Many Singapore businesses fail to generate the profits that they initially assumed they would. And in some cases, the products and services that they offer encourage customers and are better quality than those of their more successful competitors. What many of these companies are missing is the right promotion and marketing channels to encourage more customers.
No matter what industry you’re in, there is a form of advertising that will work perfectly for you. The key is to outline which ones best suit and promote your business goals. Let’s take a look at both online marketing, marketing channels, and offline advertising. We’ll discuss what they are and the pros and cons of each.
Online Promotion
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
If you would like to organically increase your visibility in search engines, then you should use SEO, or search engine optimisation. This is a digital marketing strategy that uses both creative and technical search engine optimisation elements to improve your rankings, drive more traffic to your website alone, and increase consumer awareness on search engines like Google.
SEO requires you to have relevant search terms, use certain keywords on your page, and link to other relevant sites. It also requires you to structure your site in a way that the search engine can understand. But most important, search engine optimisation is about creating the ultimate user experience for the search engines and your visitors.
Pros: Fits a small budget
What attracts many Singaporeans, small businesses, and page owners to SEO is that it can be very cost-effective. It targets individuals, local and small businesses, and other local businesses and small businesses, as well as local customers who are actively seeking out your business page and subject matter. And when your traffic is well-targeted, you do not have to spend as much on your advertising.
Cons: It takes time to see results
While SEO is cost-efficient, it does have its downsides. For instance, unlike advertising, the results aren’t instant. Business owners can wait months, maybe even over a year, to experience its true effects.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
If you have allocated a certain portion of your budget for advertising, then you should use a search engine optimisation and marketing strategy. Search engine optimisation and marketing, or SEM, is the strategy of using paid advertisements on search engine results in pages to market your products or services.
You can bid on relevant keywords that search engine users may enter while searching for what they need. This ensures that your paid ads are given priority on platforms like Google and Bing and are shown alongside the search engine results pages for these particular relevant search engines’ terms or queries.
These paid ads, often referred to as pay-per-click ads, or PPC, come in various formats. Some are small, text-based ads. Others, such as PLAs or product listing ads, are much more visual and can catch the user’s attention at a glance.
Pros: Quick results
Singapore businesses use SEM because they’re able to get their ads in front of new potential customers who are motivated and ready to buy. No other form of advertising is able to get these results in such a short amount of time. So this is a great option for startups.
Cons: Can be costly
While SEM can lead to quick conversions, it’s not cheap. Getting your ads to show up at the top of sites like Google can cost thousands. Depending on your particular goals, it may even cost hundreds of thousands.
Content marketing
If you are interested in educating your potential customers about your industry or your products and services, then there is no better way to do it than with content marketing. This is a strategy in which you use content to capture and engage your audience. It often includes the use of videos, ebooks, webinars, infographics, and more.
The goal is to answer the questions that your audience has. It’s to make sure that you offer enough value so that it changes their lives for the better in some way.
Pros: Become an authority
Singapore businesses use content marketing because it helps to build credibility for their own consistent brand identity. The more valuable your content is and the more you are able to educate and help people, the more you will be viewed as a credible resource.
This helps you attract a large audience and leads to building a following that is trusting and loyal. And when you nurture these types of relationships, you can experience significant growth in profits.
Cons: It can be a challenge to come up with fresh content
This isn’t to say that content marketing is easy. There are a lot of other small businesses and small business owners who often struggle to come up with relevant content that will appeal to their audience.
In order for you promote your business as a small business owner and succeed at content marketing, the information you provide needs to be fresh and interesting, and this relevant content is not always easy to come by.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing, also known as SMM, is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and then sharing your content on all of your social media networks.
This often requires business owners to post image, text, and video updates and drive the engagement of their audience. The ultimate goal is to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. This particular form of advertising can be either paid or organic.
Pros: Expand your audience
What Singapore businesses love about social media marketing is the fact that it can be a huge catalyst for expanding their audience. People tend to spend a lot of their time on their social media accounts and platforms. This is especially the case when it comes to Singapore consumers.
According to the Straits Times, the average Singapore consumer spends over 12 hours each day on their gadgets and a large amount of this time is spent on their various social media platforms and accounts.
This means that there is a large audience that is waiting to be tapped into. The key is to spread the word about Google ads and your own Google listing and Google business profile YouTube channel too.
The more followers you get on Google for your business page and your YouTube channel, the more people talk about Google, promote Google listings for your business, and profile your company.
Cons: Time-consuming
Social media is an extremely powerful advertising and email marketing tool now. However, it can be very time-consuming. For a business to be successful at social media marketing, not only does the content that you post need to be fresh and engaging, but it should also be posted frequently.
The key to engaging your audience is making sure that you post every day and this can be a drain on your time if you don’t have a well-planned schedule and sufficient staffing.
Email marketing
Would you like to market and promote your business or brand and stand in touch with the people who are most interested in what you have to offer? If so, you should consider email marketing.
Email marketing is an advertising strategy that involves sending messages to people who sign up for your newsletter. These messages include advertisements, educational content, or updates about your business.
The goal of email marketing is to build brand awareness, customer satisfaction, trust, customer service providers, customer satisfaction, and loyalty from loyal customers. It ensures that your customers, both old and new business loyal customers and both potential customers and new customers, will never forget about your brand. And when done well, it can lead to an increase in profits.
Pros: It’s measurable
Email marketing is a staple for most Singaporean and small business owners because it offers measurability. Many email marketing platforms allow you to track things such as how many people opened the email, what time the email was opened, and how many conversions the email resulted in.
This is information that you can use to tweak your email marketing tool and strategy and improve on this form of advertising.
Cons: May get buried in other emails
Email marketing is extremely effective, but it’s not perfect. While you will be communicating with people who have expressed a genuine interest in your business, they may not always receive your messages. In some cases, your email may be buried within their other messages and overlooked, depending on how full their inbox is or how many emails they normally receive.
Offline Promotion
Newspaper
As technology advances, more and more people are turning to the internet and social media advertising as platforms to create listings, and Google ads, consume media, and promote businesses themselves. However, despite popular belief, newspapers are still relevant today.
It’s still one of the first places Singapore businesses think to publish their business pages, and local events create listings for local event listings, business pages, and ads in local newspapers.
Pros: trusted form of media
What’s so great about this form of advertising is that people tend to trust newspapers. In fact, the better the reputation of your own local business, local community, local newspaper, or other local businesses, local community, or newspaper, the more likely they are to associate your small business name with its most positive qualities.
This is especially the case for people who have subscribed to the paper and are loyal readers. Your value proposition will be taken more seriously in newspapers.
Cons: Difficult to target the audience
Newspaper advertising can be a challenge due to targeting issues. Sure, if you are interested in earning business from a certain geographic location, then it can be helpful. However, if you are interested in a certain demographic, then you may hit or miss.
According to research, most newspapers cater to a demographic of individuals who are 40+ years old. This means that if the demographics of your target audience are mostly millennials, then you’re out of luck.
Flyers
Are you interested in circulating weekly sales ads, local call press releases, press releases, or announcements about your company’s local networking events? Well, one of the best ways to do it is with the use of a flyer press release.
This press release is in the form of a paper advertisement or press release that is intended for wide distribution. They may be posted, handed out in public venues, or delivered through the various direct mail channels below.
Pros: low cost
One of the best things about flyers is how economical they are. You could easily print thousands of these advertisements for under $100. And this is great for startups that are closely monitoring their budget.
Cons: Distribution is labor-intensive
While flyers can be low in cost, they can make up for it in labour. How you decide to distribute your flyers will depend on your company’s goals. In some cases, you may have direct mail for them, and this will involve stuffing envelopes and researching the residences of your target audience. In other cases, you may advertise on foot and choose to hand them out in public places.
Magazine Ads
Just as is the case with newspaper advertising, magazines are traditional, but they are still very relevant today. However, in this case, Singapore advertisers tend to choose to only sponsor local events, local networking events, local press, press releases, local blogs, and publications that are local events specific to their industry. After choosing the perfect sponsor for local events, the local press, or a publication, they then seek to place an ad or local event in a section of the magazine.
Pros: Great for targeting an audience
Singapore business owners may choose to advertise in a magazine because of the targeting opportunities. As mentioned earlier, the goal is to find a publication that is relevant to your industry. This means that if you offer weight-loss vitamins, you would search for a health magazine.
If you sell car accessories, then you would choose an automotive magazine. The best part about this is that the target audience that you advertise to will have some interest in your products or services. And this could lead to more sales.
Cons: Can be expensive
Magazine advertising can be great for your business, but it can also be quite costly. This is especially the case if you are working with a nationally or internationally recognised publication. Also, the placement of your ad may drive up the cost. Would you like a front page spot or would you like to be buried on the last page? Several things can affect the pricing.
Billboards
Would you like thousands of people each day to see your brand’s advertisement? Well, you should consider placing a billboard advertisement. These are outdoor advertising structures that are positioned on the side of the road or along highways.
The goal is to increase brand awareness. Depending on where they are, either pedestrians or drivers will typically see these ads.
Pros: Reach a larger audience
What many Singapore businesses like about billboard advertising is that it gives them the ability to tap into a larger audience. Billboards are typically placed in high-traffic areas. While not every individual who sees the ad will connect with it, you increase your chances of attracting more people to your brand due to the sheer number of people who view it.
And even if people aren’t initially in need of your services, the more they see the ad the more likely they are to remember your brand’s name and the products and services you offer later on when they do need them.
Cons: There may be ad blindness
What a lot of small businesses don’t consider when placing these types of ads is the concept of ad blindness. You see, billboards are a common roadside fixture. So it’s easy for people to ignore them altogether. This is especially the case if your billboard is up for quite some time. Eventually, people can become immune to your messaging. And in this regard, your ads become passive rather than active because your audience is completely tuned out. The best way to handle this is to change your campaigns regularly so that they remain fresh.
Telemarketing
Perhaps you or other business owners would like to speak directly to your potential customers. In this case, you would use telemarketing to either encourage existing customers or prospective customers to.
Telemarketing is a direct marketing strategy in which you solicit prospective customers or existing customers to purchase your services or products. This is done over the phone or via web conferencing.
Pros: Quick feedback
What most Singaporean and small business owners like about telemarketing is that they get quick feedback. With many advertising strategies, getting your results is a waiting game. You won’t know exactly how your whole customer base feels about your offer until they start to make a purchase or until you notice that no sales are coming in.
This isn’t the case with telemarketing. You can speak directly to your customers, and they will let you know whether or not they are interested in what you have to offer.
Cons: The company may be associated with spam
One of the downsides to telemarketing is that it can come across as spam. This is especially the case if you are using cold calling and the person has not shown any previous interest in your business promotion.
In these cases, this tends to leave a bad impression of your business promotion and promote your business or brand in many of your other potential customers’ or customer base’s minds. And it may do more harm than good. So this form of advertising requires a careful and strategic approach.
Bus Ads
Would you like to use a form of advertising that catches people’s attention? Well, bus ads may be a great option for you. In bus advertising, buses act as a medium for your ad. You may promote your business, online business name, small business, new business name, or brand, or push a certain message for your campaign.
Pros: It’s mobile
Unlike billboards that create video ads, buses are mobile. This means that your brand identity and messaging travel. It reaches several different areas and is great if you hope to target specific geographic locations with more customers.
Cons: Quick view
While buses are a great way to get attention for your ad, it’s important to consider how quickly people will view it. Depending on how fast the bus is going and where people are positioned, they may only get a passing glimpse of your ad.
Are you a Singapore business owner who is searching for new ways to showcase your business online and on your other social media advertising channels? Well, there are a lot of businesses that manage to keep their social media ads and posts focused exclusively on their business online brand without coming across as spammy or self-centered.
In this article, we will discuss a few ways that you and other business owners can promote your business and brand on your largest social network online and other social media and digital advertising channels without turning your target audience off.
And the best thing is, they are pretty simple to implement into your digital and social media marketing plans.
1. Approach to Micro-Influencers Who Have Similar Brand Aesthetics
There are a lot of Singaporean businesses that rely on completely branded content. With every bit of information or entertainment they offer, you can find an ad lying just beneath the surface. The problem is that the audience is aware of this. And it comes across as self-serving.
The best way to avoid appearing self-serving is to have someone else promote you. More specifically, have an influencer create your branded content.
In most cases of social media ads, people assume that this will require building relationships, adding value, creating video ads, and then reaching out to the person for shares. However, things work a bit differently when it comes to branded content.
In the case of branded content, it works much like product placement. Instead of building a relationship with the biggest influencer, try getting your services or products into the hands of someone that your audience trusts.
You can then get the person to create some content around what you have given them. Finally, you can integrate their content into your largest social network online or another social media platform.
What’s great about this particular approach is that it’s simple. Simply search for creators who have more than 50,000 followers or influencers who have more than half a million, and you can scale this approach as your business grows.
2. Let People Laugh at (or with) You
If you are interested in both creating and hosting branded content, then there is a crucial ingredient that is common in all successful campaigns: humour. This is not just because everyone loves to laugh.
According to research, there is a connection between emotions and sharing. The more powerful emotion that you can elicit from your audience, the more likely they are to share your content with others.
This is especially the case when it comes to humour and laughter. When you deliberately share something funny with your audience, it lets them know that while you may be an authoritative brand that has a certain specialty, you don’t take yourself so seriously.
Perhaps you should share a bizarre photo with a funny caption. The best thing about using branded content that is funny is that it makes your content seem less branded.
3. Include Brand Advocates’ Social Content
Sure, you could always get the attention of an influencer in your industry and have them share your latest product with their audience of thousands. But what can be equally effective are the words of consumers nearby who have tried the products for themselves and want to share their experience with others. In other words, there is nothing quite as powerful as user-generated content or UGC.
That’s why it’s so surprising to see that only recently have Singapore brands started to systematically integrate this type of content into their digital marketing efforts and strategies for online communities. They are now realising that user-generated content is like a conversion goal, especially when generated in an online community or on social media platforms.
The only problem is that many businesses sit back and wait for the testimonials and online reviews to come in when they should be actively going after them. For instance, there are some Singapore brands online websites that tap into users’ basic impulses to create engagement with nearby customers and potential customer’s online communities. Instead of waiting for users to create content on their website, they actively seek out and share customer-generated content.
Some even take this process a step further and add the images that customers take and place them on their product pages on online websites, as well as local blogs and community blogs.
The best thing about using content that is generated by social platform users is that it’s pretty easy to get. Most of these campaigns start with the business asking that social media accounts or platform users use a specific hashtag.
However, you need to keep in mind that several steps must be taken to craft the right kind of content for your own business website, business blog, business account, business blog, online community, business account, or social media platform.
Ask at every phase
It’s easy to assume that you should only ask for user-generated content on your social media channels. And that’s because this is where people spend a great deal of time and are already posting and sharing. However, you need to consider soliciting the customer at other points of your interactions as well. For instance, you can always invite the customer to share their experience when you are sending them a transaction email that confirms their order.
Make it easy
You’ll find that there are a lot of customers who enjoy sharing their positive experiences. That’s because not only does it show that they are happy with their product or service provider, but also that they have great decision-making skills. But in many cases, if you don’t make it easy to encourage customers for to share online reviews with others, they will bypass this opportunity altogether.
So make sure that you make it easy for local customers to submit their content. In most cases, you should simply request that they use a dedicated hashtag.
Use tools
Sure, you could manually collect all of your customer base and user-generated content. However, this can take a significant amount of time. Luckily, some tools can help automate the process. Try tools like Engage Hubs or Yotpo. They can help you collect photos, reviews, ratings, and even customer stories.
Business in Singapore
Branded content has long been a part of the online and local business online and digital marketing world, especially since social media has arrived on the local online and business online and digital marketing scene. However, many Singapore businesses are still struggling with the challenges of their marketing efforts dealing with audiences who don’t respond to them.
Whether you are working with a social media agency or on your own, you must devise a serious social media strategy that helps you get the most out of this type of content. According to research, only a mere 5 percent of all branded content accounts for 90 percent of total engagement.
This may seem like a depressing ratio, but it proves that you can make a significant difference in your business if you craft the perfect social media strategy.
Luckily, it’s easy to figure out what type of content your audience loves. In general, they want to be educated and entertained. With this bit of knowledge and the tips above, you will be able to make a significant amount of progress on social media.
Whether you are interested in online marketing or offline marketing, there are several options to choose from. Just make sure that the form of digital marketing, advertising, and marketing you choose fits your business objectives. Ideally, you should try to use various forms of promotion to ensure that you have the widest reach.
