By Taylor Richardson
Sr. Marketing Cloud Consultant, EMS Consulting

What is Salesforce Advertising Studio?

Salesforce Advertising Studio is an add-on that lets you leverage your first-party customer data to create and securely share audiences with your native social networks. Also called Ad Studio, it works with Salesforce Sales Cloud, Pardot, or Marketing Cloud with the same general functionality and workflow:

  1. Create your customer list/ data extension in Sales Cloud, Pardot, or Marketing Cloud with the desired criteria and exclusions.
  2. Set up any necessary automations to refresh the list/ data extension records and data however often you need.
  3. Go into Ad Studio and follow the simple workflow to create an Ad Studio Audience from your list/ data extension and choose which social networks to send it to.
  4. Now when you create a campaign in those social networks, this new Ad Studio Audience will be available for targeting with ads and content.

Take Control of Your Social Media Audience Targeting

Years ago in social media advertising, it was easy to build audiences based on home ownership, professional details, car ownership, and even zip code. Those options have been dramatically slimmed down after the political ad targeting controversy of 2016, leaving us financial services marketers at the mercy of targeting loans to people based on general interests. That may be acceptable for product lines like Checking and Deposits, but it poses a pretty big challenge for reaching Mortgage and Home Equity intenders.

With Ad Studio, you are no longer at the mercy of the limited targeting options available in each social network. You now have the power to use your very own customer data to create highly segmented audiences – and then target them with your highly relevant social media ads and content. And combined with other Salesforce marketing tools and platforms like Journey Builder and Audience Studio, the possibilities are truly limitless!

Looking for Marketing Cloud journey ideas for financial services? >>

Strategy #1: Cross-Sell to Existing Customers

Social media is a great way to generate product awareness and cross-sell opportunities with your existing customers and members while they’re taking a break from their day to scroll through Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. These moments are ripe for capturing your customers’ curiosity, attention, and inspiration – and capturing their potential interest in car or home loan refinances, home improvement loans, or even deposits and investing.

With Ad Studio, Marketing Cloud, Journey Builder, and Salesforce CRM all working together, what’s stopping you from crafting this incredible banking customer experience?

  • ‘Jennifer’ scrolls through LinkedIn during a work break, and her attention is caught by an article from her credit union about the advantages of personal investment advisors over robo-advisors.
  • She quickly scans and reads the article; near the end is an easy form to schedule a free consultation with a credit union investment advisor. She’s been a member a long time, so she doesn’t hesitate to fill it out.
  • Within minutes – before she even gets back to work — she receives a phone call from a credit union investment specialist, ready to schedule that consultation.
    • This piece is enabled by Salesforce CRM.
  • Jennifer is also put on an automated journey in Marketing Cloud that targets her with additional related social media content, email offers, SMS alerts, and more.

Strategy #2: Reach Customers Who’ve Opted Out of Email Marketing

As financial services marketers, we know how important it is to earn customers’ and members’ email addresses – and how devastating it is when they Unsubscribe from our email marketing. Other than outbound phone calls, direct mail, and occasional branch visits, there aren’t many other ways to reach them, right? Wrong!

With Ad Studio, you can work around this roadblock by reaching your customers and members through social media content and advertising, even if they’ve Unsubscribed from email marketing.

  • ‘Robert’ is a longtime customer of the bank and has had the same email address for over 10 years. Several years ago, he unsubscribed from the bank’s email marketing in order to de-clutter his personal email inbox.
  • Robert uses Facebook to keep up with family and share updates about post-retirement life; he spends a lot of time reading, scrolling, and even participates in gardening and woodworking groups.
  • His attention is caught by an article from his bank about financing home improvements and large purchases with HELOCs; it was the cool handmade wooden planter beds in the main photo that caught his eye and made him stop scrolling.
  • From the article he ends up clicking a link to the HELOC page on the bank’s website, and completing a pre-qual application to get the process started.

Strategy #3: Think Omni-Channel

With Ad Studio added to your marketing channel mix, it might be time to take a step back and think about your different channels, your different messages, and which type of communication each is best suited for.

A perfect example for financial services marketers is the Monthly Newsletter, if your bank or credit union is still producing one. Newsletters tend to contain several different types of messages and priorities, all smooshed into a single publication that is blasted to everyone, forcing them to open and hunt down relevant information. Instead of this batch-and-blast methodology, why not think omni-channel?

  • Educational content is better suited for social media distribution and targeting through Ad Studio audiences
  • Upcoming location-relevant events can be better targeted and advertised through social media too
  • Important organizational updates, transactional messages, and other more ‘critical’ communications like fraud and alerts are better suited for email and SMS.
  • By organizing and prioritizing your financial services communications this way, you earn your customers’ and members’ trust which leads to stronger opt-in and engagement rates.

Strategy #4: Go Evergreen and “Always On”

Because your Ad Studio Audiences are based on your lists and data extensions within Marketing Cloud and Pardot, they become quite easy to automate and keep refreshed for an “always on” evergreen strategy, as opposed to a seasonal strategy where campaigns have start and end dates.

What kinds of “always on” evergreen social media campaigns can you do? Well, anything really! Here are my favorite use cases:

  • New customer/member onboarding campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn with onboarding content, loan and account cross-sell, and CTAs to enroll in more services.
  • Product and service cross-selling to existing customers, just like the example in Strategy #1 above.
  • Ongoing financial education, how-to’s, scam prevention, and other topics that never really become irrelevant (just be sure to keep your content updated).

Become an Ad Studio Pro with EMS Consulting

Salesforce Ad Studio allows you to truly expand and hone your targeting abilities as a financial services marketer. Talk to the EMS Consulting financial services marketing experts today about setting up Marketing Cloud, Pardot, Salesforce, and Ad Studio!