How American Century Investments, a global asset manager, found a 10X difference in performance with AdParlor versus other partners to drive leads.

All About American Century Investments: Redefining Prosperity

American Century Investments has been a leading asset manager for nearly 60 years. Its story is one about passion for helping people – to become more financially independent and to give back something that’s more valuable than money. Together with its clients, American Century is redefining prosperity and was looking to use social media to drive its lead program further.

American Century decided it was time to evaluate the performance of its Facebook advertising to drive qualified leads. So, the company invited Facebook Marketing Partners to participate in a bake-off to see which could drive the most qualified leads, at scale.


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AdParlor’s Approach with Lead Generation on Facebook & Instagram

AdParlor tested, tested and tested some more.

  • Creative Segmentation: Dozens of creative iterations and multiple ad formats were utilized across Facebook and Instagram, including Carousel, Video/Link Click and Lead Ads. The client leveraged AdParlor’s creative team for help writing effective ad copy to use for A/B testing.Ultimately, AdParlor found a sweet spot with Video Lead Ads, which yielded the best conversion rate and gave their :15s and :30s videos massive exposure. A win-win!
  • Targeting Segmentation: American Century had a firm grasp on the demographics of its current clients, but challenged AdParlor to uncover new customers on Facebook and Instagram. AdParlor gleaned useful Audience Insights from profiling the client’s anonymized CRM data and website visitors.From this exercise, we identified common lifestyle trends and interests such as health & fitness, travel and charity work which were used to craft new “outside the box” audiences. In addition, AdParlor also leveraged Lookalike modeling and re-targeting tactics.

Lead Generation Campaign: AdParlor vs. Competitor

Results

Halfway through the bakeoff, AdParlor was the clear winner, generating more than ten times the number of leads versus its bakeoff opponent.

  • AdParlor drove 10X more leads than bakeoff competitor (204 vs 20)
  • AdParlor campaigns drove 10.43% Ad Recall Lift Rate on Facebook
  • AdParlor video campaigns yielded 32+% VTR on Facebook
  • AdParlor introduced the client to innovative social products and optimization tools that drive efficiency and scale

Conclusion

With the help of AdParlor, American Century Investments was able to generate qualified leads on social media more efficiently than ever before and garner useful insights about its target audience.


Next Steps

Have more you want to discuss? Reach out to us here and we’ll reply with even more ideas on how to apply this strategy for your paid social media campaign.