The most constraining factor in online marketing is your budget. This is true as the majority of businesses in Singapore are funded with credit cards or loans from family and friends. It’s no wonder the first question that businesses ask whenever you bring up the idea of online marketing is, “how much will it cost?”
There’s no straight answer to this question — other than the obvious one, “it depends.” However exasperating this response sounds, you have to begin by understanding that online marketing itself is an all-encompassing term for a broad spectrum of possibilities — PPC, SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and display ads, to name a few.
And with each channel comes different price models and ranges. So unless you’re working with a blueprint or replicating a strategy you’re already familiar with, the only way you can estimate your online marketing spend and put a number to it is by running some calculations.
Small businesses have the option of spending nothing or so little, to pumping in millions of dollars for a more elaborate online marketing campaign targeting multiple channels. Of course, these are the two ends of the extreme – with the majority of the businesses in Singapore falling somewhere in between.
At this point, we’d like to assume that you’re in the process of planning your online marketing strategy – and you’re looking for a ballpark estimate to help you decide which marketing channels are better suited for your business.
We plan to line up all the options at your disposal and help you estimate how much you’re likely to spend on each option.
Image source: Infographics zone
Overview of Online Marketing in Singapore
Singapore isn’t big. Its population rests at 5.6 million. So no matter how much time and resources you spend on marketing your products and services in the country, there’s a limit as to the number of leads that you can generate unless you’re targeting an international market.
Singapore is also a world-renowned tourist destination. No matter the time of the year, there’s always an influx of foreigners coming in.
This makes tourists a worthwhile market to start targeting, especially for those whose products and services appeal to tourists as well.
The Cost of SEO in Singapore
SEO is the like heart of online marketing. It’s the first thing that crops up whenever someone introduces the idea of promoting your business or products online.
It’s always the first thing that marketers consider whenever they’re trying to come up a solid marketing strategy for their business.
You need SEO to drive organic traffic straight from the search engines. It’s a long term marketing strategy that you can count on to deliver huge chunks of hot leads directly to your site.
Also, SEO is the only marketing strategy that places you on a level ground with high-profile companies stashing a war chest of cash in venture capital funding. It’s the only strategy that allows you to compete with the big boys in the industry without looking down upon yourself.
All you have to do is focus on educating your target audience. Consistently churn out high-quality articles, while paying attention to other ranking elements, and search engines will respond by rewarding you with a higher SEO score.
There’s no doubt that SEO works in Singapore. The only question is, how much will it cost you to run an effective SEO marketing campaign in the country?
|
SEO Services in Singapore |
harga |
Monthly charges |
|
The cost of writing a 1000-word article |
$300 |
$300 multiplied by the number of articles you wish to write in a month |
|
Monthly package of optimising your site for SEO |
$50 to $5000 per month depending on the agency and the scope of work |
$50 to $5000 |
|
Cost per SEO project |
$1000 to $5000 per project depending on the agency and the scope of work involved |
$1000 to $5000 |
|
Cost per Hour when hiring an SEO consultant |
Most consultants charge between $100 to $300 per hour |
Between $1000 and $6000 depending on the number of hours your consultant spends on your project |
The next most important channel in online marketing, next to SEO, is social media marketing. This is the platform you use to nurture your prospects and grow your fan base. It’s the platform that you use to get them to trust you and eventually soften up enough to take action.
Let’s take a look at the different social media channels and the cost of advertising on each.
The Cost of Marketing on Facebook
Facebook stands tall over any other social media channel out there for reasons that are pretty obvious. First, no other platform can challenge Facebook on the size of its audience. With more than 2.2 active billion users, it’s safe to say that almost every single one of the customers you’re targeting can be found on Facebook.
Secondly, Facebook has one of the most advanced advertising platforms – the only that’s advanced enough to effectively compete with Google AdWords and Amazon Ads.
It’s to be, however, noted that much has changed with this platform over the years. It’s no longer the same platform it was two years ago, but a more advanced ad network packing lots of added features and functionalities that could take you months to crack.
- To begin with, Facebook is no longer the platform to use if you’re targeting organic traffic. If you’re not willing to spend money on it, then forget about setting up a Facebook page and instead direct that effort elsewhere.
- The only way to advertise effectively on Facebook is by taking advantage of its advertising platform.
- Facebook has also proven to be an ideal platform for targeting foreigners that are visiting the country for a short stay. That’s because most of them are always browsing through Facebook as they tour the country.
|
Ad or Service |
Cost (in range) |
Average Cost |
|
Cost Per Click (CPC) |
$0.10 to $2 |
$0.50 |
|
Cost Per Impression |
$0.15 to $3 |
$0.76 |
|
Cost per conversion |
$10 to $200 |
$50 per lead |
|
Facebook Ads Management |
The cost of hiring an agency to manage your Facebook ranges for $500 to $2000 per month, depending on the agency |
About $1000 per month |
The Cost of Instagram Marketing in Singapore
As of September 2019, there were 2,005,000 active users in Singapore. This accounts for about 33.8% of the population.
Out of this, 56.2% were women.
People between the age of 25 and 34 formed the largest group of users (about 810,000). In this group, users were split across genders almost equally.
The difference between genders was more pronounced in the group of users between 35 and 44, with women forming the majority count at 80 000.
From these stats, it’s safe to say that more than one-third of your target audience can be found on Instagram.
Plus the number of Instagram users has been growing exponentially every month for the past two years.
Also worth noting is that the number of Instagram influencers has more than tripled over the past two years, with more brands beginning to sign up these influencers to help them promote their products and services on the platform.
Influencer marketing is one thing you’d also want to consider if you’re looking for a strategy to use on marketing on Instagram.
Instagram is best suited for marketing products with a visual element.
|
Perkhidmatan |
kos |
|
Kos Setiap Klik |
$1.41 |
|
Cost Per Impression |
$6.70 |
|
The cost of hiring an agency to help you with Instagram marketing |
$500 to $5000 per month |
Also, remember that Instagram ads are more costly than Facebook ads. However, Instagram has ten times better engagement rate. Meaning, running an ad on this platform has the potential to generate better results compared to the one that’s run on Facebook or elsewhere.
LinkedIn Marketing Cost in Singapore
It’s been said before that LinkedIn is the most ideal platform for B2B Marketing. Where your business sells products to other businesses, LinkedIn should be among the platforms that you prioritise on.
LinkedIn is the ideal platform for building your brand and establishing authority within your digital space. It’s the platform you turn to when you’re also looking to connect with other brands and make your presence recognisable.
The Estimates
|
Perkhidmatan |
kos |
|
CPM (Cost per 1000 Impressions) |
$7.26 to $8.39 |
|
Minimum Bid |
$2 |
|
Kos Setiap Klik |
$5.26 |
|
Cost Per Acquisition |
$3.46 |
|
Hiring an Agency to Help Manage your LinkedIn Account |
$200 to $2000 per month |
The Cost of Marketing on Twitter
Twitter has a slightly different marketing model from Facebook both in terms of pricing and type of ads. In general, twitter offers three types of ads for you to choose from:
- Promoted Tweets
- Promoted Accounts
- Promoted Trends
|
Perkhidmatan |
Nature of Service |
kos |
|
Promoted Tweets |
This is Twitter’s version of Facebook’s boosted post. They’re used to make your tweets show in the newsfeed of people that aren’t your followers |
$1.35 per engagement |
|
Promoted Account |
This is meant to promote your entire Twitter account. The goal is to get more people to engage with your brand so you can attract more followers |
The average cost per every confirmed follower you get is $2.50 to $4.00 |
|
Promoted Trends |
This option earns you a spot in the ‘trend list.’ Your posts get to be listed among trending posts (but with the ad symbol, of course) |
This is an expensive option that can cost you up to $200,000 per day. |
|
Twitter Marketing |
This is where you hire an agency to help you market your business on Twitter |
$1000 to $5000 per month |
The average cost of hiring an agency to help you market your business on varied social media channels can range from $1000 to $20000 depending on the agency and the scale of your work. This is an all-inclusive amount, including the cost of running ads on the various social networks.
The Cost of Email Marketing in Singapore
Email marketing should be a staple in your online marketing strategy. It’s the channel you use to nurture your leads and get the bulk of them to warm up to your business and consider making a purchase.
Email marketing is also one of the most affordable online marketing options on the list. It goes without mentioning that it’s one of the most profitable and dependable marketing channels provided you know how to conduct it correctly.
However, despite all this, email marketing has been suffering a slump lately in Singapore. Only a small sample of Singapore marketers has adopted it into their marketing pellet, thus sending it on a sharp decline.
Email marketing is an option you’d want to adopt if you’re looking for a way to stick out and take a different approach from the rest of the marketers in Singapore. It’s a highly lucrative marketing option for those who know how to run it correctly.
Also, email marketing allows you to track every aspect of the marketing process. It’s even possible to track your ROI and conversion rate.
It’s a marketing channel that works for absolutely any type of business – be it a blogger, service provider, product company, and so forth.
The estimated cost per lead in email marketing is $1. However, to hire an agency to help you manage your email marketing campaign in the country, you’ll be expected to shell out between $200 and $5000 for every month of service.
The Cost of Running a Google Ads Campaign in Singapore
Running a Google Adwords campaign in Singapore is like investing in the stock market. It’s easy to get burnt if you have no clue of what you’re doing or how to run the campaign correctly. You’ll invest all your money in the campaign and end up with nothing at the end of it all – and the most worrying part is that it’s not cheap.
However, do it right, and it would be a lot easier to watch your 5 to 6 figure investment yield a 7 to 8 figure income.
Google AdWords is also one of the most common forms of online marketing strategies in Singapore. It’s like every big business you know has invested in it.
Google operates a lot like a paid version of SEO. But instead of writing high-quality articles and working on your backlinks to make your site appear at the top of search engine result pages, you instead bid for relevant keywords for chance to climb up the Google search ladder.
Other than SEO being free and Google AdWords being a paid option, the other notable difference between the two is the duration it takes for the strategy to have an impact. While you have to keep on working on SEO and waiting for results to show sometimes later, Google AdWords results are almost immediate. Your site climbs up the search engine ladder almost immediately.
Google AdWords is expensive in Singapore because of the competition. More company are investing in it, thus raising their bid price, especially for highly competitive keywords.
Remember, your Google AdWords spend will always vary depending on the keywords you’re targeting and the bid price placed on them.
|
Perkhidmatan |
kos |
|
Kos Setiap Klik |
$2 |
|
Bid Price on the Keywords |
Depends on the keywords |
|
The Cost of Hiring an Agency to help you with managing your Google Ads |
$1,000 to $20,000 per month |
The Cost of Web Design in Singapore
Before you even think of conducting any online marketing campaign in Singapore, it’s crucial that you first invest in perfecting your website. This is especially true when you’re investing in SEO.
The last thing you want is a poorly designed site hampering your marketing effort.
It’s for this reason that you’re also advised to have the agency you’re about to hire also evaluate your website for SEO and conversion.
Getting your website right is critical for your success in marketing. It starts at the code level and then proceeds to how users can interact with it and get the intended task performed.
Where users have to complete an action on the site, you have to look at the sales funnel and weigh its effectiveness. Otherwise, you’ll be driving so many leads on the site without getting enough conversions for them.
Here’s a list of things you’d want your digital marketing agency to look at while evaluating your site:
- Its branding and aesthetic appeal to your target audience. Does it leave any impression behind, or lure them well enough to take action?
- Is the site responsive enough for users that are visiting it through mobile devices?
- Is the site reliable and consistent in terms of functionality? Or does it hang up from time to time making it hard for some of your users to complete an action?
- How’s the performance of the site? Is it faster enough or does it load like molasses? Also, how does it work across browsers?
- Is the site optimised for conversions?
- And best of all, is the site optimised for search engines at the code level?
So how much will it cost you to have someone look at your site and redesign it?
The cost of web designing and developing can range anywhere from $2000 to $35, 000, and even more depending on the nature of your website. This scale can vary depending on the agency in question and a series of other variables.
What’s the Cost of Marketing on Shopping Platforms?
As we’ve covered this before, about 79% of Singaporeans have ever bought something online. It goes on to show that Singaporeans love shopping online, even more than people from any other part of the world.
So yes, it’s a wise move to consider marketing on some of these platforms, especially Qoo10, Lazada, and Carousell.
Each of these platforms has its own cost of marketing. So where you’re not yet decided on the best platform to market on, you might want to talk to your marketing consultant to help you figure out which platform suits you best.
The cost of marketing on most of these shopping platforms can range anywhere from $500 to $5000 a month. Of all the options that you have, only Carousell has a different pricing model, where they charge you to boost your ads using prepaid coins.
Budgeting for Online Marketing in Singapore
By now, you must be overwhelmed with all this information. The chances are that you’re even more confused than you initially were. No need to fret though, as this is where we try to make everything clear by breaking down everything we’ve covered into small executable chunks.
Assuming you have a marketing budget of $10, 000, this is how you’d want to split your budget.
YouTube
YouTube is the most popular social media and video streaming channel in Singapore. It’s even more popular than Facebook and Instagram.
It should, therefore, be among the first few platforms that you prioritise on. In this case, we’d suggest that you allocate a budget of $3000 to marketing on YouTube.
Pemasaran Instagram
Instagram is recommended for influencer marketing. As a marketer, it’s crucial that you take advantage of influencers and let them help you promote your products or services.
Plus Instagram has one of the highest conversion rates.
Getting a graphic designer to help you design an image post for Instagram shouldn’t cost you much, but hiring a micro-influencer will cost you about $1500 a post.
For this, we recommend that you allocate about $3000 to marketing on Instagram.
SEO dan Pemasaran Kandungan
As long as Google continues to rule, SEO will always be a top marketing channel. You have to invest in quality content and focus on earning quality backlinks. Your focus should be on how you’re going to get more eyeballs to your site through nothing else but content.
You have to invest in articles, infographics, images, videos, and slides to name a few.
We recommend that you allocate a budget of $2, 000 to SEO.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is one of the most developed online ad platforms in the world. Its rivals include the likes of Google and Facebook.
They’re always working round the clock to improve their PPC model and refine it for better ad results.
We suggest you set aside the remaining $2000 for Google AdWords.
The next thing you want to do is replace each of these platforms with a different platform on your next marketing run and see which one generates better marketing results.
Fikiran Akhir
As you can see, online marketing works with no specific budget. It’s perhaps the only marketing strategy that you can manipulate or play around with until it fits your budget.
Is there anything else that you wish to learn about online marketing? Well, we suggest that you talk to our team of online marketing experts at MediaOne, and let’s help you run your marketing campaign with the professionalism it deserves.
