Investing in online marketing solutions contributes significantly to the success of a business. Surprisingly, many entrepreneurs and SMEs ignore it, as it is not their specialty.
The truth is, online marketing is a lot more complicated than it was a few years ago. Search engines such as Google are continually updating their ranking algorithms. Social networking sites are evolving into essential marketing platforms. Also, PPC advertising platforms are introducing new features at an incredible rate.
Although it seems confusing, you can hack online marketing if you have the right tools, accompanied by proper setup and transparent organization.
That said, here are the key online marketing solutions that can steer your SME to the next level.
Content Marketing
If you want to take your SME to a higher level, ensure that you provide valuable content to your clients. Quality content will also get you more new customers, as well as help your business to gain trust and authority in your area of specialization.
The main techniques of content marketing used in Singapore include blog posts, videos, brochures, and newsletters, and so on. Such tools enable you to create a strong relationship with your clientele and reach a bigger audience, which results in increased sales.
This strategy is only useful if it is aligned with the objectives of your business. Therefore, you take time to learn about the nitty-gritty of this tactic before implementing it as part of your online marketing strategy. Luckily, online marketing courses are abundant in Singapore.
Social Media Marketing
The majority of Singaporean SMEs (and big companies) have limited their social media campaigns to the three ‘big’ social networks – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. As of now, several new social media networks have entered the scene, and they are equally as effective as the three mentioned above when it comes to marketing. Indeed, some of them are even better at marketing specific products and services.
These include platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr, which are gaining traction among millennial Singaporeans and have a rich set of features that make them viable digital marketing solutions. Instagram is particularly useful for those who want to leverage influencer marketing as part of their e-marketing solutions. The government of Singapore has in the past paid local Instagram influencers to promote its budget, further showing the effectiveness of this social media app. Tumblr and Pinterest are best-suited for businesses whose digital marketing strategy is heavily centred on compelling visuals, images, and infographics.
The reach to target audiences declined massively following the changes made on Facebook’s News Feed last year. Businesses have had to pay for visibility. This trend is expected to persist this year, meaning that marketers have to come up with relevant content that can be promoted prudently.
Another social media trend that SMEs in Singapore have to keep an eye on is video marketing. Many businesses worldwide now consider video as an integral element of their internet marketing solutions. The recent launch of Instagram TV (IGTV) and Facebook Watch, coupled up with YouTube’s enormous popularity, are important pointers that more brands are taking advantage of video marketing on social media.
Similar to other online marketing solutions, social media marketing undergoes constant evolution. What doesn’t change, however, is the need to create individualized messages for specific audiences, and using great content to promote engagement.
Mobile Optimization
More businesses are now optimizing their online platforms. This is understandable, as the majority of Singaporeans use their mobile devices to access the internet. The two main forms of mobile optimization are creating a responsive website and developing a mobile app, and both are hugely effective.
Another advantage of optimizing your digital platforms for mobile is its positive impact on your search engine ranking. Google has in the past declared that mobile-friendly sites would be relevant for organic search results. Besides, the popular search engine also launched Mobile Usability – a new feature in the Webmaster Tools that is now one of the top factors affecting search engine ranking.
The number of businesses incorporating mobile optimization into their marketing solutions will only increase. This includes building responsive sites, creating unique content targeting mobile users, and perhaps the game-changer, investing in mobile ads. To surmise, the mobile market has an enormous potential that any business would find hard to overlook.
Search Engine Optimization
Whenever someone talks about online marketing solutions, most people think of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a proven method of getting traffic to your website. While more traffic doesn’t guarantee increased sales, it is certainly a good starting point.
SEO appears intricate, but its basics are simple, even for a beginner running an SME in Singapore.
The first aspect of implementing SEO is keyword research. You have to know what your target audience is searching before you can optimize your content for that search. This is where research comes into play, as it helps you identify popular search queries and topics.
After keyword optimization, you move on to on-page optimization. On-page SEO encompasses optimizing your webpage content and HTML elements.
The next step is to optimize your off-page attributes for SEO. Off-page SEO is an excellent way of improving your search engine ranking through strategies that are implemented on other websites (not yours). In Singapore, off-page is mainly conducted through link building and sharing to social media. You can add some spice to your off-page SEO by building citations.
Conversion Rate Optimization
The primary objective of implementing marketing solutions is to get more conversions for your business. The basis of employing tactics to boost conversion rate is what’s known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). SEO gets traffic to your site, while CRO converts them into clients.
CRO primarily involves two aspects; user interface and experience (UI/UX), and copywriting. The design elements make it easier for the user to navigate your site, while the copywriting conveys the marketing message to your site’s visitors. If both are well-crafted and compelling, you should be confident of a substantial increase in your conversion rates.
To get started with SEO, take a look at your web design from a visitor’s perspective. If your site looks like one from the early 2000s, you will struggle to generate any conversions. Your website should have a modern outlook, user reviews and opinions, contact information, and social proof.
The focus shifts to headline optimization once the design includes all of the elements mentioned above. A great way of creating a headline is following the pattern used by your close competitors.
You might implement a great SEO strategy, and all other CRO tactics, but it all comes down to one important aspect – your call-to-action statement. Your CTA tells a visitor to perform a particular action, and why they should take it. It should be short and precise, and most importantly, use strong language.
Email Marketing
Email marketing establishes a direct communication channel between your business and its clients, making it a standout digital marketing strategy. Starting is probably the hardest stage of email marketing, as you have to figure out how to acquire email addresses without spamming.
The easiest way to get the email addresses of your potential customers is by using lead magnets. This involves offering a valuable item in exchange for an email address. For instance, you can provide visitors with a free subscription to an online newsletter in return for their email addresses.
Once you have the required addresses, your next objective should be nurturing the lead into a sale, as well as building brand awareness and authority. The best way of achieving this goal is by segmenting your email lists, allowing you to send targeted and personalized messages to each client.
The last aspect of email marketing is automation. This not only saves your time, but also allows you to send different messages based on the recipients’ activities – opened emails, clicked links, and websites visited, and so on.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Every business strives to offer the best possible experience for its customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to all strategies, activities, and technologies that companies use to manage the interactions and engagements of both their potential and existing customers. In return, businesses benefit from keeping close touch with clients, streamlined processes, and increased profitability.
In most cases, Singapore businesses use specialized software to implement CRM. This software quickly collects data from customers regarding their preferences, feedback, and other engagements with the company. This information helps the business owner to develop products and services that are likelier to appeal to the customer. Another method of implementing CRM is creating a customer service team that promptly responds to the queries.
12 Online Marketing Trends You Should Start Embracing to Grow your Business
Entrepreneurs are always finding new ideas to grow their businesses. There is always a massive interest in online marketing trends and innovation throughout the year. Creating a good product or service is no longer enough. You must spread the word about your products to improve sales and reach a wider target audience.
For some time now, online marketing has helped change obscure start-up businesses to become more successful. Thanks to online marketing, many companies have moved from having few clients to getting a huge population of subscribers and customers.
If you are wondering if online marketing is right for your business, read on to find out the trends you need to start embracing to grow your business.
Advanced Chatbots
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and chatbots are becoming more valuable as client support tools and channels for marketing. In the past years, many people saw chatbots as annoying, inauthentic, and disruptive. However, with the improvement in AI and machine learning, chatbots have grown better at providing beneficial solutions specific to the needs of individual users.
According to a recent study by Facebook, 56% of consumers prefer sending instant messages instead of calling support lines. If your business does not have a chatbot to send instant messages to your customers, you may lose them. A customer will choose to find another product or service than pick up the phone to call your business line.
Chatbots are the best way of delivering instant answers to consumers and clients, and they allow you to close sales that may otherwise have gone to your competitors.
First-Class Customer Experience
Customers are significant in the success of any business. People have been shifting their perspectives on what entails marketing. Marketing is no longer about trying to convince individuals to purchase from and work with your business. Instead, companies are now prioritizing providing a great customer experience that keeps the consumers coming back for more.
When a business focuses on creating a positive culture and offering excellent customer service, the marketing aspect will automatically take care of itself. Customers expect to have a seamless experience from the time they contact a store until after a sale. Businesses can use personalized messaging to help customers in solving issues about their buying decision.
Moreover, businesses need to find ways of listening and responding to customers’ questions. The digital marketing team should work with the sales and customer service team to ensure that the business delivers quality to all customers.
Consumers have gained more power due to the growth of online content. They have their own way of learning about products online and do not have to wait to be told by a brand how certain products are excellent. Instead, they are visiting websites and using social media to do their research.
To keep the customers coming to you, you must offer them more than just content. 73% of individuals attribute customer experience as an essential factor in their purchasing decision, but most companies fail to provide a good customer experience.
In customer experience, people value efficiency, convenience, excellent service, and easy payment options. Other aspects that also matter but are more traditional include updated technology, personalization, seamless mobile service, business image, and design. All these factors play a massive role in the overall customer experience.
Website Personalization
Website personalization is an important online marketing trend that can help you grow your business. You can do website personalization through content, call to action, and marketing emails. This trend can help you connect with your customers as you improve your website at the same time.
The trend can help you boost brand engagement, grow conversions, keep clients coming back and create a steady emotional connection between your clients and brand. Statistics indicate that 63% of consumers dislike generic advertising blasts, and a huge percent say they are more likely to do business with companies that offer personalized experiences.
Voice Search
Voice search has been a major trend that businesses are using to grow their brands. It has a significant influence on how a company creates its content and markets itself online. Many people own a smart speaker in their homes, and this shows that many searches may be driven by voice in the coming years.
As much as voice search brings challenges, it also presents opportunities. One smart speaker advertising opportunity that has grown in the past few months is branded skills. A smart speaker allows the user to ask a digital assistant a question about a product or service to which they get an instant reply.
The questions help increase brand awareness and visibility. They also enable the user to buy a product directly from the search results. Some businesses may not be ready for smart speaker advertising, but making your content well-optimized for voice search is critical.
Since voice search uses longer and more conversational questions, brands should slant their content to serve these questions. They should also answer questions directly, which will help make their content more visible to voice searches.
Featured Snippets
In the past, SEO had always been striving to land a top spot on the search engine results pages. Nowadays, the most important thing is to land a featured snippet.
Featured snippets are parts of a text, usually with a few visual lines, shown in a different box at the top of the search engine’s organic results. Some of the ways that your business can land a featured snippet include:
- Answering the question of the searcher directly in less than 75 words.
- Placing your answers at the beginning of your article.
- Asking the question of the searcher in your body text and in the subheading.
- Elaborating the answer in the rest of the article.
- Citing authoritative sources and backing up your claims.
Shoppable Social Posts
Shoppable posts are the new trend, and although they are still new to Instagram, they are highly effective in generating conversions. Recent data from Instagram proves that 130 million users click on shoppable ads monthly. Digital marketers in the e-commerce business should capitalize on running shoppable ads as they contribute to a better buying experience.
Push Notifications
Push notifications are a great way of giving customers a push towards making a purchase. Statistics indicate that 85% of online stores capitalized on them in 2019, and in 2021, more businesses will adopt push notification as one of their marketing strategies.
Push notifications allow brands to reengage consumers on their websites and increase their number of conversions. Since there are numerous digital innovations, developers are now personalizing push notifications and making them quite sophisticated. Some examples of push notifications include promotions, incentives, and alerts. They are an excellent way of getting a business’s real-time messages across.
Speedy Load Times
Ultra-fast load times are a critical factor in user experience and SEO. Since the release of Core Web Vitals by Google, fast-loading pages have become a ranking factor and a priority for every business. Fast load time can help your website rank higher and increase conversions.
A slow-loading website makes customers leave the page immediately without purchasing. Therefore, it’s clear that a website’s performance quality significantly impacts your sales. Every business must ensure that their website has fast loading times, and in case of downtime, perform maintenance promptly.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is an essential marketing trend today and will still be in the years to come. A business should incorporate video in its digital marketing strategy. YouTube is not the only way to do this; there are numerous other ways to drive high engagement with your video marketing. You can choose to make video posts or go live on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Marketers are facing a significant challenge due to the increasing shift to mobile devices. The long-form sales pages are fading rapidly due to difficulty in reading them on small mobile screens. Nonetheless, a video will present that same information so that any person using any device can get the message perfectly.
Websites that include videos have 50 times more chance to drive organic search results than texts. This is because video content is more compelling, and therefore Google ranks pages that have videos much higher.
Video marketing makes it easy for you to reformat your content. You can transcribe your video before publishing it to add a text version and upload a raw video using the transcription as subtitles on Facebook. You can also turn your transcription into a blog article or use your video as a podcast episode.
Other marketing trends becoming more popular include live videos, 1:1 video, Video SEO, 360-and degree video content.
Account-Based Marketing
Businesses can use account-based marketing to personalize messaging and target every decision-maker with the information needed in solving certain departmental issues. The same way personalized messaging is directed to consumers, account-based marketing can yield a high ROI compared to other kinds of marketing.
Account-based marketing is the best thing you can do to your business and one you should embrace today.
Thought Leadership Content
Current online marketing strategies are all about getting your brand’s name out there and showing that you are knowledgeable and an expert in your field. If you do not know how to get started, the first thing is to share your expertise on LinkedIn Pulse and Medium platforms.
After you are comfortable with the production of educational content, join online communities that deal with your field of expertise. Even if you are not a writer, you can still share your knowledge and expertise with other field colleagues to help them learn.
People are always eager to learn new things, which can be an excellent way to grow your brand. Consumers will start associating your brand with educational content, and you will get more viewership, mainly if you also include videos.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using significant figures to get your brand message out to a broader audience. An influencer can be a well-known celebrity or a social media personality with a vast niche following. The influencer will help spread the word about your brand and products through their social platforms.
Influencer marketing has proven to be more authentic than corporate advertising as most consumers trust an influencer’s opinion about a product than they trust what a brand says about themselves. Influencer recommendation makes consumers purchase products more. According to medikix, the ad spend for this type of marketing may reach $10 billion by 2022.
Artificial intelligence may affect influencer marketing as brands are using AI every year to make the process of searching for the best influencer to partner with. AI is helping to find influencers who have better engagement, fewer fake followings, and a high chance of bringing positive impact to the brand. Some of the ways that artificial intelligence is changing influencer marketing include:
- Use of image recognition with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
- Identifying the performance of the influencer using Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Prediction of incentives with Artificial Neural Networks
- Determining the influence that a particular influencer has
- Eliminating fake engagements and spambots
- Finding posts that violate disclosure guidelines and flagging them
Simple Result-Oriented Digital Marketing Hacks for 2022
Optimise Your Email Features
Email marketing has been around for more than a decade now and continues to top other digital marketing strategies in terms of ROI. In a recent poll, 80% of marketers reported noticing a sharp increase in client email interactions in the last 12 months.
Another staggering statistic is that email marketing offers the highest ROI to small businesses with a niche market for their products and services. To get the desired results, you need to redefine the email features.
Apart from having attractive short text, make sure all other features are fully optimised to match the recipients’ expectations. For example, the CTA buttons should be clickable and easy to locate. Go against the grind and include them in the above the fold section of the email, and if it works for your business, stick with it.
Embrace the AIDA Method
Wondering what AIDA means? Well, it stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Your marketing strategy should be specifically tailored to grasp the attention of potential customers to your products or services. Then, get them interested in trying it out then create a burning desire to have the service.
The final step, Action, is when they decide to purchase the full package or the trial package.
Photo Credit: Hubspot
This digital marketing strategy has been since 1898, can you believe it? Turns out it works perfectly on both traditional and digital marketing strategies.
Identify the problem the customer is currently experiencing, then go ahead and demonstrate to them that your product or service can resolve the problem. Please make sure that you deliver on your promise to avoid painting a negative image of your brand.
Complete Video Marketing
68% of online digital marketers recently reported getting better ROI from video marketing than Google Ads. 53% say video helps boost brand awareness, and 49% say it helps them better engage with the target customers.
The video should be an integral part of your online marketing strategy. Most consumer traffic comes from videos and not text, as previously believed. Think outside the box by having conventional videos and live videos.
One of the benefits of live videos is that you get real-time feedback from the audience. Contrary to popular belief that its expensive, many small businesses have managed to run successful video marketing campaigns by recording the videos using a phone camera.
We recommend prepping well for each video to avoid confusing the audience. Every video should be geared towards a particular problem facing the customer. Meaning, you shouldn’t try to solve more than three problems in one video.
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world after Google. Post videos on the platform to increase your reach. Ensure that the title and description have the relevant keywords to increase their visibility in search results. Even though they may be videos with similar content, yours will stand out from the rest if you coin it properly.
Leverage the Growth Hacking Approach
Gone are the days when businesses would channel thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign without a clear blueprint. You cannot afford to shoot in the dark and expect to hit the target. To succeed in growing up your business, you need to make decisions based on accurate market data.
The growth hacking approach recommends testing everything to get information on what triggers qualified leads to purchase your product or service. Fully implementing this strategy may be time consuming and tedious, but you will save plenty of time and profit in the long run.
Unlike other approaches, this can be applied in virtually any digital marketing plan. For example, instead of broadcasting emails to the entire audience, you can segment the audience and send personalised emails.
Regarding blog posts, you can have multiple content clusters then monitor the results to know which one generates the most leads and sales. The information gathered will help you know which areas to focus on and which ones need to be improved or removed.
Consider Hosting Webinars
Five years ago, webinars used to be very popular but surprisingly, their popularity is slowly overwritten by the new ways of communicating with customers. Unknown to most businesses is that webinars are perfect for generating leads.
You don’t have to be the only person hosting the webinar; you can invite industry leaders to address certain trends in the market.
The process of creating content for webinars is similar to finding blog topics. Carry out research to find ideal topics for each webinar, then develop a robust promotion strategy to reach many people. One sure way of doing this is by sending out promotional emails to the target audience. Reminders are great, but be careful not to come out as too pushy and needy.
Create New Content
Content that’s already on your website may be effectively generate fresh leads, but you need to develop a plan for creating new content regularly. It will keep your website fresh and show Google that you are an authority. It will also help you stay engaged with the target customers.
Picture this; if you only have a handful of blog posts, the readers will only visit once or twice. After that, they will run to your competitor sites for more fresh content. However, it doesn’t mean that you should replace the old posts with new ones.
Instead, you should use the new content to beef up the old posts. Research to identify the low performing posts and add fresh content related to the topic already discussed. Google will identify the fresh content when crawling your site and reward you with a higher ranking.
For example, if you posted a case study last year, but realise several new market trends, use the new information to make the case study relevant and accurate. Use external links to show the audience that the fresh content is accurate and legit. You could even quote prominent speakers in your niche. Better yet, enhance the case study with video snippets of the interview you quote.
Whiteboard Videos
Your content should be easy to understand for the audience to take the desired action. Whiteboard videos are perfect for explaining a process, product functions, and much more. They are engaging and more appealing to the target audience than blocks of text.
The beauty is that you can use them for anything and everything illustrated. One of the highlights that make them special is that they grasp the audience’s attention and curiosity. The view’s attention is locked from the onset, and they look forward to how the story unfolds.
Another advantage is that illustrations are informative and engaging, and entertaining. Spice them up with a pinch of humour to keep the audience interested in the product or service.
You don’t need special skills and expertise to create one; there are plenty of whiteboard video programs such as MySimpleShow and Doodly. Prep for the recording process to end up with a compelling and professional whiteboard video.
Carousel Posts
Carousel posts is the new generation blog post that contains multiple photos instead of text. They are relatable with the target audience and portray a better image of your brand.
The best content is one that records a high ERR across multiple platforms. Carousel posts does exactly that as they can be posted on multiple platforms. They are also engaging as the audience has to scroll to learn more about the brand or view more photos.
Include a fully optimised CTA button and confirm it leads to the right web page.
Screencast Videos
The whole idea of creating content is to help the audience understand how a product or service works. Unfortunately, text may not be enough, and that’s where screencast videos come in to save the day.
Using the screencast format, you can create one or a series of tutorial videos with ease. It is an excellent way of responding to commonly asked questions and addressing issues related to your product.
Another highlight that makes screencast videos special is that the audience will hear your voice, and your story or message will be visualised. That personal touch makes them effective in conveying the intended message to the target audience.
Guest Infographics/Guestographics
As the name suggests, guest infographics are published on multiple websites but linked to the primary site you own. Unlike before, brands now embrace the idea of collaborating on guest infographics more than the widely used guest posts.
If well crafted, guest infographics have proven to create stable connections and enhance brand awareness.
Apart from publishing the infographic on your site, you can go the extra mile to create guest content for another partner website that embraces the guestographic concept.
In addition to using them to promote your business, they will boost your SEO campaign through the backlinks gained from other high authority websites.
You won’t have to spend an arm and a leg on them. You can use tools such as Canva for creating infographics for your social media channels. Alternatively, you can hire a graphic designer to create a custom infographic either for posting on your website or other websites to earn backlinks.
Collaborate with Influencers
One surefire way of enhancing business credibility and creating a buzz on social media is by collaborating with influencers. You don’t have to hire macro-influencers with millions of followers; start with micro-influencers. The latter has a small group of followers who are genuinely interested in what your brand has to offer.
For small businesses, we recommend using micro and nano-influencers concurrently to learn the ropes and monitor the results before allocating more funds to this form of digital marketing. During the selection process, consider the type of audience a particular influencer has before sending a proposal to get the best results.
Post User-Generated Content on Instagram
Instagram is the largest visual social media platform today. It boasts of over 1 billion active users per month, with the average user spending at least 30 minutes per day browsing through the feed. 81% of the users rely on the platform to research various products and services before buying.
Instagram stories are the most popular option as they are interactive than general posts. They are widely used to promote businesses, services and products. Remember, online customers trust user-generated content than reviews posted on the company website as real customers develop them.
Request some of your customers to record short videos using your product or speaking about the services. Post the videos on your Instagram business account, or better yet, request them to post them on their account. Incentive them by offering freebies or discounts on their next purchase.
The content should be genuine, so make sure that you let them know what kind of content you are looking for to avoid sounding too pushy.
Instructographics
As you can probably tell from the name, instructographics are infographics whose main purpose is to explain how something is done. It’s more engaging than the conventional text product descriptions and guides. If you recently noticed a significant increase in questions on how your product works or a particular feature, you can create instructographics to address the concerns.
Use your creativity to create instructographic how-to guides and step-by-step guides. Like other infographics previously discussed in this post, you can hire a graphic designer or use online tools such as Canva.
Help Web Visitors Find Resources by Using Chatbots
How consumers use websites has changed significantly over the years. They don’t like visiting multiple pages to find the content. Luckily, you can enhance the user experience by using chatbots and chat.
A live chat is great, but it’s only available at specific times of the day. On the other hand, a chatbot is available every day of the week for the whole year. Take the time to create one that can present plenty of accurate information to the users based on their questions.
Another pro tip is that users don’t have to provide their personal information, but you can request them to provide their email address if the chatbot cannot answer their questions.
Conclusion
While this list is not comprehensive, it certainly touches on the most effective online marketing solutions for Singapore-based SMEs. If you execute these strategies correctly, your business will improve substantially.
It is worth noting that online marketing is continuously evolving. You can’t tell if a strategy that is currently effective will have the same impact in the future. The best way to stay in the game is by familiarising yourself with the latest trends in the digital marketing world.
Get in touch with us for the best online marketing solutions in Singapore.
