DigiMarCon Asia Pacific 2018 in Singapore Marked a Remarkable Value

This year in Singapore a big conference when knocked the floors of the World Trade Centre, the entire world was on its toe to grab a seat in the event. “DigiMarCon”, which stands for ‘DIGITAL MARKETING CONFERENCE’ showcased the most audacious and thought-provoking speakers from the digital marketing industry. With their tagline, “If you want to be successful in digital marketing, you can’t miss attending a DigiMarCon Conference!” it did deliver what it promised. Attendees were able to grab knowledge on:

• Digital strategy
• Programmatic advertising
• Web experience management
• Usability / design
• Mobile marketing & retargeting
• Customer engagement
• User acquisition
• Social media marketing
• Targeting & optimization
• Video marketing, data science & big data
• Web analytics & A/B testing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Conversion rate optimization
• Search engine optimization
• Paid search marketing
• Geo-targeting
• Predictive analysis & attribution
• Growth hacking
• Conversion rate optimization
• Growth marketing tools
• Marketing & sales automation
• Sustainable growth strategies
• Product marketing & UX / UI and much, much more!

One of our associates, Mrs. Aarti Sharma in Singapore attended the conference to represent KVR Webtech at DigiMarCon, Asia Pacific 2018.

With a nice warm coffee on the table, we were greeted with a welcome speech by Mr. Tony Eades CEO (APAC) and also serve as a Chief Strategy Officer at the Salted Stone. The speech was followed by a very fruitful conversation between Mr. Gaurav Gupta, who is a marketing evangelist of Omni-Channel, Mr. Tony Eades and Mr. Yiwen Chan, the head of commercials at Content.co. The topic of the agenda was, “growing and ever-changing digital marketing industry.”

He told the entire attendees about the Omni-channel marketing and how they stitch all their customers together with the digital platform like messenger apps, chatbots etc. and how it can be an impactful tactic for upcoming and established companies. A lot of things like the consumer behavior, data collection, study of the analytics, filtering and use them to get a potential customer, and the entire session was focused on it. He also shared his take on strategizing offline and online marketing tactics to churn the maximum benefit for the business. Few of his major discussions were on making good headings but not overpromising and how to get more personal in marketing strategy.

A panelist came up with his take on chatbots and said, “May take a bit more time to become smarter but will always require human intelligence along with it“.
It was best explained by Gaurav Gupta, giving an example of one of the new technology – self-projection. It is similar to as if you go to a cloth shop and there a magic mirror reflects clothing on your body. It is clear that you need to try new technologies with a pinch of salt.
Following the same was the perfect quote by Gaurav Gupta, related to quality data partnership, -“When you living in the desert- you don’t ask water bearer how good the water is, you simply take it”.

The next person on the stage was catalyzed by Mr. Ben Soubies, The Head of APAC, Talwalkar.
He came up with the consumer behavior and how it affected when it was digitally studied and analyzed, and how it leads to a successful profitable campaign. He stressed using appropriate keyword selection on the basis of consumer behavior for a specific region, city or a country. One should refine the research and must use the protective measure to promote the business. The online space controllers must study social analytics and try to gather information about their competitor’s active digital medium. The session was concluded with dozens of illustrations and insights into the impact of digital data on business.

The Head of Marketing, Almitra Karnick from Clever Tap came up with an exceptional informational session:
She enthralled everyone into the marketing history and enlightens us about the use of artificial intelligence with marketers and how it helps them in their work. She ‘pinpointed’ us into the needs of a customer and how I must use the SEO quality content and market them smartly. There was a moment when she came up with analyzing a customer’s data and how we must offer a discount to the potential customers. As a fact and reality, she was pretty right then we as a marketing person should be updating ourselves with the latest digital technologies and must focus on the customer retention as she said about Starbucks, a brand worth a billion.

Sharanya Ramachandran came up with the discussion on an evolving role of a marketer in the digital world. She holds the position of Product Marketing Leader in ZOHO.

She discussed the challenges us as a digital marketer face and how things are getting aggressive in this digitally evolving era. She stressed the understanding of consumer behavior to involve an audience. She also came up with a discussion on email marketing and marketing automation. She drew our attention to understand email marketing and how minimalistic emails can prove to be more impactful and how we must add a personal touch in the email write-ups.

The afternoon lunch was more of a networking than eating. It was extremely amazing when we went across people from overseas and got to know them and their takes on digital marketing. It’s one world and we are never complete until a union is formed.

BLOCKCHAIN was next on the list and how it has affected the social media and banks.

Ian Farmer took the mic and as a stroke on a canvas, he took one of the most amazing hours of the conference. Ian Farmer holds the position of Managing Director, at Frontiering and Ian McKee. The agenda of the discussion was brought to a relationship between social media, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency which is new to the society and how fast it is evolving. The sigh of relief from the attendees to know that the Facebook might consider Blockchain Technology for it data privacy concerns.

Astha Kalbag, from FACEBOOK SINGAPORE, works as a Marketing Science Expert came up with, “Where did my dollar go? How to measure the real business outcomes”

Now this topic is something that every marketing staff would love to get their hands on, and grabbing pieces of advice would be like digging a gold mine as “spending and expecting” is the biggest question of every campaign. As per Astha, ‘Attribution’ is a hyped word in the digital world. She confidently claimed that the industry leaders like Netflix, Airbnb and many more not only have achieved a medal of honor in the digital world, also have achieved success using incrementality to measure their ad effectiveness. She stressed on measuring the value of marketing investments on business results. With the examples of Netflix and Airbnb, she came up with an advice that said, “We as a digital Marketer have to move away from the number of clicks, clicks through rate, cookies and last clicks.” She focused on the incrementality tool that helps the digital marketers to know the effect of actions taken in marketing in view of a business. She also put a light on the benefits of incrementality with analyzing and understanding business in the digital world and how one can channel out profits from it.

Luca Destefanis, the GBS & Industry Marketing Leader, IBM Asia Pacific was next in queue.
“Modern Marketing Mandate” was the subject of the hour. As per him, the clients never change and they always look for business value. He stressed on the analytics and how the data is changing the way of marketers. Artificial Intelligence and its influence in the new era was one of the topics, and he discussed on an “Individual Value” and “Personal Motivation“. A very informational discussion was done on the consumer behavior in the past and modern era.
A wide range of nationalities was found in the venue. People from Srilanka, Australia, USA, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines were among the few participants whom she managed to talk with.

Busting the myth of B2B Social Media was one of the major attracted discussion for which the entire attendees were waiting. It was undertaken by Moderator Kelvin Lee, Global Director, Social Media, and Thomson Reuters. The panelists were Anna Rokina, Social Selling Lead, Oracle Digital Tech APAC and, Elaine Adoptante from Veritas Technologies. They gave a fine time on a discussion of measuring ROI through quality leads, quantity, and velocity.

The last but not the least, David Fallarme the SEA Head of Marketing at Hub Spot shared his view on rounding up Facebook Messenger as the next marketing channel. One should be including Facebook Messenger in their marketing strategy and further, he came up with the ways to give a personal touch to each and every customer who uses facebook. The inception of Facebook Messenger also came up in the discussion and he described how important we chat was then and how it became the reason for FACEBOOK MESSENGER and what it is today. He told, how messaging apps surpassed.

The night was welcomed with a wrap-up speech by Mr. Tony Eades with a nice and warm farewell reception on the go. Mrs. Aarti Singh ended up this wonderful diary call with the KVR Webtech with an advice that, “hearing the leaders always end up reaping new fruitful results“.

How to Grow Your Instagram Followers in Singapore

Want to grow your Instagram followers in Singapore? All you need to incorporated these strategies in your marketing plan.

In this era, if you are not using social media for your business, you are missing out on a huge customers and marketing. Social media takes your business to a lot of people, if it is used strategically.

The major stress of most small businesses is on Facebook and Twitter. They often forget that they can also find customers through image platform like Instagram. However, Instagram requires different marketing strategies than Facebook and Twitter. At this platform, you need to sound more “emotional and humanistic” than “business”.

If you know the art of posting over Instagram, you can expand your followers list. After all, there are 1.9 million users in Singapore, accounting for 33 percentage of the total population. From generating engagement, building a personality for your business to making your content viral, Instagram benefits your business in many ways.

And icing on the cake—there is a low competition on Instagram as there are only 2-3% businesses are active on Instagram.

You couldn’t ask for more!

But the thing is that you should know how to use it. Let us help you with these tips.

1. Use the Right Hashtag:

Users can easily find the photos with hashtags when they are looking for those specific terms. However, there are certain hashtags that can give your products more visibility. This is because the users of Instagram use these hashtags over others, just like with Twitter or Facebook. Using the right hashtags will expose your photos to new users.

Use the Right Hashtag

Some of the top used hashtags on Instagram are…

  • #love (1,271,692,015)
  • #instagood (742,795,562)
  • #photooftheday (507,358,504)
  • #fashion (487,010,088)
  • #beautiful (463,668,566)
  • #happy (427,528,663)
  • #cute (418,686,470)
  • #like4like (417,887,839)
  • #tbt (413,049,020)
  • #nature (303,040,276)

Don’t worry if this list doesn’t feature the suitable hashtags for your products.

Free online tools like IconoSquare or Websta help you find relevant and most popular hashtags for your products. However, popular hashtags are likely to change over time as they are driven by the trends. So make sure to changes the hashtags keywords every few months. Or you can also take hashtags ideas from the top selling competitors accounts.

One more thing—try to use those hashtags in your stories too!

2. Choose the Right Time to Post:

Do you consider the timings of your post?

It is important because your target audience may not be active the time you post. May be they don’t have time to respond to that post. So choosing the right time slot can make a difference. The key is here to post when majority of your audience in online. Evening (around 5.00 p.m.-7.00 p.m.) is the best time to release your post when people are back from work/school and have time to check their phone.

Further, you can use Instagram Insights to check where your followers are located, their gender, theirage and, above all, when they are likely to active on Instagram.

Besides, the insight lets you see their locations by country or city, so you can know their time zones. On the basis of this data, you can determine the time to schedule your Instagram posts.

Read Also: 7 Reasons Why Businesses in Singapore Should Use Instagram for Brand Promotion

3. Share User-Generated Content:

As the name implies, it is generated by the users as personal story or their experiences related to the product.

User Generated Content

Most brands feature this type of content while giving credit to the user. Invite your followers to share their experience with your products. For example, invite them to post their photos with the dress they bought from you. Or how your travel agency made their Europe tour great.If your customers have no idea how to generate content, interview them and publish it on Instagram. This will encourage other users to submit their content. By reposting the user generated content, Buffer, a social media management tool, has seen a rise in number of their Instagram followers by 400% in one year.

4. Attract Your Competitor’s Followers on Instagram:

This is one of the best ways to find and attract new followers. Visit your closest competitor’s Instagram accounts and interact with their followers. And there are many ways to interact with their followers.

  • Follow them
  • Like their photos
  • Comment on their photos

The more you make efforts and interact with the users, the more will be added to your follower list.

5. Post Regularly:

According to one study conducted by visual marketing tool Tailwind, the more often you post on Instagram, the more like and followers you have. The study unveils that accounts that posted seven or at least once a day are likely to get new followers faster than those post less frequently. Make sure to use right hashtags (as we have told you in the first point) to be discovered by others who will be interested in your services.

6. Run a Contest:

Running an Instagram contest is one of the best ways to get more followers, create an engaged audience and promote your brand. The objective of your contest shouldn’t just be to boost your follower count. Make sure it also builds awareness for your brand while interacting with your existing followers. It is simple to start.

For example, you can ask your current followers to tag a friend to participate in the contest. The algorithm or your follower will encourage the people who are new to your brand. They might follow you if they choose to enter the contest.

Before starting the contest, keep these things in your mind.

  • Make sure to check Instagram’s promotion guidelines or any legal requirements for running a contest that apply in your region.
  • Use a good hashtags (remember the first point in this blog)
  • Use an amazing photo or video. (don’t use the one created with MS Paint)
  • Give away prizes related to your brand
  • Make it easy to enter

7. Post Better Photos:

Now this is the point you can’t afford to take lightly. It is fair to say that images are the lifeline of your Instagram account. After all, Instagram is all about images. But that doesn’t mean you just post anything. Great photos help you get likes and followers as well. Here are some characteristics of the most liked photos on Instagram.

  • Be creative with your captions. It can add depth or humor.
  • Try teaser photos that create anticipation or satisfy curiosity for your new opening or product launch.
  • Behind the scenes video
  • Animation or artful photos

So these are some tips to boost your followers on Instagram in Singapore. However, incorporating these tips won’t give you result overnight. Do the things right and keep patience.

We also like to hear from you. How’s been your experience on Instagram? Do you have trouble getting started over there? Let us know in the comments below.

Why ZMOT Matters in Singapore Digital Marketing

ZMOT can help you seize the customers at the time they have so many options to choose from. Learn here how to do it properly.

What is ZMOT? And why should you care about it?

ZMOT stands for Zero Moment of Truth. (Sounds like a title of crime thriller or anything from sci-fi movie.

It is a momentin the buying cycle when the buyer researches a product before buying the product.

For example, a buyer views the ad of the product and considers all factors like review, price and quality before the purchasing. This is the ZMOT.

The ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH is followed by the “first moment of truth” (when a buyer picks the product from the shelf) and “second moment of truth” (when a buyer uses and experiences the product).The ZMOT was coined by Google in their 2011 eBook entitled as ZMOT.

It is an important part in customer decision making hierarchy. This point decides if the buyer is really interested in the product.

Let’s move to the second question—why does ZMOT matter to you as a marketer?

This is because, as we have said before, it is an important point in buyer’s decision making about any product. Therefore, you need to win the customers at this crucial point.

And knowing all aspects of ZMOT will help you understand the right strategies to be made at this point.

Why ZMOT?

Most of the today’s buyers are savvy. They don’t enter the store right away having seen the ads. Instead, they search online for the information to make a right purchase decision. Some of the key points being considered by them at this stage are…

Online Buying

  • Comparing the Price
  • Checking the Testimonials
  • Looking at the Reviews and Ratings
  • Asking Other Users for Feedback

For example, a potential smartphone buyer is likely to have questions like…

  • Which smartphone has the best battery backup?
  • Will it work in night mode?
  • Is the XYZ phone waterproof?

Google has found that the average customer taps into 10.4 sources of information between seeing an ad and buying a product. By 2015, this number was 22 sources.

They use many mediums to do research about the product, from online platform, friends and family, and social networking sties to get opinions before they make a purchase. And 57 per cent of Singaporeans use social media to read reviews.

What is Your Role at This Stage?

You as a marketer should be ready to answer the questions asked by a customer at this point, in their way and on their preferred time.

A business that answers these questions just gets a competitive edge. A customer feels close to the brand as it has answered his all queries. But it is not that easy.

This is because consumers use majority of resources that fall outside the direct control of the businesses. Then, the audience is distracted, fragmented, dynamic and always changing. It is trickier than ever before to figuring out when the customers are ready to buy.

Read Also: Why Businesses in Singapore Need Digital Marketing to Grow?

How to Win Zero Moments Of Truth in Singapore?

Win Zero Moments Of Truth in Singapore

ZMOT is a crucial stage for both customers and businesses. Whereas customers can make here an informed decision, businesses can win over them by providing relevant information. In fact, this is the stage where you can outwit your competitors by hooking the customers.

This quote from Google’s ZMOT eBook says it all—

“If you’re available at the Zero Moment of Truth, your customers will find you at the very moment they’re thinking about buying, and also when they’re thinking about thinking about buying.”

Singapore has everything that encourage you feel the pulse of the customer before making purchase. The country has the highest Internet penetration rate while there are popular influencers or experts on food, shopping and lifestyle. Most people are active social media users and seek reviews of a certain product online. So here is how you can perfectly seize the “ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH” in Singapore.

1. Hire an Influencer:

Influencer is the person who is followed and adored by people (fans) for his expertise or piece of advice. There are many top influencers in Singapore on food, shopping and lifestyle. Some of have exceeding fan base while some have the modest number of followers.

Therefore, you can use them to promote your brand. For example, if you are an ice cream business, you can hire a cookery experts on YouTube or social media to get your brand promoted. The influencer will share information about your brand and recommend it to the followers. You can use micro-influencer (1500-20,000 followers) if your budget is tight.

2. Information about Your Products over the Web:

Make sure the information about your product is readily available on the customer’s sources. They will be looking for the sources like customer reviews, buyer’s guide and case studies. Besides, they look for the reviews coming from your clients and customers.

3. Get Familiar with Your Customer and Their Concerns:

Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes will help you create the effective content. Consider these points to know your customers and their habits…

  • Who are my customers?
  • What they do?
  • What are their concerns?
  • What is their age? Is my brand according to their age?
  • How my brand can solve their problems?
  • Where they go for their online research and entertainment?

4. Which Device they are Using to Search Information:

Most searches are online and likely to start from simple Google search on a PC or phone. So make sure your website is optimised for both desktop and phone. This will help you to be discovered by the potential customers. However, mobile devices in Singapore are nowadays driving the purchasing decision than their desktop counterparts.

5. Analyse the Reviews:

To understand the customer’s perspective better, reviews, blogs and tweets come handy. They are the platforms where people share experiences about brands and raise the query as well. According to one study, nearly 90% of the potential customer base thinks that reviews are important to their purchase decision. In Singapore, 57 per cent of Singaporeans use social media to read reviews.

As review can drive purchases, you can be missing out on potential buyers if you don’t ask for a review. One more thing—always respond to the feedback of the customers dropped at your website or other reviewing platform.

Conclusion:

Winning the ZMOT means that you have won the half of the battle as you prepare, encourage and prompt the customer to think about your product. However, the customer experience should be great with your product or services after using it.

We Find This Quote to End the Blog on a Great Note…

“You’d never set up a corporate 1-800 number with nobody to answer the phone… The Internet is that 1-800 number, and it’s been set up for you even though you didn’t ask for it. People are ‘calling’ you with their web searches every minute of every day. Grandma doesn’t just phone 1-800-Butterball now – she searches online for, ‘How do I know when the turkey’s done?’ If turkey is your business, you’d better be there with a helpful answer (and maybe a demonstration, or a coupon, or a stuffing recipe). If people search for your product and you don’t answer that search, who do you think will answer?”

  • Jim Lecinski, Managing Director U.S. Sales & Service, Google

How Online Investing Increases Your Business’ Visibility?

Is your business seen online? Increase your business’ visibility using these online strategies.

A recent survey tells that 84% or 4.83 million Singaporeans are Internet users. That’s why your business requires sound online visibility to leverage those ever increasing users. It becomes even important if your competitors are already doing so. Even building a website or using listing directories can do a little. Therefore, as we have said before, you need to improve your online visibility. And these tips will help you…

Optimize Your Website Presence:

Nearly 97% of consumers search for products and services online. If you don’t have a website for your business, get the website developed now. If you have a website, get it optimized. Here’s how…

  • Use simple pages that showcase your work, testimonials, and blog. Don’t go for too fancy or complicated look.
  • Make it mobile friendly.
  • It should load quickly.
  • Place Call to Action Buttons wisely.
  • Add live chat or create a mobile app.

Read Also: Website Design Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make in 2018

Choose Your Social Media Channels Carefully:

While having the presence on social media outlet is essential, you should concentrate on the one or two that you can easily manage and grow. Make sure to stay active at least on the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. LinkedIn helps you build a network and generate leads, while Twitter is a great medium to spark off conversations with your customers. Use Instagram to share the appealing pictures of your products.

Create engaging content, including text and photos, for your customers and manage the accounts with tools like Buffer. Or you can hire a professional digital marketing agency for SMM in Singapore for that.

Try Videos, Podcasts, and Infographics:

Move beyond blogging to other forms of content like videos, podcasts, infographic, and e-book. They are more engaging and appealing than the text version of the information, driving you more traffic which in turn adds to your customer base. For example, adding a video to your webpage can boost its chances to top the Google SERPs by 53 times. Then 85% of customers are more likely to buy an item after watching its video. An engaging and informative content has more chances to go viral on a large scale.

Read Also: How to Improve Customer Satisfaction with Social Media

Improve Your SEO:

SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps increase visibility across the web. If it is done in a right way, it ensures top places for your business in the search results. And appearing higher and earlier in search results get more traffic and visibility as well.

Here are the ways to improve your SEO to get more traffic…

  • Improve your page loading speed
  • Produce high-quality content
  • Optimize your Images
  • Use header tags to break your content
  • Publish content on a relevant platform
  • Fix broken links
  • Strategically use keywords
  • Do link building

(Hire a professional digital marketing agency if the terms sound too technical.)

Read Also: Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Agency in Singapore

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC):

Also known as CPC, it is an online advertising model in which an advertiser pays the fee each time when his ad is clicked by a user. In simple words, it is the way to buy the visits, rather than earn those in an “organic way” (like SEO does). PPC is the most effective and quick digital marketing tool to direct traffic to the website.

Read Also: 7 Ways Google Adwords Can Help in Boosting Your Visibility.

Online PR:

Press and news releases help increase the visibility of companies for decades. The same thing can be expected from online PR. It lets you get exposure for your business without spending more money. The press release should showcase the offerings and their benefits in a clear and concise way. Go one step further and incorporate video, interviews, and product demo in your PRs to make them more compelling.

Read Also: Tips to Increase Traffic on Your Blog in Singapore

Over to You

Maintaining a strong online presence gives your business vast exposure in a long run. While incorporating the above-given tips, keep these things in mind…

  • Your customers and their concerns
  • How your product can help them
  • What language or platform your customer use

Do you have other tips to share with us? Or you have a query?

Just drop your thoughts in the comment box given below.