Get the low-down on digital marketing and find out how to pick a digital marketing agency in Singapore that suits your business needs.
Marketing has always been about making the right connections with the right people at the right time.
In the past, marketing strategies looked like this, something you probably grew up used to:
However, print and billboard marketing is on its way out because that’s not where the attention is anymore.
Now, it’s on websites you use every day. In fact, Google and Facebook make more money than any other traditional media company!
That’s because the internet is where people pour their time, money and effort into. So you’ll have to meet them where they already spend their time: online. That’s why digital marketing is so important – that’s where your audience, your market, is.
Let’s look at this from the eyes of a consumer:
You want to engage a service from X company, so you Google their name, hoping to see some reviews in order to be better informed. Bonus if they’ve got a Facebook page, as you’ll have access to their content and contact.
However, your search barely turns up anything!
Would you consider this a trustworthy company?
This is exactly the scenario you want to avoid.
Furthermore, as Singapore moves towards its goal of being a smart nation, it’s in your best interests as a business to engage with a digital marketing agency that knows its stuff.
You literally can’t afford to miss out on the opportunities of the web!
But how do you even begin to navigate the numerous digital marketing agencies in Singapore? What even is digital marketing?
That’s why ReferReach is here. In this article, we’ll go through the basics of digital marketing and also recommend the best digital marketing agencies in Singapore.
Digital Marketing: The Basics
Simply put, digital marketing encompasses any endeavour to spread the word about your business through an electronic device or the internet.
Businesses use digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to engage with potential clients.
Are you struggling with ROI? Do you want high lead generation?
Digital marketing is critical for your business and brand exposure at this point.
Every other brand, it appears, has a website. If they don’t, they at least have a social media presence or a digital advertising strategy. The reason is apparent – consumers now anticipate and rely on online means to learn about brands.
In fact, the biggest brands utilise full-service digital marketing to maximise their ROI. But if you’re an SME or startup in Singapore, you probably don’t have the extra funds to start crazily aggressive digital marketing campaigns!
That’s what this guide is for – we want to help you figure out which digital marketing services rake in the most ROI.
When you figure out that sweet strategy for your company, your business goals will be within reach with barely any effort!
By achieving a broad audience, you’ll be able to target the prospects who are most likely to buy your product or service.
That means your leads will turn into sales, which turns into ROI!
Types of Digital Marketing
Native Advertising
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a long-term approach that refers to the creation and promotion of content assets with the goals of
- increasing brand exposure
- increasing site traffic
- lead generation
- customer acquisition
That being said, you certainly cannot and should not sell with content marketing. Content marketing is not your sales pitch.
So what is content marketing for?
It aims to cultivate a strong relationship with your target audience by consistently providing them with high-quality information that is relevant to them.
So, rather than marketing your services right away, concentrate on increasing brand awareness and thought leadership in your field.
Content marketing is a tool that, when used correctly, elevates your business to the status of an industry influencer.
Why?
Today, more than ever before, people want to feel like you care about them.
By creating content that caters directly to your audience, you’re able to attract, entertain, and engage future clients.
Furthermore, content marketing works as it has a specific formula:
- Awareness: Engage with the customers, so they know about your business
- Consideration: Prioritise their concerns and consider their emotions
- Closing: Provide a solution for the customers
As a natural outcome of the relationship you’re developing with your clients and prospects, you’ll have the power of customer loyalty. When eventually faced with a buying decision, clients are inclined toward your business, not your competitors’.
Types of Content Marketing
The following are some of the channels that can be used in your content marketing strategy:
Blog articles
Writing and publishing articles on a company blog helps you demonstrate your industry expertise while driving organic search traffic to your website. As a result, you’ll have more chances to convert website visitors into leads.
E-books and whitepapers
E-books, whitepapers, and other long-form information can educate your website visitors.
They also allow you to trade content for a reader’s contact information, creating leads and guiding individuals through the buyer’s journey for your business.
Infographics
Readers want to be shown rather than told!
Infographics are an easy way to help your clients visualise an idea you’d like them to understand. The key is to break down complex information into a simple, easy-to-follow form.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that entails sending emails to clients and prospects via email lists with the intention of promoting your brand.
You want clients to subscribe to your email list because that’s where you’re keeping them updated about new content, special offers and upcoming events.
But that’s just a minor part of the equation.
If you want to monetise your email marketing, you have to ensure that these prospects don’t opt out of your emails.
Additionally, you must ensure that they will continue to open, read, and connect with your emails. After all, if no one reads your emails or clicks on the material included, then all your efforts will be for nought.
So that’s the big question: How can you encourage your subscribers to interact with your emails?
The answer is to provide them with high-quality emails that
- add value to their lives,
- builds customer trust and brand loyalty
- establishes your business as an authority in your area who can help them with their concerns
With that being said, if you don’t have an email list or an adequate budget to build one, you’re better off focusing on other forms of marketing in the meantime.
Email Marketing Types
Among the sorts of emails that you may send in an email marketing campaign are the following:
- Newsletters for blog subscribers
- Follow-up emails to website visitors who have downloaded your content
- Welcome emails to new customers
- Promotions for loyalty program members
- Customer nurturing emails in the form of tips or similar series emails
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimising your website or content to rank higher on search engines.
The ultimate goal of any business is to appear on the first page of Google. After all, 75% of online searches begin on Google!
However, if you have a website or create content, you know it’s not as easy as just uploading and hoping you’ll be at the top. The most effective way to handle search engine optimisation is to understand how Google ranks websites in the first place.
Another thing about SEO: You have to conduct keyword and market research.
If you don’t label your goods and services in a way that connects with the clients you want, your business will never get that reach you’re striving for.
The only time SEO can’t serve your business is when what you’re selling is so new or niche that people won’t know how to search for it.
But how can the average business owner in Singapore be expected to know the ins and outs of something as complex and ever changing as Google’s algorithms?
Don’t worry – keep on reading to find out the best SEO agencies that’ll get you climbing to the top of Google searches in no time.
Types of SEO Approaches
There are several ways to approach SEO to generate qualified traffic to your website. These strategies:
On-page SEO
This is the form of SEO that you’re most likely used to. On-page SEO focuses on the content that exists on the page when you’re on a website.
Off-page SEO
Meanwhile, off-page SEO is the optimisation that happens off of your website, such as backlinks.
This effort-intensive endeavour involves building a network and generating external attention, all to direct traffic back to your website.
Technical SEO
Lastly, technical SEO focuses on the backend and coding of your website.
You could generate the best content with superb backlinks, but if your website loads slowly and is difficult to navigate, people will click away!
Some other aspects to consider for technical SEO are:
- Image compression
- Structured data
- CSS file optimisation
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is a method of driving traffic to your website via ads placed in search engines.
This type of digital marketing is something you’ve likely encountered; other names for SEM include paid channel marketing and pay-per-click marketing (PPC).
SEM is a powerful marketing strategy because
- It allows your website a chance to appear on the first page of Google.
- It’s measurable – built-in analytics tools calculate both a long-term and short-term value for the ROI that results from just one click.
- It’s customisable – select the best targeting features to ensure you’re reaching your ideal clients.
The ROI and volume of leads generated from SEM can be immense, yet many companies shy away from it as:
- It’s a big investment.
- There’s a huge chance you’ll lose money if you don’t have a comprehensive SEM strategy.
Related roles:
Types of SEM
Google Ads
One of the most common types of SEM. While it doesn’t generate as much traffic as organic SEO, appearing on the first page of Google is still a big deal.
You pay for top slots on Google’s results at a price per click of the links you’re targeting.
Display Ads
This is when a user receives paid, targeted ads related to their interests, usually in a visual format rather than a link.
Social Media Advertising
This type of digital marketing primarily appears as a paid ad on a platform alongside other non-paid content.
You see these ads everywhere online, especially on websites like Buzzfeed where they have a huge audience, allowing you to connect with clients you may not usually encounter.
Furthermore, many ads are now integrated into your social media feeds in non-obtrusive ways, such as ads on Instagram that are stylised to appear as a post.
So, who should engage with this form of marketing strategy?
Everyone with the budget for it!
With a good advertising agency, they’ll be able to form a critical plan that consistently acquires clients, allowing your business to grow predictably.
As mentioned under SEM, this form of digital marketing can burn budgets very quickly if not executed properly. As such, if your business has lower selling prices, you may find it difficult to generate an ROI.
Types of Digital Marketing Platforms
In order for your digital marketing to reach your target audience, you’ll have to host your content on some sort of platform. Let’s go through some of the most efficient platforms to improve your business:
Email Direct Marketing (EDM)
Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to digital marketing.
Let’s take a look at why social media helps businesses grow:
- Built-in data analytics tools that allow your business to track ad campaign progress, performance, and engagement.
- Allows wide-scale communication with a variety of stakeholders, including clients and prospects, potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public
- Allows your brand to cultivate a culture and tone, allowing you to connect with your audience emotionally
However, social media marketing needs to be tailored to each platform.
That’s because each social media has its own unique characteristics that you need to utilise in order to get maximise your reach.
Thus, rather than copy-pasting the content that you’ve created on one platform to all other platforms, make an effort to tell stories that are appropriate for each platform.
A good digital marketing agency will know how to conduct media planning for each platform, making your brand relatable to the specific demographics on each social media platform
Related roles: Social Media Executives, Content Creators
Brand Website
You may be wondering: What is the function of a brand website in the age of extensive social media?
The difference lies in the inherent functions of each platform.
When a user goes on social media, they want to have fun and share. They want to interact with your brand to build meaningful relationships. Meanwhile, if they’re searching for your website, they’re looking to solve a problem.
This leads us to another question: What is the goal of your business’s website?
If you can’t adequately answer that question, you’re probably squandering your most valuable internet asset. A website, when done correctly, is a step in the right direction for a company looking to expand.
Related roles: Web designers
Types of Brand Websites
Let’s take a look at some different types of websites and how they help market your business.
E-commerce Websites
E-commerce sites are basically your brand’s 24/7 salesman.
This is where your business presents and promotes your services and products. Clients need to know what you offer, and its relevant details like quality images and prices or service cost estimation.
Not awake to handle payments at midnight?
No worries, your e-commerce website will handle that too!
You won’t even need to develop a whole new website for this purpose. Many e-commerce hosting sites like Shopify have made web development easy for those on a budget by including useful widgets like shopping carts, secure credit card payment channels, and customer account creation.
Online Namecard/Portfolio
This is where you want to display your brand’s credentials and contact info.
It’s one of the easiest types of websites to maintain as you don’t need to constantly generate content for it.
An online name card allows prospects to see your trustworthiness at one glance. Meanwhile, the provision of contact details allows clients to reach you on other platforms. Ideally, you would use this website to link to other platforms such as your Instagram or Whatsapp.
Landing Pages
A landing page is a specific page type created for a marketing campaign that drives visitors to take a specific action.
The information on a landing page should be kept to a minimum and should direct the user to the call-to-action (CTA) you want them to take. Some things you can do to aid that is to leave empty space around your call to action and remove components that aren’t relevant to the campaign’s goal for future pages.
Blog
A blog’s objective is to provide information that answers queries from potential customers and helps them learn more about your product or service.
Did you know that businesses with blogs have a 67% higher lead generation than those without?
While a blog takes a lot of effort to maintain, it’s one of the best platforms to increase your brand’s visibility on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).
That’s because, with a regularly updated blog, you’ll be able to keep your content fresh and produce articles about key search terms on a regular basis.
Furthermore, a well-written blog post has a compounding impact. It draws website visitors, and as the number of clicks it receives from search results grows, it rises in search rankings and increases its position in the search engine results.
Your blog also provides content that other people can link to. This means more exposure and clients from a source that you may not have had access to. This also gives you more credibility in search engine results, growing your position within SERPs.
Most crucially, a blog allows you to establish credibility and trust with your readers. Blog articles are one of the finest ways to draw your customers in and create a relationship with them by
- improving brand recognition
- answering their queries
- providing relevant information that can benefit them in purchasing decisions
- and delivering “free” value.
Related roles: Copywriter
Loyalty Apps/Programmes
Customers’ purchasing behaviour and retention are influenced by the opportunity to access exclusive deals and obtain loyalty discounts.
A good loyalty program has the potential to turn a company into a profit machine focused on its customers.
Some really good examples of successful loyalty apps are Starbucks and Sephora.
They provide a variety of rewards and recognition programmes to their customers and keep them constantly updated on new promotions and services. Sephora even has exclusive secret sales just for their top tier customers!
If you don’t have the budget for mobile app development, you can host a loyalty program on your website as well.
Picking a Digital Marketing Agency in Singapore
Can’t wait to get a digital marketing agency to boost your business to new heights?
ReferReach is a platform that allows you to connect with trustworthy and vetted digital marketing agencies in Singapore. To get connected with these top-notch businesses, businesses can create an ‘Ask’ with the details of what you’re looking for. Then, just sit back and wait to get connected!