Digital Marketing Trends in Singapore

Digital marketing here in Singapore and other parts of the world is changing at a meteoric rate thereby making it more difficult for businesses to keep up with the latest trends and industry standards. The most successful companies have put in place a dedicated team of digital marketers whose primary role is to monitor the industry and come up with ideal marketing strategies for the business.

According to a recent study, 76% of people who are conversant with the digital marketing sphere in Singapore are of the idea that the industry has changed more in the past two years than it did over the past five decades. Businesses have started to embrace the power of digital marketing in Singapore, and they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to get exposure online.

Here is a comprehensive overview of the various digital marketing trends in Singapore.

 

It is our sincere hope that this information will help you understand the potent power of digital marketing and the positive impact it can have on your business.

Mobile Marketing in Singapore

There are more than 4.3 million active mobile social Singaporeans – this 75% of the total population. Research also shows that smartphones and mobile phones are used by 91% and 95% of the population respectively to look up information online.

Based on these statistics, mobile is no longer the new kid on the block; it is the most common and preferred way of looking for information online and doing digital marketing in Singapore. Businesses in Singapore are aware of these facts, and some have put in place robust mobile marketing strategies to help them reap big from this lucrative audience. According to eMarketer, in 2019, mobile marketing and advertising will account for 72% of digital ad spending.

Segmented Email Campaigns in Singapore

Segmentation is the process of grouping or dividing email subscribers into smaller segments based on specific factors such as interests, location, and stage in the conversion funnel. Machine learning has proven to be very helpful especially to businesses that have a large audience and vast amounts of data. They use it to understand the interests and expectations of their audience when creating any digital marketing campaign in Singapore. With this information at hand, they are able to come up with robust segmented email campaigns.

Note that segmented email campaigns record an open rate that is 14.32% higher than the conventional or non-segmented campaigns. 84% of the total population in Singapore rely on the internet as the primary source of information and have active email addresses. Based on these facts, it’s not difficult to see why segmented email campaigns are working so well for businesses in Singapore

According to a report posted on Marketing Charts, the best time to send emails is between 4 pm and 8 pm as most people have time to spare to read and respond to the email at this time of the day. Be vigilant not to send unnecessary emails to your subscribers to avoid compromising your reputation online. Every email that you send should contain information that is valuable or meaningful to the recipient. Otherwise, they will be marked as spam or deleted outright. You definitely do not want that to happen when doing digital marketing in Singapore.

Video Marketing in Singapore

The average conversion rate for a business website in Singapore that use videos to capture the attention of the target audience and pass the intended message is 4.8% compared to 2.9% for those sites that don’t use videos. Unlike blocks of text, videos explain the benefits of a product or service to potential customers in a relaxed and engaging way.

According to a report published on Optin Monster, digital marketers who use videos to sell their products and services get 66% more qualified leads and benefit from a 54% increase in brand awareness. This year, the number of businesses in Singapore that use video marketing to connect with their target customers has increased tremendously. Some have confirmed that this ingenious digital marketing strategy in Singapore helps them to achieve 55% returning customer rate.

The standard video content marketing types include:

• Video interviews
• Video blogs (Vlogs)
• Videos of presentations
• Tutorial videos
• Video Ads
• Video testimonials
• Recordings of live streams

Social Media Marketing in Singapore

First, it is important to note that Singapore has the highest smartphone penetration in the world. Research on social media trends shows that 7 in 10 Singaporeans use their mobile devices to network and socialize with other people on various social media platforms. By 2022, there will be more than 3.93 active social network users in Singapore.

Here is a list to help you understand the number of people who use the various social media sites. Note, you can use this information to improve your other digital marketing campaigns in Singapore.

• Facebook = 72%
• Pinterest = 8.05%
• Twitter = 6.97%
• Instagram = 5.05%
• Tumblr = 1.84%
• YouTube = 3.9%

Another research revealed that 22% of the world’s total population use Facebook and 91% of social media users use their mobile devices to access their preferred social networking platforms.

Businesses based in Singapore are aware of these facts and have put in place robust social media marketing strategies to promote their services and products. With the number of social media users in the country expected to skyrocket, expect to see more businesses that are yet to start advertising on these platforms to join the wave. Spending on social media ads will also increase and demand for graphic designers who can come up with high quality ads, as well as social media influencers will triple.

Content Marketing in Singapore

Producing stellar content is difficult for every brand and users especially the savvy customers are getting more demanding about the kind of content they want to engage with online. According to Marketing Profs, 72% of digital marketers from all across the globe who were polled said that relevant content creation is the most effective and reliable SEO tactic in the modern world.

Most brands not only here in Singapore but also in other parts of the world spend 25%-43% of their digital marketing budget on content. Those that have good content marketing strategies can make sales easily especially in instances where the consumers find out information about their services and products even before they visit their shop or website.

Content marketing plays an even more instrumental role for business-to-business (B2B) companies as it helps them get corporate sales. A majority of them use social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest (the two most popular social networking sites in the country) to distribute the content to the target audience online.

Integrated content marketing is also gaining traction in Singapore. For example, 3M Singapore gives students, consumers, investors, and even business prospects an opportunity to book an appointment with them to visit their new customer technical center. In this center, they learn about the brand’s history and indulge in the creative world of innovations and inventions.

As reported by Demand Metric, the cost of content marketing is 62% less than the traditional digital marketing strategies and generates three times more leads than the latter.

Use of Infographics in Singapore

As mentioned earlier, 7 out of 10 Singaporeans are active social media users. Apart from sharing videos, photos, and articles on social media, businesses in Singapore have also started to embrace the power of infographics. What is an infographic? Simply put, this is a visual presentation of information about a brand, product, or service. Over the years, it has proven to be more effective in simplifying complex subject matters and making it easy for the target audience to understand and take the desired action such as place an order or subscribe to a weekly or monthly newsletter.

There is virtually no limit on the call-to-action that can be linked with an infographic. Just make sure that the content in the infographic is relevant to your audience. A study done by Mass Planer showed infographics are shared and liked on social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram 3X times more than any other form of content.

Design a top quality infographic that highlights your brand and what you offer then distribute it on all your social media channels. This tactic will help boost your brand awareness online and spur engagement with the target audience. If well designed, it may go viral and expose your business to millions of potential customers and business partners.

Be sure to respond to comments posted by the audience to paint a positive image of your business. You can use the comments to get ideas for your next infographics, videos, or articles. Some companies actually respond to the comments by providing links to relevant articles already published on the main website that addresses the concern or questions asked by the prospect.

Search Engine Marketing in Singapore

46.8% of the global population accessed the internet in 2017, and this figure is expected to increase to 53.7% by 2021. Concisely, the number of people who rely on search engines to look up information online is growing year on year, and it is almost unfathomable.

In a bid to continue offering the best user experience, search engines have also improved their algorithms. Back in 1999, Google would take almost one month to crawl and index 50 million website pages. Today, it takes less than one minute to do that!

With 84% of the total population in Singapore using the internet actively, businesses have started to use search engine marketing (SEM) as a way of reaching out to more clients. Over 60% internet marketers worldwide agree that SEM is one of the guaranteed ways of scaling up a business primarily in the competitive niches. It entails promoting websites by posting ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) through paid advertising.

Note that Google and other search engines main source of revenue is advertising and thousands of other businesses offering similar products and services use the same strategy to generate leads. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to make sure that you do it correctly.

The foundation of any search engine marketing campaign in Singapore is keywords. The quality of the target keywords that you use will determine whether the campaign will be a success. Since Google will charge you based on the number of clicks on the ads, it is recommended to hire a professional who has the skills and experience required to create the digital campaigns and monitor them on a continuous basis. Continuous monitoring helps to uncover any flaws or aspects that were overlooked and can be rectified to enhance the effectiveness of the campaign. Be sure to ask for a weekly report to know if you are getting value for money from this digital marketing campaign in Singapore.

Statistics on Marketing and Paid Search in Singapore

Here are some facts that will affect your search engine marketing strategy in Singapore for sure:

1. In the 4th quarter of 2017, all platforms increased in ad spend by 24% over the last year. This is up 22% in growth compared to the last quarter.
2. AdWords showed a 23% increase in search ad spend over the last year.
3. Google search ad conversions for mobile devices received a 12% boost in ad conversions for Google search due to cross-device conversions which is 100% more than desktops.
4. There was a 14% increase in Google Search Network’s cost-per-click which resulted in higher quality traffic from ads in Google search.

Credits: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/02/05/marketing-statistics

1. Google Search Network’s click volume increased by 9% over the last year.
2. A 32% increase in shopping ads and a 15% increase in text ad spending led to a 23% boost over the last year in Google search ad spending.
3. There was a 38% year-over-year increase in Google search ad spending explicitly allocated towards mobile devices and a 21% growth in desktop spend.
4. 30% of Google search ad clicks were from RLSA, Customer Match, and other audiences similar to these–a 10-point increase from the previous year’s 4th quarter.
5. While Google experienced a 13% drop in CPCs over the past year for branded keywords in the 3rd quarter, it experienced a 23% spike in the 4th quarter..
6. There was a 23% year-over-year increase in the first page bid minimum for keywords that were non-branded.
7. There was a 3% drop from the previous year and quarter in the ad clicks of non-brand mobile text for ads in positions 3 and 4 on Google’s first page results.
8. Over the past year, non-brand Google search ad resulted in a 20% increase in RPC on desktop. This is a 17% increase since the 4th quarter of 2016.
9. Much like the U.S., the ad click growth for Google search dropped from 13% over the last year in the 3rd quarter to 5% year-over-year in the 4th quarter.
10. More than 50% of retailers’ Google search ad clicks in both the U.K and the U.S. come from Google Shopping.
11. There was an 11% increase in the UK’s Google search ad spending..
12. Clicks for Google search ad experienced a 5% drop in Search Partner share.
13. B2B advertisers experienced 21% ad spend, 4% clicks, and 16% CPC year-over-year growths.
14. Over half of the clicks for Google search ads came from mobile devices while they only accounted for 14% of the ad clicks on Bing.
15. Mobile Devices and tablets accounted for 49% of Google Display Network’s ad spend–a 3% increase compared to the last year.
16. During the 4th quarter of 2016, Bing and Yahoo experienced a 32% increase in search ad spending, up 6% year-over-year from the third quarter.
17. In comparison to 2016, there was 7 times as much search traffic for Bing mobile during the 4th quarter of 2017.
18. The Ad spend for Bing Product experienced a 43% increase.

Should We Bank On Google Ads?

The effectiveness of Google Ads (or fka Adwords) when doing digital marketing in Singapore is undoubtedly played a huge role in the amount of money advertisers decided to spend at the end of 2017. However, this was also in part due to the increase in both cost and competition. Merkle shows us that though these sites may be paying more for top spots in the SERPS, it’s definitely worth the investment because not only are they getting more traffic, but the traffic is of higher quality. These particular clicks are coming from people who are actually interested in what the business has to offer, as evidenced by this quarter’s 20% increase in RPC.

Another huge player for Search and Display was mobile. Site owners should ensure that their landing pages have been fully optimised for mobile search before the prices of clicks get higher. They should also include Bing in their next strategy session because this search engine was very significant in last year’s 4th quarter. This is especially the case if you have a solid mobile marketing strategy when doing digital marketing in Singapore.

What’s particularly interesting about the 4th quarter is that search was audience-centric– a trend that will very likely continue into 2018. In fact, when it comes to search, its biggest advantage is intent and the more advertisers continue to target similar audiences as opposed to the search queries of individuals, the more successful their search strategies will be. In this way, they gain more control and are able to better advertise across multiple platforms. In 2018, expect to see many advertisers augmenting their search bids by leveraging their Facebook audiences. Many will also search for their newest leads on the Display Network.

Statistics on Marketing and Paid Social in Singapore

• When it comes to paid social advertising, Facebook accounted for over 82% of all spending.
• Facebook News Feed Ads resulted in a 1.2% CTR average which is 4 times the amount of ads that are right rail.
• There was a 20% boost in Facebook Ad spend over the last year.

Credit: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/02/05/marketing-statistics

• Tablets and mobile devices accounted for 83% of all Facebook ad spending.
• Growth in Facebook spending year-over-year has decreased to 20%, down from the 40% that it had maintained throughout the year.
• There was a 27% year-over-year decline in Facebook ad impressions.
• Facebook ad spend increased 20% over the past year.
• There was a 36% year-over-year increase in Facebook ads CPC average, no matter where the ads were placed.

• 8% of spending on social ad came from Instagram and 7% came from Pinterest.
• Instagram experienced a 122% increase thanks to its various types of ad and placements as well cost.
• Over the last year, there was a 99% increase in Instagram impressions and a 77% increase in CPCs.
• Twitter ad spend experienced an increase– 44% over the last year.
• There was a 12% increase in Twitter impressions and 15% increase in CPCs over the past year.

Is Facebook Still A Good Bet in Singapore?

Facebook might have experienced a 43% drop in its impressions and its ad placement on the News Feed may not have been ideal, but it’s easy to see that this platform is still #1. Ad spend on Facebook managed to soar in the 4th quarter. In fact, when it comes to paid search, it can be considered the social equivalent of Google. This platform may be costly, but its massive audience and ability to narrowly target them make it a priceless tool when doing digital marketing in Singapore.

If you want to boost your posts and save money on leads, then you can’t expect to pay bargain basement prices. You must optimise both your audience and ads so that you can acquire the best leads. What Markle teaches us is that Instagram is blossoming and that Twitter can still have an impact.

Key Marketing Trends to Watch in 2020

As 2019 rolls to a close, and we usher in 2020, that’s a call for some calibrations to your marketing strategies.

What worked today comes with no guarantees of working tomorrow. Plus, new strategies are constantly introduced into the world of marketing, and that means you have to adapt – or at least, learn how to integrate them into your marketing campaign.

If you’ve been keen on following trends and reading in between the lines, then presumably you know where the industry is headed. You know what trends will be working in 2020, and which marketing strategies will be shaping up the digital landscape.

You’ve probably heard a blogger maunder about voice hunt and how it’s going to account for about 50% of all search queries. No news on that because these are things that bloggers talk about all the time.

But there’s more, and which will be affecting how you run your marketing campaigns come 2020.

So, what are these trends that are waiting to happen in 2020 and shift things around in a big way?

Relying on Google Analytics Won’t be Enough to Beat Your Competition

Google still stands as one of those tools that no marketer should miss in their marketing arsenal. The tool is free and has all the data you need to adjust your marketing strategy and know where to apply the bulk of your marketing effort.

It’s also free, another reason it’s so common with marketers in Singapore.

Don’t get it twisted – there’s nothing wrong with marketers using Google analytics. But you’ll also agree that the market is also shifting. New channels are popping up, and that means the tool is losing its effectiveness as time goes.

And there’s more to the transactions people make than the simple act of buying and selling products and services. You have to factor in upsells, where you focus on increasing the number of sales that you’re able to make. Remember, with every customer, comes the opportunity to make one more sale.

Then, there are things like down sells, checkout bumps, repeat purchases, and so on. It goes without mentioning affiliate marketing, webinars, partnerships, and different other ways for generating revenues for your business online.

As you can see, Google Analytics can’t help much with this. This explains why business people are beginning to adopt analytic solutions that can dig into their database to help them make better business decisions. A classic example of such a tool is Amplitude.

It’s no longer about income viability, but long-term business viability. For how long can you sustain your business, or what should you be doing to splay your profit margins?

While traffic sits at the centre of it all, a good analytics solution digs deeper than that. People are beginning to adopt intelligent business solutions – and the good thing is that you have both paid and free tools, such as Google Data Studio for this.

If you haven’t contemplated using Google Data Studio, here’s your chance to take advantage of this amazing business intelligence tool.

Businesses Will Optimise their Content for Voice Search, but they’ll forget all about Conversion

Thanks to Alexa, Siri, Google, and a whole lots of other voice search features, verbal interaction with mobile devices is beginning to gain popularity. Talking is fast proving to be a preferred way of interaction among online users. What remains is for the machines they use to play catchup, and that will be the new paradigm shift come 2020.

So, it’s pretty obvious that companies will be quick to optimise their sites for voice searches. That will be the trend come 2020. However, while at it, most of them will forget about optimising their voice content for search engines.

Optimising your content for voices serves as a salutary move to get your brand in front of the people you’re targeting. But that’s not enough. You need to figure out how to convert the traffic you get into sales.

One solution for this is Jetson Ai. For what’s worth, this is a voice search solution that’s been specifically created to help people buy on your website using voice search. The solution can work with both Google and Alexa and is compatible with all the popular devices you know.

It gets more fun with Jetson when you realise it’s designed to learn from your customers and customise the interactions that they have.

For instance, once a customer successfully manages to order a product from a particular store using voice search, Jetson will retain all this information and use it for their subsequent purchases to make the ordering process seamless for them.

For all we know, using Jetson makes online shopping way easier than the standard process of logging into a website to make a purchase.

For Conversions. Singapore Customers will be Forced to Look for Other Channels Other than Email Marketing

Email marketing is the undisputed king of lead nurturing. It’s what you use to stay in touch with both current and prospective clients until they make up their mind and decide to make a purchase.

However, there’s no denying that email marketing is fast losing its effectiveness. Different reports indicate that emails are experiencing a click rate drop.

If the trend continues, that shows that more and more customers will start ignoring your email messages, thus rendering them even more ineffective.

Don’t get it wrong – email marketing isn’t dying. But relying on it alone isn’t going to do your business any justice.

Email marketing isn’t going anywhere. It’s here to stay, but that isn’t enough. You can’t depend on it entirely for sales.

As 2020, approaches, you must find ways to dig into other communication channels as well.

Common among the channels to take advantage of are the chatbots. Not talking about the standard chat apps such as Tawkto and Drift, but more advanced chat solutions such as Mobile Monkey and ManyChat.

What these chatbots do is that they allow you to integrate your chat system with popular messenger platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. These chats are bound to get even more popular with time.

Other than that, companies are also beginning to adopt tools that allow companies to send push notifications.

It’s a powerful marketing channel that you don’t want to wait until next year to take advantage of. Not when you can start today, and leverage its power before the whole world plays catchup.

There’ll be Nothing to Stop Your Competitors from Copying You, Only Branding

If you’ve never thought of growing your business into a brand, then it’s time you started.

What prevented your competitors from copying you and usurping you from the top position might not work in 2020.

What made your site stick out? Is it a feature you had? A technological advantage or a cost structure?

Or did you have a secret marketing strategy that placed you miles ahead of your competition?

Well, nothing is going to stop your competitors from figuring you out in 2020 and pulling the same strings on their end. The little achievement you have today won’t last for long until you focus on one crucial thing, Branding.

Branding

With branding, you just have to find a way to make people fall with your business to never want to look elsewhere.

Once customers develop a certain perception of you and your business, it would be hard for your rivals to convince them otherwise, and that’s the secret to maintain your success, even when your competitors choose to bring it hard on you.

With companies such as Jordan, Nike and the Kardashians to take a cue from, your focus should be on building such a strong brand that other companies can’t afford to oust. Once it registers into your customers’ mind that you have the best products or better at a given service, nothing your competitors do will be enough to get your customers off your hair.

2020 should be the year when you learn to take advantage of influencer marketing. Try to create an image for your brand by associating it with certain good qualities that the world can’t get enough of.

To cut it short, 2020 should be the year that you focus on building your brand. This is the only sure-fire way to establish a moat around your business and cut all your competitors short.

You’ll Be Forced to Automate Much of Your Marketing Processes

SEO meant that you have an equal chance to drive traffic to your website as giant companies with big ad spends. It meant with hard work and a good understanding of SEO; you could outrank any company out there and grow to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site than even the big companies that you know.

The playing ground was levelled, and it’s bound to remain so in 2020.

Start-ups have an equal chance of running a successful online marketing campaign as any other big company out there — even so, because the levelling is going a step further by trying to give small businesses the same financial muscle established businesses have.

For instance, credit card companies are making it possible for start-ups to apply for larger loan limits, with protracted grace periods.

Other loaning companies such as Lighter Capital have made it possible for companies to access larger loans without being necessary taken through hoops, and it’s bound to get even better in 2020.

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The Importance Of A Digital Marketing Plan In A Business Plan

A successful business requires great sacrifice in terms of time and other resources. Yet marketing occupies an integral part in the success of the business. Therefore, creating an effective marketing plan is essential.

All about the digital marketing plan

The problem is that digital marketing can be hard to understand. It takes a team of experts to formulate a marketing plan for an organization. Marketing plan almost never appears on the priority list of some organisations. Worse yet, the planning process can fail to be beneficial even with all the committed resources.

Failure to emphasise on digital marketing in a business can be disastrous. It has been found that businesses’ with effective digital marketing strategies in place make 2x revenues per employee than those without. Better yet, they are 2x more likely to grow than those without it. As a result, lack of plan and focus indicates a lack of strategy and coordination and, therefore, bad performance. So what is the secret to developing a function digital marketing plan for your business? The following is a 7 step guide on how to develop one: 

View it as a marketing system, not just a website

Do not think of your website as a stand-alone concept but, rather, a component of the larger digital marketing system. Creating a big website won’t impact the business remarkably but building an effective digital marketing systems will. But a system must be managed. So you will need to formulate goals and measure their progress periodically. As such, you’ll need to track the following metrics:

Google analytics active users traffic

Google Analytics can display the traffic performance of your site. Log in and see the number of your website’s visitors under the audience and “active users” section.

Contacts  

Traffic means nothing on its own unless you convert the visitors to contacts. That will generate relevant traffic to your site. Open the email marketing system and track your contacts from there.

Customers  

You know you’re attracting the right kind of contacts and traffic when you convert contacts into customers. All metrics related to customers can be accessed via CRM or the accounting system.

Referrals

Do you want to identify customers in need of additional support or those with the potential to refer new prospects? Don’t hesitate to implement the NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey.

If a business shows growth in all of the above 4 metrics, you know your digital marketing system is working well. 

Identify your “best customers” and shower them with right offers

A successful doesn’t target everyone. The first and vital part of creating an effective digital marketing plan is to focus on a group or few groups of people.

Think of your customers in the following ways:

Segments

Segmenting involves grouping your clients in term of demographics, behaviour, psychology, company-specific information, and even geography. A good should be large, grow fast, and have fewer competitors. A segment should be as profitable as possible nevertheless.

Personas  

Personas are mainly fictional profiles a business makes for people. Hence they base how those people act, their goals, attitudes, skills, environment etc. Although it is a fictional picture of the audience, it speaks a lot about it.

A guide to creating a useful persona:

The life cycle

The lifecycle of your customer can greatly help with focus. A prospect client making initial contact with your business wants to learn more about your business. A long term customer may have diversified his interests. There ought to be right offers for correct groups of people.

Jobs that need to be done

“Jobs to be done” are the needs of the customers. There are only 2 such needs; the main job and the closely related jobs. You can easily group your clients based on their needs. 

Let the right people easily find you

In the world of digital marketing, the success of a business depends on how effectively web visitors are being converted into profitable clients. So a website has become an integral factor in turning visitors into clients. Hence, businesses are obliged to create robust traffic building systems to grow the traffic.

You must be part of the world of prospects to connect with the best of them.

Advertising

It has always been said, doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. A business must expose itself to the prospects.

Since most visitors on a website never convert, retargeting serves to pursue them with more ads to lure them back. Here are the secrets to a successful retargeting strategy:

Adwords

Google Adwords can use the visitors’ credentials to expose them to more of your ads.

Paid Ads  

Paid ads appear in the search results made by your visitors. If your target keywords are set in a right way, the page’s SEO can as well improve.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves seeking the help of public figures and popular individuals on social networks to promote your products or services.

Email marketing

This can involve adding the emails left behind the visitors to your email list and reaching them out thereafter. Email marketing has the advantage of having a higher ROI.

Social Media

There is a strong chance both the unconverted and converted visitors uses social networks. Social media is an excellent avenue to post content and showcase the organization’s expertise to attract the prospects. 

Websites

The website as simple as possible

Visitors seldom read the website, they just scan it. And they make a decision on whether to engage the website further or stop seconds after opening it. For this reason, it is essential for the website to as simple and easy to use as possible. 

1. Keep the visuals authentic
2. Do not try unusual placements on your website
3. Be cautious with design features
4. Research your clients to know the best colouring options and image selections
5. Use user stories, scenarios, and personas

Apply the right technology

The level of technology depends on the stage of maturity of the marketing program. Starter programs will require simple and low tools such as MailChimp while advanced programs will need more complex tools such as Hubspot. 

The growth goals: Set them SMART

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) means that your goals should have set figures with their respective deadlines; should be tracked; must pass the reality check; and should have regular check-ins.

You need to be considerate of your customer’s experience in terms of awareness and engagement. Here at MediaOne, we provide effective spreadsheets that can you model the growth plan of your business. Please, contact us and get a baseline model tailor-made for your business. 

Don’t hesitate to seek help

Since planning can consume the big part of your time, it would be great to seek the assistance of digital marketing consultants to ease the workload. Also, do not take on the whole planning commitment at once. Start small with a prioritised plan and allow room for consistency and future improvement of the marketing system.

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6 Major Marketing Digital Trends You Will See This Year

The digital marketing landscape in Singapore is dynamic. Just when the internet marketers believe that they have a clear understanding of their target market, a new technology, new trend, consumer behaviour kicks in and changes everything. It is not easy to predict the next marketing strategy that will take over the industry.

That said, based on past digital marketing trends, we can predict some of the trends that will become more popular this year.

Content Will Become More Prominent

In the current digital marketing ecosystem, content is the cornerstone of every digital marketing strategy that you implement in Singapore. Already, you are aware of what type of material that inspires, excite, appeals and triggers positive emotions.

This year, you need to go an extra mile and not only focus on putting content in front of potential customers and hoping that they will respond to your call to actions but also encourage them to share and engage with it.. Engagement will create an opportunity to interact with them at a personal level, and this is in turn builds trust. Structure your content in such a way that it shows the consumers that you appreciate their input in your business.

More Usage of Chatbots

Customer service is another essential pillar of your Singapore e-commerce site. Unknown to most people is that not all customers are comfortable talking to a real person on phone or email. Thanks to chatbots, this group of customers can now get comprehensive and accurate answers to their queries in real time and without necessarily contacting the support team.

By using AI technology, chatbots can fulfil requests efficiently and without compromising the personality or image of the brand. Recent research done by Grand View Research predicts that the chatbot market will hit $1.25 billion by 2025. The current annual growth rate is 24.3 percent.

Artificial Intelligence Will Continues to Advance

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is growing at an unexpectedly high rate in Singapore. Businesses in different niches appreciate its ability to make data tabulation and analysis more accurate and efficient. Artificial Intelligence is also making it possible for brands to do tasks that were previously not possible or were time-consuming in a matter of minutes.

In the world of digital marketing, AI monitors customers’ online patterns and behaviours. With this information at hand, it gets a clear understanding of the target customer interests, needs, and preferences. This year, more businesses will start using this technology to not only do market research but also create robust digital marketing campaigns that are based on the data collected.

Conventional Marketing Funnel is changing

At the moment, the marketing funnel is open to everyone. It assets them for profitability and any prospect who is deemed as unfit or not ready to convert is rejected. Too many companies that rely on the internet to sell their products and services see their clients as gatekeepers to wallets. The customers, on the other hand, feel ignored and insulted when the purchasing journey ends.

Smart businesses in Singapore that are keen on staying ahead of the competition are creating new digital marketing funnel that unlike the previous one that swallows any lead, this one uses custom content to target niche markets and audiences.

This kind of marketing funnel is more effective in increasing conversion as it focuses solely on people who are already interested in the company and what it offers. It is more sustainable and efficient in terms of resources and time input. It is also important to note that modern customers are not comfortable doing business with companies that gloss over them; they are interested in genuine and trustworthy relationships.

Voice Search is Becoming More Popular

As the name suggests, voice search allows internet users to find the information they are looking for online by speaking to the search engine as opposed to typing their query. This new trend is gaining traction in Singapore and other parts of the world as it simplifies the process of finding information about products and services online.

The ever-ballooning online community is gradually falling in love with this new way of finding information as it reduces the amount of time they spend in front of the screen. If you want to start dominating or to continue getting clients online, you need to make sure that your website content is optimised for voice searches.

Increased Use of Vertical Videos

You already know the potent power of using videos to communicate the intended message to the target customers. In the past, we used to perceive it as just one aspect of your digital marketing strategy in Singapore. However, based on a recent research report that shows that people are spending hundreds of hours watching videos, you need to have an entire marketing strategy for just videos.

Note that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. Whether it is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or any other prominent social media platform, video marketing is here to stay. This form of content will continue to open doors for new and existing businesses to thrive in 2019 and beyond.

However, it would help if you tweaked how you present your videos to stand out from the crowd. A majority of the customers do not like turning their smartphones to watch a video. Consider creating vertical videos to suit the preferences of all audiences.

Instagram launched IGTV in June last year to present more videos in vertical mode on the platform. One of the highlights of IGTV is that it allows content creators to come up with longer videos as well as animated videos, interviews, demos, 360-degree virtual reality, live streams, case studies and the list is endless.

The bottom line is that; as you create your Singapore social media marketing strategy; consider incorporating vertical form IGTV videos to get ahead of the competition.

These six digital marketing trends will help your business to continue scaling up and venturing into new markets in Singapore. However, they need to be well crafted and implemented to deliver the best results possible. Our team of digital marketers is on standby ready to create superior digital marketing strategies that will generate more leads in Singapore. Get in touch with us for more details.

Consumer Behavior Will Continue to Change As a Result of Digital Marketing Changes

The pandemic drove e-commerce growth by a factor of ten in just three months. In fact, new purchasing patterns were seen in 61 percent of organisations across all industries during the last year.

A critical window of opportunity has passed for businesses to pivot and stay up with the growing need for convenient and straightforward online shopping, curbside pickup, and contactless delivery.

Businesses are now focusing on establishing security and integrity to prepare for the future. According to IBM’s most recent Institute for Business Value report, 52 percent of retail brands prioritise transitioning to a more resilient infrastructure, which is followed by deploying contactless mobile payments (46 percent) and developing more powerful online marketing platforms (47 percent), among other things (45 percent).

Not only is there no use in waiting for things to get back to “normal,” but according to data conducted, vaccinations and re-opening stores are already creating new web search opportunities. The plan that you had put in action before the pandemic should be re-evaluated and re-prioritized in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Put everything on the table, including timeframes, money, complexity, and other things. Some efforts may need to be expedited, while others may need to be canceled entirely. Align your resources now for where you’d like to be five years after COVID-19, not where you believed the organisation would be by now if the event hadn’t occurred.

Marketers Must Stay One Step Ahead Of Customer Demands By Utilising Real-Time Data

Search insights are the closest thing you can get to the authentic voice of the user information. With their search keywords and onsite activity, consumers openly communicate with businesses about their interests, requirements, and intentions to purchase.

A significant chance to engage and communicate is overlooked if your business isn’t set up to listen to, evaluate, and then act on these insights with actual personalisations and recommendations.

Put the people, procedures, and technology in place to carry this precious consumer data to improve business performance.

Increasing The Velocity And Quality Of Content To Gain An Advantage

Whenever it comes to material, more is not certainly good, especially as it relates to visuals. So any approach for scaling content marketing must include both velocity and quality in similar proportions when planning for growth.

Putting in hours of labour and care to your content but only being able to publish once a month means you’re missing out on a slew of possibilities to appear in search results, social media posts, emails and other channels as compared with your more productive rivals.

Despite this, we understand the crucial relevance of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in content creation and distribution. The production of a large volume of low-quality information serves no purpose at all.

Clients Are Searching For Businesses To Provide Digitally Connected Experiences That Are Seamless And Smooth

The results of Salesforce’s latest State of the Connected Customer study revealed that 81 percent of consumers feel that the relationship they have with a brand is as significant to the products or services the business offers.

Customers anticipate that agents will have access to personal information, whether they’re conversing with an artificial intelligence support bot, speaking with a customer service professional on the line, or dealing with sales.

They anticipate that one encounter will take up where the previous one left off – that they will not be required to start from the beginning with each new interaction with the brand. In the same survey, it was shown that 61 percent of customers believe their previous experience with one business influenced their expectations of other industries.

Instead, consider what you need to enhance and put in place in order to produce high-quality content at a large volume.

In The Digital Age, Intelligent Automation Takes Us Beyond Essential Replication

SEO specialists and digital marketers are discovering that just automating processes in order to decrease repetition is no longer sufficient.

The number of customer contacts and touch-points has increased dramatically in recent years, a significant development in the digital age. In recent years, the amount of information we have to examine has significantly increased.

These results show that deep learning, advanced analytics, language processing, and robotic process automation (RPA) are all making their way into the SEO and digital marketing processes.

You are allowing intelligent automation to take over means that you no longer have to make each and every choice. It entails allowing robots to not just behave in pre-programmed if/then scenarios but also to learn about and come to know each client on a level that we, as humans, cannot achieve on a large scale.

It also entails empowering those computers to operate in real-time when the user is most open to tailored messaging, content, bargains, and suggestions.

First-Party Data Is Becoming Increasingly Important And Valuable

In the wake of Google’s announcement that it will phase out third-party cookies, PPC and SEO professionals are scurrying to prepare for a cookie-less future. In fact, 46 percent of respondents believe cookie devaluation would be their most significant media concern in 2021.

As advertisement targeting and behavioural analysis continue to get more challenging, the value and usefulness of first-party data become increasingly apparent. Preparing for how you might respond to customer queries and concerns about security, data management, and disposal should begin right away.

Determine what kind of value you can provide them in return for their personal information. Evaluate the potential impact that this trend has on your assessment and analytics procedures.

Hyper-Localisation Extends Beyond Geographical Boundaries

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, customers became acutely aware of supply chain difficulties, and there was a broad desire among them to support small, locally owned firms.

While “value for money” was the most crucial purchase motivator for customers questioned by KPMG in mid-2020, a more recent study by Ernst & Young indicated that 68 percent of consumers felt that companies have a responsibility to impact the world positively.

According to Millennials, who account for 83 percent of the population, the companies from whom they purchase their products must have values that are compatible with their own.

In order to ensure that the brand’s values are adequately communicated, marketers and management must undertake the legwork.

Receiving hyperlocal means acknowledging what actually matters to shoppers in any location. This includes not only localising content by geographical area, sharing knowledge of local landmarks on your Google My Business profile, offering fresh blog content by area, and aiming ads by geography – but also recognising what matters to your clients.

Those principles can then be expressed in tailored ad text, promotions, email campaigns, and other forms of marketing communication.

PPC And SEO Help To Strengthen The Relationship

Even if both PPC and SEO crews are aware of each other’s activities, this will not be enough. That is no longer the case.

In the future, sponsored and organic search should be considered real partners in crime, with one taking over where the other left off. Both teams should be aware of the many SERP features and positions accessible on the brand’s most valuable brands, and they should communicate this knowledge to one another.

They must collaborate to provide the most continuous coverage on those parameters while keeping expenses to a minimum to optimise ROI. For example, search engine optimization data provides the marketing team with more insight into client preferences.

A recent analysis performed by our firm demonstrates that specific sectors are more equipped for Core Web Vitals than others as Google begins rolling out the Page Experience Update. This implies that technical SEO, particularly for businesses that must plan more than others, will become a need rather than a choice.

The synergy between SEO and PPC must go beyond simply sending data and outcomes back and forth. A proactive approach and a shared commitment to gives the best possible solution to each consumer’s requirement at every stage of their purchasing experience are required in the present market.

Combining SEO and PPC data to achieve more powerful results.

SEO and PPC are two distinct marketing channels, each with its own set of responsibilities and objectives. However, this does not imply that you must pick either SEO and PPC campaigns.

Both SEO and PPC may be beneficial to your business.

Both search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising have the same goal: to bring more visitors to your website. A comprehensive strategy to search will assist you in navigating an increasingly complex environment.

You have the opportunity to do the following when you join forces:

• Learnings should be shared.
• Increase the efficiency of your budget.
• Contribute to the mutual growth of the brands you are in charge of.

In reality, this does not occur frequently enough in practice. Let us consider the controversy that erupted a few months ago regarding the necessity of brand bidding in order to preserve visibility in search as a result of rival bidding.

Brand advertisements may be more successful than organic results since they allow companies to completely control the creative content and landing sites for every associated search phrase.

The ability to better grasp how both SEO and PPC may work together to generate mutually beneficial results is vital to achieving success in this industry.

Making better data-driven judgments about your search strategy will come from bringing all of your data together and evaluating it with a view on how each route may complement the others.

This, in turn, should increase the quality of the outcomes supplied through both channels. Most of us may be told to make budgetary concessions in the coming months due to the current economic climate.

There has never been a better moment to begin equipping yourself with this type of information. Preparing for the inevitable debate about where savings may be made is preferable to halting everything and finding yourself back at square one when things start to pick up again later.

Higher Relevancy Is Being Driven By Semantics, Entities, And The Knowledge Graph

Entity-based SEO represents a significant departure from the keyword-driven improvements of previous years. As Google’s Knowledge Graph continues to improve its grasp of searcher intent, it is critical that marketing and SEO professionals stay up with the changes.

We can’t possibly optimise content without at the very least a basic comprehension of what Google is searching for. That’s what SEO is all about.

The Way We Do things Has Undergone Significant Change

COVID-19 forced employees to leave the workplace, and that there is no urgency to get things back to the way they were before. It is reported that the total of workers working from home at least 1-2 days each week increased from 28 percent to 80 percent.

According to 70 percent of managers, productivity has either remained consistent or even increased due to entirely remote work, contrary to common expectations that we were not ready for it even though it would be disastrous for businesses.

Changes are occurring in how we cooperate and develop, and the transition to remote working has hastened the flattening of organisational hierarchies in many firms.

We were obliged to develop and problem-solve as a result of the pandemic. It helped us break through the technology and psychological constraints that had held the adoption of remote work at a snail’s pace up until that point.

Marketing and other business services are some of the industries with the highest potential for practical remote jobs in the future. In addition to the technical components of their jobs, SEO and digital marketing team leaders must also schedule time for remote people management tasks.

How to Make Use of the Latest Digital Marketing Trends?

The strategic concept in which something is evolving, changing, or moving may be determined by looking at trends in technology marketing and search engine optimization.

The elements mentioned above are not a road map, and there is no one-size-fits-all method to address them. Keep a close eye on them, though. Examine the potential ramifications for your marketing organisation as well as the company as a whole.

Suppose there is one thing that the past year has taught us. In that case, we must be flexible in our view of individuals, technologies, and digital trends while also being prepared to adapt to any economic conditions in the following months.

Conclusion

Over the last three years, digital marketing has gained massive traction in Singapore. Businesses are now willing to spend more money on various strategies such as email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing to connect with potential customers and motivate existing customers to come back and purchase more products.

With the expected increase in online users, there is a need for not only medium and large businesses but also startups to come up with ideal digital marketing strategies to help them rival their competitors and establish themselves as an authority in their respective niches.

As mentioned at the start of this article, the digital marketing sphere is changing rapidly, and so it is imperative to keep tabs on the trends to avoid falling behind. For example, Google updates its algorithm more frequently nowadays, and failing to adjust your website and content accordingly can be costly to your business. Save time by hiring digital marketing professionals to create, run, and monitor the campaigns for you. You will save not only time but also resources that you would have spent implementing the wrong strategies that would hamper your business’s growth and profitability.

MediaOne is a professional digital marketing agency in Singapore whose record of accomplishment speaks volumes about our commitment and determination to help businesses realize their full potential through robust online marketing. Our team has years of digital marketing experience and undergo continuous training courses that hone their skills and expertise. We will work closely with your existing digital marketing team to ensure that the campaigns agreed upon delivers the expected results. Call us today for more details about our digital marketing services.

Just in case all these are greek to you, you may want to consider engaging a digital marketing consultant like MediaOne. Give us a call today at 6789 9852 or click here. We look forward working with you to exponentially increase your online visibility and sales.