Strategic Marketing: Brand Advocacy & Cost Reduction for Standard

This report examines strategic marketing strategies for STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE, focusing on cost reduction through brand advocacy and social media marketing. It highlights the importance of turning consumers into brand advocates by building trust and offering value, suggesting that genuine connections are more effective than traditional advertising or paid influencers. The report emphasizes leveraging social media platforms to reach a wider audience at a lower cost, citing the high internet usage in Cote d'Ivoire. It recommends creating engaging online content to foster a social relationship with potential customers, ultimately driving lead generation through online sharing by brand advocates. The conclusion reinforces the benefits of brand advocacy and social media presence for the bank's sustained growth and effective lead generation.

Strategic Marketing 0
Title: Strategic Marketing
Assignment Name:
Student Name:
Course Name and Number:
Professor:
Date:

Strategic Marketing 1
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Company’s Background and Issues to be Resolved..................................................................2
Cost-Cutting through Brand Advocacy......................................................................................3
High Reach and Cost Reduction through Social Media.............................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................6

Strategic Marketing 2
Introduction
This study aims to discuss the ways of cost reduction by utilizing social media
marketing with a focus on turning the consumers into the brand advocates, in the context of
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE. Brand advocacy is a kind of brand
loyalty when the consumers advocate the service and products of a brand to the others. They
are different from the influencers as they are not paid for influencing the customers, rather
doing it for their own pleasures. Influencers are the professionals whom people ask for
guidance, whereas brand advocates are the everyday people. These common people help in
marketing by promoting the brand out of love. In this effort, social media offers the most
cost-effective benefit by connecting the society people with the help of a virtual media. It
enables interaction between individuals in a group and even community and helps to figure
out the people of common interest. Social media provides a channel for sharing a common
interest between people.
Company’s Background and Issues to be Resolved
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE is a sister company of the
Standard Chartered group, located in the region of West Africa. The parent company is well
known for its operation in the field of corporate and institutional banking, though it also
operates retail banking. In spite of being a British multinational bank, the retail sector is not
conducted in its base country, the UK. Most of the retail banking is operated in their branches
located in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The branch at Cote d'Ivoire was established in
2001 (The Guardian, 2012). The partners of the branch are the government, local institutions,
and corporate. The core value of this organization lies in pleasant customer experience. The
strategic goal is increasing good customer experience by welcoming customer inquiries,
feedback, and suggestion.

Strategic Marketing 3
Cost-Cutting through Brand Advocacy
Brand advocacy is a response from the consumers’ side that they are connected with
the product and services of the brand. As the foundation of this relationship is trust, the brand
has to create a genuine connection with the consumers by offering them values. The values
inform the consumer what they mean for the brand. When people relate them with brand
identity, it will make them easier to respond. People can easily relate to their friends or alike
persons than any brand or an indirect relation such as an influencer (Sashi, 2012). When the
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE launches a new attractive interest
rest, they should appoint brand advocates for more response and also for the cost-cutting
programme. Investing in Television advertisement will go in vain as the viewers skip the ads.
Paying influencers will be high, while the people will listen to other consumers as they
believe they are on the same boat. Standard chartered bank should engage common people
for advocating their brand. People believe unbiased reviews which cannot be accessed from
the brand influencers, rather the brand advocates who give reviews based on their experience
and emotions. The company should not pay those consumers directly for recommending their
brand. Instead, they should provide some perks (Kumar et al., 2013). Making a long-lasting
relationship will not be developed only by offering incentives or gifts. It should work on a
deeper emotional level of the consumers. The bank should allow the consumers to have an
inside view into their new products and let them share the content first as they represent their
brand. This strategy will hit the emotion of the consumers as they will be feeling prioritized
by the brand. When the organizations share their employee stories with the consumers and
ask for sharing their own, it immediately creates an emotional connection because the
consumers started to relate themselves with the organization easily (Tarigan and Elsye
Hatane, 2019). Being familiar to the brand will enable them to do advocacy spontaneously.

Strategic Marketing 4
High Reach and Cost Reduction through Social Media
Social media enables the brand to reach a higher number of people than the traditional
media at a relatively low cost. The people of Cote d’Ivoire are internet savvy, as the statistics
of internet users are 213 million in Africa, whereas 191 belong to different social media
channels (Council on Foreign Relations, 2019). As per an influential 2016 report, Africans
have a higher rate of political tweets than the UK and US (Internetworldstats.com, 2019).
Therefore, using social media is a marketing effective tool for the STANDARD
CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE to reach up millions of people each day at a low
cost. The features of chatbots, live video, and VR in social media make easier to promote the
products. There are various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
LinkedIn, which allows the organization to show different sides of their traits. For example,
Twitter helps to assess opinions; Linked In is effective for gauging professional relevant
experience details of the brand; Facebook is best for interacting with people, while Instagram
is good for recording the journey of the brand (Berthon et al., 2012). Using the social media
platform, the STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE D'IVOIRE can build a social
relationship with the people from different races in Cote d'Ivoire. This strategic tool helps the
organization to create a real-life connection with the people who can be their potential
consumers. The organization should invest in creating engaging online content which will be
highly scalable by online exchanging (Thackeray et al., 2012). The brand advocates share
online content and information about the brand to their online community which guarantees
lead generation.
Conclusion
The organization can get immensely benefited by brand advocacy as the brand
advocates are huge in numbers while there are a handful of influencers. The organization can
utilize their social media channel to transform the consumers into their brand advocates.

Strategic Marketing 5
Social media presence will allow the consistency of the brand and it helps in effective lead
generation compared to a static commercial advertisement. As the People of Cote d'Ivoire are
found to be familiar with social media usage, operating a social media campaign for
increasing brand advocacy will benefit the STANDARD CHARTERED BANK COTE
D'IVOIRE.

Strategic Marketing 6
References
Berthon, P., Pitt, L., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D. (2012). Marketing meets Web 2.0, social
media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business
Horizons, 55(3), pp.261-271.
Council on Foreign Relations. (2019). In Africa, A New Tactic to Suppress Online Speech:
Taxing Social Media. [online] Available at: https://www.cfr.org/blog/africa-new-tactic-
suppress-online-speech-taxing-social-media [Accessed 12 May 2019].
Internetworldstats.com. (2019). Africa Internet Users, 2019 Population and Facebook
Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm [Accessed 12
May 2019].
Kumar, V., Bhaskaran, V., Mirchandani, R. and Shah, M., 2013. Practice prize winner—
creating a measurable social media marketing strategy: increasing the value and ROI of
intangibles and tangibles for hokey pokey. Marketing Science, 32(2), pp.194-212.
Sashi, C.M., 2012. Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social
media. Management decision, 50(2), pp.253-272.
Thackeray, R., Neiger, B.L. and Keller, H., 2012. Integrating social media and social
marketing: a four-step process. Health promotion practice, 13(2), pp.165-168.
The Guardian. (2019). Standard Chartered: a short history. [online] Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/aug/07/standard-chartered-short-history
[Accessed 12 May 2019].

Strategic Marketing 7
Tarigan, J. and Elsye Hatane, S. (2019). The Influence of Customer Satisfaction on Financial
Performance Through Customer Loyalty and Customer Advocacy: A Case Study of
Indonesia’s Local Brand. KnE Social Sciences, 3(11), p.270.