Visa Checkout

This changes
everything

Launching and driving adoption of the new Visa Checkout digital payment solution using an account based marketing campaign.

Problem

Visa needed to launch a new payment system – Visa Checkout – in the UK, and gain critical mass adoption by UK merchants. There were two parts to this brief. One – we needed to target CMOs, CTOs and CFOs in 120 key accounts, identified by Visa as critical to gaining a foothold in the UK market. Two – we were tasked with taking the campaign to a wider audience to reach other merchants who might be interested in Visa Checkout.

This required a value proposition and creative idea that would shake up the payments market, and a digital marketing campaign that would engage and convert key target accounts.

Audience insights

To establish relevance…

Audience research showed us that online merchants were operating in a fragmented market, competing across largely uniform eCommerce platforms that offered little differentiation in customer experience. As a result, merchants were forced to look for tactical changes to secure small and easily replicable competitive advantage.

At the same time, merchants were facing a more demanding consumer. Today’s shoppers are less tolerant of friction and expect a fast, connected, and seamless experience. Switching behaviours are high, and customers are actively seeking out merchants that meet their expectations.

High priorities for merchants include increasing conversion rates, customer loyalty, basket size/value and the ROI of marketing efforts. This means staying ahead of trends and innovation as well as dealing with the challenges of privacy and security.

In this context, under pressure to grow their business, merchants needed something BIG to realise a step change in performance, despite often having a restricted budget. As a result, they need something that will deliver maximum results for minimum effort, something that offers a fantastic return on investment. Visa Checkout was that something.

Planning, strategy and a creative idea

Articulating the proposition in a compelling way was where brand strategy and creative inspiration came together. The proposition,‘Visa Checkout – This changes everything’, was born out of the core audience insight that, in a market of little differentiation, merchants were looking for the small tactical changes that would deliver a competitive edge.

The ‘Visa Checkout. This Changes Everything’ Campaign positioned Visa Checkout as an industry-shifting payment solution that would redefine the eCommerce landscape.Something that you simply couldn’t live without. This was expressed in terms of a step change in the checkout experience – moving from a frustrating, time-consuming and arduous shopping experience, to one that is simple, fast and frictionless.

The sign-off “Small action. Big Results” juxtaposed the small action required to install and integrate the Visa Checkout payment solution, with the significant results it would deliver – reducing cart abandonment, increasing sales and providing a more seamless customer experience.

By aligning persona pain points with the features and functionality of the Visa Checkout, BBD developed a compelling and emotionally charged messaging that resonated with key UK merchants.

An innovative account-based marketing approach

Targeting senior IT decision-makers – CMOs, CTOs and CFOs – in 120 target merchant accounts, we implemented a one-to-many account-based marketing strategy. The digital campaign was executed as a multi-touch content flow, aligned with the various stages of the customer journey.

Using LinkedIn and account-based marketing software, DemandBase, we served a series of benefit-led ads and gated high-value content to engage target merchants, move them toward a point of decision, and capture their contact information. Target prospects were served a series of sequential ads and with audiences segmented based on their engagement with the previous ads. Creative executions heroed the Visa Checkout button. Those who engaged entered a four-step Eloqua email nurture campaign.

Over the course of the campaign we optimized creative, copy, ads and assets based on which messaging our target decision-makers responded to most; using Click-through-rate (CTR) and Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) as our guiding metrics.

Results

Since its launch in July 2017, Visa Checkout has secured one million consumer accounts in the UK, and is one of the fastest growing markets for Visa Checkout globally. As many as a third of online payment volumes in the UK are now attributed to Visa Checkout.

In other words, everything has changed.

Visa Checkout has become a popular way to pay specifically because cornerstone merchants are onboard – ranging from Ticketmaster to Hut Group, while those who have signed up include Tesco, QVC, Whitbread and Morrisons.

In numbers…

221

leads delivered via the LinkedIn sponsored content campaign (to January 2018)

71

of 82 reachable accounts engaged through DemandBase – Tesco, Just Eat and Sainsbury’s among the most engaged

11.9%

of target merchants signed up and 30.7% of those have since implemented VCO across their platform as a result of the campaign

B2B supporting B2C:

“The digital marketing campaign was nominated for a 2018 Drum award for Best Product Launch Campaign”

To June 2018, the Visa Checkout Consumer page had over 91k visitors, ranking it 9th out of all Visa UK pages