#BankWar: Sterling Bank Digital Hit.

Sterling bank shades again GTBank and some other Nigerian financial institute which means they are not done yet with the #bankwar. The massive publicity the #bankwars gave the bank is a stunt business can learn from.

The strategy is quite simple but worked. For a week, the sterling bank #bankwars reached about 1,066,020 accounts with an impression of 1,802,767 between August 16th to August 20th, 2018 using hashtag report monitoring tools…

Generating that impression on twitter would have cost the bank, nothing less than $1000 but they were able to push everyone tweeting and retweeting. Over 10 banks were actually shaded– Access Bank, First Bank, Union Bank, Zenith Bank, GTBank and others. For two weeks, the media would not allow the issue to lay at rest as it generated lots of excitement.

The most retweeted tweet came from the account @_DarkMond while the owner of the account @xvnthe tweeted which generated over 48.5k impression. This is the essence of content, the reach, and impression.

A content that goes viral can be measured by the number of people reached but also, it is important to know the content-lift, and for this, you look at the impression which stood at a ratio of 1.69 (more than one person viewed the tweets posted by another more than twice while using the hashtag).

A list of the contributors with tweets that generated over a thousand are

1. @xvnthe with 48.5k impressions
2. Prinzgbemi with 35.8k impressions
3. Kroniclesofjayi with 11.9k impression
4. Ogededidun with 8k impression
5. the_omotola with 1.2k impression

Ordinarily, Twitter has more male Nigerian to female with the age group dominated by 22 years of age. From the one week analysis of the #bankwars by Sterling Bank of Nigeria, 79.4% contribution came from the male while a paltry 20.6% came from the female.

This means that out of the total reach within the five days I analyzed, the content was engaged by over 8.4 million Nigerian males. This evidence shows that good content would gain popularity with male youth than female and brand managers should think about using Twitter to promote more products.

Also, it is important to anticipate the react (or sentiment) people would give the content. The #bankwars could have gone wrong but the majority of the people shared a positive sentiment on the content. They gave it a positive meaning (more of jokes) than a negative meaning.

67.1% reacted positively to it, 9.7% reacted negatively while 23.2% stayed neutral on the discussion. Within the five days analyzed based on the keyword #bankwars, 72 contributions were received with 100 tweets posted on it.

Looking at the devices used showed that most participants to the discussion had 61.5% of people using Android phones while 19.2% use an iPhone. This alone reveals some information about the audience and what product would be best suited for them.

Though it is not sufficient, it adds to knowing your target market. You can read how digital marketing can help to produce value here.

As mentioned earlier, it is not just about looking at the number of people reached, it is important for a brand to measure the retweets and replies of the content posted.

For a content manager, it depicts that people want contents similar to the one posted. So energy should be contributed to ensuring creative and copy lines match with this content. At least for more weeks to come.

Aside from the hashtag popularly used, closest hashtag being #bankwar without an s, recorded 97.996 accounts reached and generated as a result of post engagement, 111,050 impressions.

Based on the reaction from people, Sterling Bank media team launched another hashtag #breakupnote which within 17 minutes recorded 12,112 impressions from 11,488 people that got the post.

However, unlike the other hashtag, there is no much media buzz to the breakup note hashtag. @Chemicalbrodar alone within three hours gave the content 11.5k impression just from his engagement with the content.

But what are the lessons of the #bankwars sponsored by Sterling Bank of Nigeria?

Here are the lessons of the Sterling bank #bankwars that happened in Nigeria:

1. Digital Marketing Planning: I am sure the digital team of sterling bank planned this all out before setting out for the fight with other major banks. They were seriously prepared for the backlash and also they were able to use a subtle creative that made people think and admire the team involved. Even though they may not be able to measure the impact at first but I am sure, there must be a sort of PR planning alongside the digital marketing plan before the content was made public. We do that very well at Dreamspire Media Agency as you can check our offers.
2. Digital Marketing Creativity: Most people who were involved in the hashtag #bankwar saw it as one of the biggest viral creative in Nigeria and of course, it seems so. For it to have trended for weeks with other financial institution and businesses latching on it and gaining more brand recognition as a result of participation. The tone of the creative was a marvel with a subtle description of some competing financial institution like First Bank of Nigeria, Access Bank, GTBank, Union Bank and about five more represented through imagery, letters and colors. It was more like a fun war that eventually gave them over $1,000 worth of free ads.
3. Media is not all about Money: Properly planned strategic creativity can even make a digital marketing campaign much more successful than imagined with a lower media budget. This is what the team actually achieved at the end of the day.  They spent less money to gain more traction for the brand as well as realize more in terms of lead generation, profit, and overall business objectives. In their communication, the message was clear especially to Generation Y and Z that quickly promoted via a retweet, mentions, and likes. They communicated the idea of a one customer bank taking customers higher through delivering quality service.
4. Effective Teamwork: Having an effective digital team is important, those who can bring in ideas on how to leverage digital assets to achieve business objectives. An effective and efficient team delivers value through their actions online. They promote, connect and engage with a purpose. They tend to consolidate the work of others within their organization. To them it is not just about work and post, it is looking at how to effectively drive visitors and customers through the marketing funnel. You can go through our 22 Benefits of Social Media for the Nigerian Business as it would help you understand the importance of Digital Marketing.
5. Marketing Opportunity: For every small and big business, this shows that with a strong creative idea, there are possible probabilities to win over your competitors’ customer or even discover a new one. Both can be achieved digitally by paying attention to the pain points of people online.
6. Marketing Research: To buttress Marketing opportunity, a close look at what people talking about could open new areas a business can venture into. People most time communicate their grievances, perception, style online and a careful look at these variables or signals would help a business understand what to add, what to take away, what to leave from their current business model and strategy.

We have talked about some many parts to the Sterling Bank #bankwars, #bankwar and #breakupnote. We analyzed the metrics and discussed the benefits the creativity has given the business, not just in terms of publicity but recorded lead generated.

We also touched on lessons to learn as a Digital Marketer or a business and we look forward to your contribution on the lessons as well.

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