logged in could view charts, infographics as well as expansive visuals and text. To drive viewership of the guide, Singsaver advertised digitally across Instagram, Telegram and key opinion leaders. The content enabled SingSaver to solve real-life problems, while positioning the brand as a trustworthy source that equipped readers in taking the driver’s seat in their own financial journey.

The Investment Hub

Through research, Singsaver realised that even among Millennials who claimed to be financially savvy, there were clear knowledge gaps when it comes to making investments. Singsaver identified top three pain points:

1. Too many available options 
2. Difficulty in comparing benefits
3. Lack of information online 

To round out Singsaver’s campaign to be the one-stop shop personal finance platform, the team worked together with product, tech and sales to build an Investment Hub in 12 short weeks.

The Investment Hub consisted of five comparison pages, an Investment Skyscraper and an extensive content catalogue that provided readers with impartial information and empowered them in making the right investment decisions based on their life goals. Singsaver also onboarded investment platforms across the categories of online brokerage, stocks, forex and robo advisors to offer users exclusive sign-up gifts. The team also rolled out a full-funnel digital media campaign to speak to the audiences’ different motivations and desired outcomes.

Results

Singsaver’s campaign was a success despite the highly competitive personal finance platforms category. Singsaver’s site traffic increased by 93.14% while its Instagram followers grew by 74.57%. This ultimately translated to an increase of 35.11% in site conversion. Singsaver’s USG delivered a 75% improvement in unique page views and acquired a 102% increase in new audiences for the brand. The Investment Hub brought in a 208% increase in revenue driven by investment content. Singsaver’s campaign also brought about a significant shift in unprompted awareness for the brand due to its strong brand differentiation.