Stock Yards Bank Scales Digital Acquisition with a Performance-Driven Growth Framework

Stock Yards Bank & Trust has evolved from a small bank in Louisville to a strong regional player over its 120-year history. As the financial landscape has grown more competitive, Stock Yards Bank recognized an opportunity to further differentiate its brand and connect with high-intent customers across local markets.

“It’s not just competing against other players in the industry,” said Director of Marketing John Dietrich. “When people are actively deciding what they want to do with their money, it’s a very short decision window. We need to reach them at the right moment.”

To continue growing while honoring its legacy, Stock Yards Bank set clear priorities: driving new account acquisition, increasing website conversions, and generating more foot traffic to local branches. The bank aimed to attract high-intent banking prospects - such as recent college graduates, young professionals, and millennial families - within a 5 - 10 mile radius of Stock Yards Bank branches located in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio.

To support continued growth with a scalable, performance-driven approach, Stock Yards Bank partnered with MediaOne as a strategic growth partner to develop and execute a multi-channel digital advertising solution.

Designing a Scalable Digital Growth Engine

Stock Yards Bank’s approach was deeply data-driven and designed to support high-quality traffic generation, precise audience targeting, and continuous optimization at scale. MediaOne worked alongside Stock Yards Bank to design a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that included:

• A multi-channel digital framework

• Influencer campaign

The team prioritized advanced digital targeting across Google and Bing search, geofencing, streaming audio, YouTube, display prospecting, retargeting, and Facebook campaigns. This approach ensured Stock Yards Bank maintained consistent visibility across multiple touchpoints throughout the customer decision-making journey.
Using first-party, intent-based data, targeting focused on individuals actively researching banking services, mortgages, loans, and financial planning. These contextual and demographic signals enabled the team to align campaign messaging with moments of highest intent - often within days or weeks of a purchase decision.

To strengthen brand authority and increase social buzz, MediaOne helped Stock Yards Bank expand its digital presence through an influencer marketing strategy. The result was a modern, localized, and community-centered digital presence that reinforced Stock Yards Bank’s position as a trusted regional financial partner.

Across all initiatives, MediaOne supported Stock Yards Bank with daily, weekly, and monthly monitoring, structured A/B testing, landing page optimization, and ongoing recommendations for budget allocation and channel mix - ensuring performance continued to improve efficiently over time.

Driving Measurable Acquisition Across Products and Markets

The initial general banking campaign focused on growing checking account openings and generated 574 prospective customers initiating the checking account application process. As part of this effort, an influencer marketing strategy delivered 20,452 video views, 661 interactions, 19 hours and 17 minutes of watch time, and 257 LinkedIn bio clicks driving users directly to Stock Yards Bank’s landing page.

Building on that momentum, the next campaign promoted high-interest checking accounts, resulting in 477 people starting the account application process and 10,316 visits to Stock Yards Bank branch locations.

A subsequent campaign focused on high-yield certificate of deposit (CD) accounts delivered even stronger performance, generating 12,159 people starting the account application process and 4,427 visits to branch locations after ad exposure.

Based on the success of the general banking initiatives, Stock Yards Bank expanded their partnership with MediaOne to support a more complex objective: growing new high-net-worth client leads for its Wealth Management & Trust division within its core Kentucky markets. Within a more focused and highly qualified audience universe, the Kentucky campaigns generated 301 qualified leads for Stock Yards Bank’s Wealth Management & Trust team.

“MediaOne didn’t just deliver traffic. They delivered measurable growth.” Dietrich said. “Their ability to connect digital marketing performance to real account openings, branch visits, and revenue gave us the confidence to scale and invest for long-term growth.”

Through this multi-phase approach, Stock Yards Bank established a measurable, data-backed digital acquisition system that combined performance marketing, localized and segment-specific targeting, influencer partnerships, and advanced analytics. Most importantly, Stock Yards Bank now has a scalable, repeatable roadmap for continued optimization - supporting sustained growth in reach, conversion, and differentiation as the bank continues to evolve.