Situation / Challenge

Purchasing Power is a buy now, pay-over-time purchase program sponsored by affiliated brands and organizations. It empowers customers to regain financial control and buy the items they need and want.

Purchasing Power came to Sage with a task to reach its federal government customer audience. Purchasing Power’s objectives were to raise brand awareness with this audience, increase traffic to the website, boost new user registration, optimize the new-user journey to drive higher conversion to full-time buyers, and uncover what moves the federal registrant to action.

Approach

Sage supported these efforts with a three-vector approach:

• Umbrella direct to consumer messaging — Sage refined and improved existing tactics, like geotargeting, with sophisticated and dynamic use of media channels, timings, appeals, calls to action and landing page content. Our approach provided continuous exposure while enabling other vectors to focus on attributes, themes and creative tailored to specific locations or missions.

• Geographic focus — Sage targeted US metro regions with disproportionate federal employment. For example, the National Capital Region is home to more federal employees than four or five of the largest metro areas, but accounts for only 15% of current Purchasing Power buyers.

• ABM-style campaigns — Sage focused these primarily on geotargeting and sustained engagement with third parties. We presented vertical targeting by location and facilities of agencies with highly concentrated workforces, and horizontal targeting by role of remote employees at agencies with highly federated missions.

Sage delivered all three approaches through a six-month campaign covering a variety of creative and outlets including:

• Paid social media campaigns.

• Run-of-site display ads on federally focused websites.

• List acquisitions and digital ad space in federally focused email newsletters.

• Out-of-home transit billboard ads and bus shelter displays.

• Streaming video ads on premium content creators and YouTube.

• Retargeting ads.

• Direct mail campaigns through Valpak.

We crafted a series of messages for those various platforms, applying to a variety of relatable situations like the cost of credit, unexpected expenses and holiday shopping.

Results

During our six-month campaign, Purchasing Power garnered over 20 million impressions, 50,000 clicks and visits to its website and 98 new user registrations.

Sage’s creative efforts also resulted in a 2021 Gold MarCom Award.