Thunderdome Marketing Fundamentals Series: We demystify standard marketing terms and techniques in this series. Digital marketing is complex, and we aim to help business owners understand key terms and concepts.

What Is Marketing? 

Marketing promotes a company's products and services to increase its market share. A successful marketing strategy involves advertising, sales, and the delivery of goods to consumers. 

The goal of marketing has always been to connect with your audience at the right time and place. In today's world, that means reaching them where they already spend time: online.

What Is Digital Marketing? 

Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, simply includes all marketing activities conducted online. You connect with customers and promote products and services using digital channels, such as social media, search engine optimisation, email, and mobile apps. Digital marketing is any marketing campaign involving digital communication. You can build a brand, enhance customer service, attract potential customers, and more.

Understanding The Southeast Asian Consumer. 

The Southeast Asian region is a highly sought after market as over 75% of consumers have access to the region, one of the highest rates in the world. Not only is the region highly connected and tech savy, but has also see over 70 million new online shoppers added during the COVID19 pandemic. 

According to Google, Temasek, and Bain company, the e-commerce industry in the six largest Southeast Asian markets will continue to grow as it will likely reach US$172 billion in value in 2025.

iPrice Group, an e-commerce aggregator, collaborated with SimilarWeb and AppsFlyer to discover the impact of Covid-19 in their Map of E-commerce Yearend Report 2020.

The report reveals that the overall website traffic of online shopping platforms increased positively across all countries year-over-year, including in Singapore, which experienced a surge of 35% compared to 2019.

Covid-19 has increased the online demand of Southeast Asian consumers for non-essential items such as fashion, electronics, health & beauty, and sports & outdoors.

2021 was the year that social commerce rose significantly in populartity across the region with 40% of consumers shopping on a social media platform at least once per month. Research has shown that shoppers even prefer social commerce to more traditional brick and mortar stores. 

Types Of Digital Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

It involves optimising your website to appear higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing organic (or free) traffic to your site. Websites, blogs, and infographics are all channels that benefit from SEO.

Content Marketing.

Content is created to generate brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and customer acquisition.

You can use the following channels as part of your content marketing strategy:

• Blog posts: You can demonstrate your industry expertise and generate organic search traffic for your company by writing and publishing articles on your company blog.

• Ebooks and whitepapers: Long-form content like ebooks help visitors learn more about a company's products and services.

• Infographics are visual representations of concepts that help website visitors better understand them.

• Audio or visual content: You can reach a wider audience by creating content that can be shared online as a video or audio clip.

Social Media Marketing.

Social media marketing aims to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads for your business through your brand and your content.

Among the social media channels you can use in social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Searching for products or businesses related to yours is an ideal chance to promote yours. To capitalise on those future leads, you should use paid advertising and SEO. In search engine marketing, paid ads are placed on search engines to increase website traffic. Google Adwords is one most popular SEM services in the SEA region. Search engine results pages feature these paid ads seamlessly, providing instant visibility. 

Email Marketing.

Business owners often use email to promote content, discounts, and events and direct people to their websites. 

Online PR.

PR online involves securing earned coverage on digital publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. In many ways, it's like traditional PR but online. 

The Benefits of Digital Marketing.

Now that we have a better understanding of digital marketing and what it can involve, so let's move on to its benefits to businesses of all sizes and stages. 

Target The Right Audience.

It is possible to target only the prospects most likely to purchase your product or service through digital marketing. A TV, magazine, or billboard ad you place has limited control over who sees it. You may know who the typical reader is, what type of audience watches a particular TV show, or what kind of person typically frequents the bus stop opposite your billboard. You cannot, however, be sure that your ad will reach your target audience when you place this type of advertisement.

You can use the methods above if you are marketing a product that everyone may need, such as toothpaste, since these methods work well for scale. The reality, however, is that most businesses target a particular audience. In the case of leadership coaching services, if university students mostly see your advertisement, it may not result in the desired outcome. Personalised, high-converting marketing messages can be sent to an audience you identify and target with digital marketing.

Using social media targeting features, for instance, you can display social media ads according to variables like age, gender, location, interests, networks, and behaviours. 

You can use digital marketing to develop your buyer persona, allowing you to reach people who are most likely to buy. Digital marketing will enable you to split your audience into subgroups which is especially useful if you sell multiple products or services to different buyer personas.

Cost Effective.

In addition to reaching a more targeted audience, digital marketing is more cost-effective. There can be a high overhead cost associated with newspaper ads, television spots, and other traditional marketing methods. Furthermore, you have less control over whether your target audiences see your messages in the first place.

There are several ways to create a slick, professional website for a relatively low cost. You can start a social media account for free and sign up for an email newsletter service at a competitive price. 

Go Beyond Your Locality.

You can reach a vast audience with digital marketing. Your business can connect with customers from all over the world, in various time zones, as seamlessly as if they were in your local area. Your business can reach a larger audience across different digital channels and expand its market reach in ways that seemed impossible before.

Measure Success.

In digital marketing, you can measure a wide range of metrics to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. Setting goals and measuring metrics for each channel is the first step. Tracking conversions, leads, website visits, and more can provide valuable business insights.

Quantifiable Results.

Finding out how many customers and revenue your marketing strategy generates is the key to determining whether or not it works. However, what about non-digital marketing strategies?

The traditional approach asks each customer, "How did you find us?"

Unfortunately, that doesn't work in every industry. Often, companies don't get to speak one-on-one with their customers, and surveys do not always yield accurate results.

Results monitoring is simple with digital marketing. Your open rate, the number of visits to your home page, or direct purchases can all be tracked automatically by digital marketing software.

Easier To Adapt.

Developing a marketing strategy takes a lot of time and effort. Following that strategy until completion, allowing it to take effect, and evaluating its effectiveness is generally the best course of action. You may realise halfway through that a calculation was inaccurate, an assumption was incorrect, or an audience did not react as you expected. You can pivot or adjust the strategy along the way, preventing you from starting over from scratch.

It is a great benefit of digital marketing to change your strategy quickly. In contrast to more traditional forms of marketing, such as mailers and billboards, digital marketing is much easier to adapt. For instance, you can adjust or pause an online ad if it isn't delivering as expected.

Personalised Communication.

To engage customers where they are at that moment, your marketing team must deploy cross-channel functionality. Social media platforms, for instance, have different audiences and expectations so marketing may appear differently. The tone, images, offers, and scheduling of your posts all play a part in this.

Improved Lead Quality And Conversion Rates.

As digital marketing simplifies the measurement of marketing efforts, improving your conversion rate is also made more accessible. You can develop better strategies by measuring each tactic's effectiveness. You can improve your conversion rate by continuously refining your methods. When you invest in online marketing, you optimise everything for the most conversions possible.

Furthermore, not all leads are equally valuable to your business. You can target a specific audience with digital marketing to generate high-quality leads more likely to become customers. Your conversion rate will be directly improved by connecting your business with the most valuable leaders.

Engage At Every Buying Stage.

The earlier you engage your audience, the better. Leads are more likely to move through the customer funnel if they are connected early in the buyer's journey. The use of digital marketing allows you to accomplish that from beginning to end.

With online channels, you can track your customers' entire buying journey. It is essential to understand and analyse how customers behave and move to convert leads. You can follow this through digital marketing. In the early stages, even if they don't convert, it ensures they have made a connection with you.

Can all types of businesses use digital marketing?

No matter what industry your business is in, digital marketing can work for you. Whatever you sell, digital marketing involves creating buyer personas and valuable online content to identify your audience's needs. That's not to say that all businesses should implement a digital marketing strategy similarly.