WOrk:Samtrade fx
Company background
S.A.M. Trade (Samtrade) is an award-winning Singapore broker presented in South-East Asia and China.
It was founded in 2015 serving over 200,000 clients worldwide. The offerings include forex, commodities, crypto, and CFD trading. Copy-trading platform is developed.
I was hired as the Head of Marketing (Integrated) for Samtrade.
Due to the pandemic restriction, Samtrade C-management decided to cancel all offline events. My working scope mainly performed in digital marketing and social media.
+ Working scope
Marketing plan & strategy
Brand & Customer Strategy
Communication tools utilization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content marketing - creation & curation
Google Search engine marketing - PPC（SEM）
Facebook, Youtube & LinkedIn Social Media Marketing
Finance Media Media Plan & Buy
Online Reputation Management
Landing page design & creation
Copywriting & Translation
+ Region
South-East Asia Region
The situations
The lack of a well-organized marketing plan and media plan for campaigns resulted in high Inefficiency cost
Samtrade launched promotional campaigns occasionally with board and unclear targeting segment and position. It was only advertised on Facebook. It showed marketing communication tools were underused.
Media and ad buy performances were low. Low CTR resulted in low lead generation. The efficiency of media and ad buy needed to be optimized.
The utilized sponsorship deal limited the huge positive impact of brand presence
Samtrade signed a sponsorship deal with the Premier League football club but lack of interaction between both parties on ATL and BTL channels. It reflects there’s room for Samtrade to utilize the partnership.
Negative reviews and questions stopped the potential clients
Since Samtrade obtained the ASIC license in 2021. Before the license was granted. Questions and negative reviews were flooding the Google search engine. Also, the most frequently appearing search result on the SERP was sponsorship news but company information. It means the next step was optimizing the SERP.
The approaches
Research, analysis and evaluation through metrics to discover existing issues
After I reviewed the existing marketing team operation with the team head. We listed out the issues as abovementioned.
I optimized master customer behavior, segmentation, positioning and marketing mix through metrics and analysis to formulate effective annual and monthly marketing plans and strategies to support business priorities. One of the components of the analysis was competitors' marketing and business landscapes research. It helps Samtrade to gain insights into strategized marketing plans and strategies.
Understanding the market and segmentation to formulate a cost-effective efficient marketing plan
To keep up with the market trend, I also explored and evaluated opportunities for effective emerging marketing communication tools (social media, advertising, emailing and media) and regional marketing trends (Finance and technology).
Based on the evaluation, the takeaways were the market in SEA region was competitive with some leading brokers. The SWOT result showed us the offerings and pricing in the market were similar. The margin cost was low. Hence we would not adopt the skimming pricing strategy but differentiation.
The good news was the persona shows our clients (direct clients) concerned about the safety of a platform. Promotions were welcome. Customers were loyal.
Formulated sales campaigns to generate leads and sales promotion on fully utilized digital channels
Next, working on formulating the marketing plan and marketing campaigns with the conversion funnel - Awareness, consideration, acquisition and retention. Spearheaded the regional teams on the regional marketing initiatives, and sales campaigns to acquire new customers and retent loyal customers. Implemented effective social media and media plans and optimized the existing digital channels' performance to execute the promotions on channels. Channels: Online – Facebook Ad, Google Ad (Text and Display Advertising) and YouTube Ad, Programmatic ad, Ad banner on media, press release distribution, PPC and landing page. Programmatic and remarketing. Weibo and emailing. Offline – Expo and seminar. For example, the Implementation of the product launch project of Cryptocurrency CFD offering on major communication to drive traffic and sales. Distributed through press releases, website and social media content (Facebook and Linkedin).
Continued ... The approaches
Strengthened the brand image and awareness through SEO strategies
To maximize the performance of the marketing campaign and optimize the SERP. We also need to focus on the content marketing which often takes place on social media channels (Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube etc.) I planned and oversaw social media calendar for digital channels to update the social media trends to promote the brand through content planning (creation and curation). I also performed daily social listening.
While we were actively promoting on Facebook and Google, we never forgot to Managed the social media accounts' operation and the account health to comply with policies. Because the nature of this industry resulting lots of restrictions on advertising.
Extend the brand exposure to the sports industry through the Valencia CF sponsorship deal to acquire new registration
On the sponsorship aspect, utilizing the sponsorship deal and implementing global launching plans through collaborating with the Valencia CF marketing team constantly to maximize the brand presence purpose.
Evaluations were one of the keys to success
Finally, supervised and evaluated all marketing campaigns and budgets through KPI, metrics, sales pipeline and analytic tools (Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager etc.) to assure their effectiveness. Including regional offices’ (China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines).
The key results
Growth of number of registrations and lead generations with the same spends
Strong brand presence in Europe and South-East Asia
Enlarged the market share through Crypto offerings and Vanlencia sponsorship deal
The key results
1000+
leads in 1 month in SEA regions campaigns beat the CPL benchmark
100K
Facebook Page followers reached to 100K in 3 months.
Rebranding
Lead the rebranding project to redefine brand position as leading SEA Fintech through launching the Cryptocurrency offerings.
The showcases
