Startups share 3 ways digital marketing can help businesses reach their audience

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Additional reporting by Nathaniel Fetalvero

A business can’t run without a customer base. But getting to potential consumers means more than just putting up advertisements. Asia’s ever-growing internet penetration is opening up more ways for companies to reach the masses.

This is especially beneficial for startups and small and medium-sized enterprises that typically can’t afford the high costs of traditional marketing. Digital marketing strategies typically tap platforms such as social media and email that offer cheap and effective means of connecting with an increasingly internet-savvy audience.

But a successful digital marketing campaign requires more than just setting up a Facebook page or doing an email blast about a company’s latest product. Tech in Asia spoke to three startups about what strategies they use and how each approach can help businesses hit their target demographic.

1. Social media marketing

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Facebook is a major platform in Asia, recording almost 500 million daily active users in the region at the end of 2017. No wonder it’s a lucrative and sought-after avenue for targeting existing and potential customers.

“Social media has changed the way people communicate with each other, the way people view information and news, and the way in which governments and businesses operate,” says Jeremy Wong, head of program at online higher education provider UpGrad in Southeast Asia.

As such, having a social media presence is transitioning from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” feature, especially for businesses, according to Wong.

“People used to rely on directories and websites to know if your business is legitimate. Now, having an active social media page is also a reflection of how big and legitimate your business is, because that is how people consume news and information,” he adds.

On top of helping shore up its legitimacy as an educational institution, UpGrad’s social media presence also allows its team to “communicate to prospective and current students efficiently on a daily basis” and allows students to keep track of UpGrad’s events across Southeast Asia on a platform convenient for them.

However, a key challenge that businesses face in social media marketing is the fact that a lot of people primarily use social media for entertainment and networking purposes. This means that attempts at marketing may be considered unwelcome or distracting.

UpGrad avoids this by only targeting “people who are potentially interested” in its programs as much as possible. But Wong points out that this is not an easy task, as users’ online profiles aren’t always indicative of their interests.

“A person in his or her 30s who doesn’t have a tertiary certificate may or may not be interested in upskilling,” he says.

Aside from targeted campaigns, Wong explains that captions and visuals are instrumental in making UpGrad stand out from the clutter on social media sites like Facebook and appealing to its target audience.

The text and images must say, “This particular program is good for you because of these reasons” instead of just “this program is good for you,” he says, adding that this “provides prospective students an outlet to evaluate their upskilling options” even though they are not actively looking for one.

2. Content marketing

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A recent survey by advertising tech firm Unruly found that 86 percent of Southeast Asian internet users lose trust in advertisements that lack authenticity. This means that businesses need to find new ways to engage with customers while not being too intrusive.

Content marketing, which focuses on creating content that has an intrinsic relevance or value for the target audience, is one solution to this challenge.

While most companies do this by writing blogs that complement their products or services, Joline Tang, founder of Singapore-based ecommerce platform The Sustainability Project, took the reverse approach by starting a blog on sustainable living before setting up the online shop earlier this year, which sells items like reusable straws, beeswax wraps, and organic tote bags.

“The Sustainability Project started as a blog where I shared my knowledge with people regarding sustainability and leading a zero-waste lifestyle,” says Tang. “The shop came about as a way to give people the tools to transform this knowledge into action.”

With the hype around this lifestyle, Tang soon ran into a growing number of competitors in the city-state’s sustainability scene that sell similar items.

To fend off the competition, The Sustainability Project has built a community of customers through organizing workshops and giving talks. Tang also found that her company’s unconventional approach to content marketing helps it retain its customer base.

Unlike other businesses that may use content calendars to determine the frequency and subject of their content, Tang only writes for the blog when inspiration hits as she finds that this helps “ensure a smoother flow of ideas.”

“Sometimes, you might have writer’s block and it shows in the article,” she points out. “Hence, we only write articles when there is a strong interest in a certain topic.”

Tang adds that her writing style – which she describes as in between casual and formal – lets her “personality and character show in each article,” lending a more personal touch compared to other company blogs.

“There are a lot of brands out there that just sell, so the blog helps because customers know that we’re credible and that we’re not just selling things, but educating as well,” she contends.

3. Search engine optimization

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As of January 2018, there were over 1.8 billion recorded websites across 213 million unique domains, according to a survey by internet services company Netcraft.

An increasingly crowded internet means that businesses with a web presence constantly need to differentiate themselves or risk losing their customers to competitors with a more prominent online standing.

One solution to this is improving a website’s search engine optimization (SEO), which ensures the site appears high on a list of relevant search results. Indeed, SEO should be part of a company’s branding strategy, recommends Stanley Gunawan, technical lead at four-hour delivery service Pickupp, which started in Hong Kong in 2016.

“As with all branding, you need to showcase proficiency of a certain level. If consumers Google your name and are unable to find it, it will look very bad,” he says.

Pickupp was originally called “HK Pick-Up.” But the results that users got when searching for “Hong Kong pick up” harmed the company’s SEO, explains Gunawan. The original name also wouldn’t have worked in its expansion into Singapore and Malaysia in early 2018. Changing its name to Pickupp helped place its website on the first page of Google searches.

Other methods that Pickupp employed to improve its SEO include registering on relevant tech startup sites like Tech in Asia, e27, or TechCrunch, and forming partnerships in the ecommerce and logistics ecosystem to “leverage on their platforms” for better visibility.

“SEO efforts go beyond just the company’s website – it includes all the peripherals around it,” says Gunawan. However, SEO is always a work in progress because of “the ever-changing Google algorithm.”

He continues, “No one knows the exact rules and algorithm, and articles online might be hard to judge for authenticity or might be outdated. Experimenting with SEO settings is doubly hard due to the non-instant nature of the ecosystem, which slows down the learning process.”

Nevertheless, the technical complexity that comes with the strategy is worth it because achieving a strong SEO is “a good tell if you’re a good technology company or not,” he concludes.

An online education provider focused on forward-looking skills, UpGrad offers a four-month executive program in strategic digital marketing in collaboration with the Cambridge Judge Business School’s executive education track.

The comprehensive course is taught by University of Cambridge faculty and industry veterans to help students master digital marketing tools that are widely used by marketers, achieve tangible career impact through one-on-one industry mentorship sessions, and network with coursemates at offline basecamp events.

Enrollment for the October and December 2018 batches are now open. Visit UpGrad’s website for more information.