CASE STUDY

Highlighting Innovators on Social Media: Alger

Background Information

In 2018, Alger, a leading growth equity asset management firm headquartered in New York with over $30 billion in assets under management, approached Spark Growth with the intention of revitalizing its social media and content marketing programs.

This year, we worked with Alger to expand its DEI initiatives and visibility through social media. Supplementing its LinkedIn presence by leveraging one of its more recently adopted platforms, Instagram, we developed two strategically aligned series that explored the ways that Alger isn’t just an innovator and leader in growth investing but also an inclusive workplace.

Target Audience

At Spark Growth, we recognized that both investment management and institutional investor audiences are active on LinkedIn, a channel where they are likely to conduct company research.

Likewise, we identified Instagram as a platform frequented by a younger audience, such as undergraduates and graduates who may be interested in Alger summer internship program or working for the company upon graduation.

With this in mind, we developed a strategy that included both LinkedIn and Instagram to leverage each platforms’ unique offerings and audiences in order to best transmit the company’s intended messaging. The efforts on each platform worked in tandem to achieve our intended goals and are presented as a holistic endeavour.

Objectives

Our primary objective was increasing brand awareness of Alger’s DEI initiatives and work culture by strategically using key social media platforms to share targeted content and messaging.

The campaign explored Alger’s inclusive work environment and how it offers valuable career growth opportunities for individuals from all backgrounds while simultaneously positioning them as an authority in investment management.

Spark Growth recognized that the content Alger produced in collaboration with Citywire would perform optimally on LinkedIn because it presented strong DEI messaging while simultaneously representing Alger as a leading growth investment firm. This combination was perfect for catering to portfolio managers and analysts and any prospective recruits researching the company through LinkedIn.

The series featured three of Alger’s top thought leaders: Dan Chung, CEO and CIO; Amy Zhang, Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager; and Ankur Crawford, Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager. The content included videos of all three conversing together as well as written articles.

The second series, titled “Why Did I Join Alger,” presented what life at Alger looks like through the lens of Mia Pillinger, Associate Council; Christian Yeager, Vice President and Analyst; May Poon, SVP and Director of National Accounts; and Rick Singh, Business Analyst. Spark Growth developed this series with a lighthearted, accessible approach to appeal to the younger Instagram-focused audience, making it an ideal content series for this platform.

Challenges

For the “Why Did I Join Alger” series, the Instagram Reels produced were relatively short in length. One obstacle was how could we leverage this short content to create a longer series in order to stay top of mind among our Instagram audience.

Methods and Strategies

By using the different types of Instagram formats available, such as single image posts and carousels, we developed additional content to further add a sense of anticipation before a Reel was released or provided more linking opportunities to key landing pages on the Alger website.

Spark Growth created twelve posts to promote the series on Instagram, utilizing both Reels, Carousels, and Single Image post types. The Reel video format has become increasingly popular on the platform over the last year, and the increase in potential reach made utilizing the format a key component of our strategy.

Additionally, the Carousel enabled us to transmit more information than just a single post could provide, allowing for a more in-depth explanation of the employee’s perspective.

Spark Growth also developed several posts to promote the Citywire series across LinkedIn. These included posts with strategically worded descriptions combined with short, enticing clips of the video series, as well as posts that introduced key topics accompanied by custom graphics featuring an embedded quote by the thought leader. This strategy focused on providing valuable content and emphasized the importance of engaging visuals.

Results

In total, the Citywire Partnership campaign yielded:

20,282 total impressions
160 total reactions
400 total clicks

With a global average benchmark for the CPC of LinkedIn sponsored content at $8-11, we well surpassed this with a CPC of $3.25 and $2.87 on the two posts [1][2] we chose to allocate spend. We were even able to surpass the general benchmark of $5 CPC for an accounting demographic.

In terms of CTR, we also surpassed the 0.49% general benchmark for financial services, insurance, and banking with a total CTR of 0.8%.

Developing a “3-grid” approach that utilized single images, Reels, and carousel post formats proved to be an engaging way for Instagram users to interact with Alger content. The “Why Did I Join Alger” campaign:

Contributed to the Instagram account’s cumulative reach of over 395k unique profiles.
In total, the series reached over 62,000 users and generated over 5,000 engagements.