Thinking about taking the plunge into digital marketing in the Singapore market?
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to dive into a campaign without really taking the time to plan, goal set, and strategize.
We’ve put together a list of six vital questions to ask yourself before kicking off your campaign.
Not sure where to start? Know you need help? Skip to #4 to find our best tips for engaging an agency.
What is Your Primary Marketing Goal?
Fail to plan = planning to fail.
It’s tempting to think, “Well of course my goal is to grow / get more business / get more customers.” And while that might be true, it’s vital you get specific during the planning stage.
“Getting more customers” or “growing my business” is a great starting point. But you’ve got to drill down.
If you’ve been in business any length of time, you know about SMART goals. Perhaps they’ve become cliche, but there’s a lot of wisdom in the acronym.
Make sure your goal is:
- Specific. How much do you want to grow? How much new business would you deem a success? If that’s how much business you want, how many clients will you need to close?
- Measurable. Make sure your goal is quantifiable and trackable. More on this later.
- Achievable. Be realistic. If you’ve never grown by 50% YoY before, and you don’t have a significant investment coming in, this might be an unrealistic goal.
- Relevant. Ensure your goal for this digital marketing campaign is tightly aligned with your company’s vision and big picture objectives.
- Time-Based. This is crucial when it comes to digital campaigns. Put an end-date on the goal. Otherwise you won’t be able to gauge success.
Lastly, once you’ve set your goal, come up with objectives and KPIs that you’ll need to hit along the way.
Let’s look at a quick example and how you might set a SMART goal for a digital B2B marketing campaign.
From a big picture standpoint, your financial B2B company has been stagnant for about 3 years. You’re ready for a little growth to close out the year.
Your initial thought is, “Let’s grow revenue by 15%.”
Okay – great start. But let’s get a little more granular.
After doing some thinking, you choose two service lines you want to grow: end-of-year tax prep for small businesses and corporate accounting.
So, if you’re going to grow each of these divisions by 15% in revenue by the end of Q4, it might help to set a few objectives. These might look like:
- Get 20 new leads in each division
- Close those leads at a 25% rate
- Gain 6 new clients in each division
So now you have 3 objectives you’ll keep a close eye on as you attempt to reach your stretch goal of 15% growth.
Who is Your Audience?
Now that you have a good idea of your goals, it’s time to refine your audience.
If you cast a wide net, you’ll probably land only a few leads from your digital marketing campaign. It pays (and saves) to be more targeted and intentional – especially if you’re in the B2B space.
If you run a B2C company, you can afford to be a little more broad. But even still, we’d recommend heavy segmentation.
So how do you drill down your audience in Singapore?
We’d recommend starting with a few personas. A buyer persona outlines typical demographics, challenges, aspirations, and buying behaviors for your ideal client.
So in our example, it might make sense to create a buyer persona for our small business tax preparation service and another for our corporate accounting service.
What Digital Marketing Channels Will You Use?
Once you’re crystal clear on your goals (the what) and your audience (the who), it’s time to consider the how. When it comes to digital marketing, the how is all about channels and platforms.
Where will you reach your audience? How will you get your brand in front of them?
There are six primary digital marketing channels for B2B:
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- Digital Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing / Marketing Automation
- Accounts Based Marketing
No clue where to start? We like to ask people two questions:
- Are people actively searching for what you sell?
- How competitive is your market?
- How quickly do you need results?
If people are already actively looking for what you offer, your best bets are probably SEO and content marketing (for starters). If you sell a novel product / service or you have an incredibly competitive market, digital advertising is probably a better place to start.
You should also consider budget and ROI. If you have a limited budget, you should try a leaner approach (like a highly targeted Facebook ad campaign). With more money to work with, you could try a more robust multi-channel approach. For instance, you might roll out an ABM play utilizing a few pieces of content and retargeting.
And lastly, you should consider timeframe.
Some channels will get you results ASAP, like ads. Whereas others take time to grow, like content marketing and SEO.
Should You Engage a Digital Marketing Agency?
Now if you’re still not confident in where or how to start, you might benefit from working with a digital marketing agency in Singapore.
There are a few types of digital marketing agencies, and each brings a little something different to the table:
- Boutique / Single Service Agencies. Some agencies only specialize in one thing. If you’re dead set on one channel, engaging an agency like this might be a good idea. That said, if you think you’d benefit from multiple marketing channels, they might be too limited.
- A Big Six Agency. You know the names of most of these – they’re the big players in Singapore. They are great to work with, but they might cost you an arm and a leg.
- Affordable End-to-End Agency. Some agencies offer end-to-end services – including strategy and execution across multiple channels – without costing that arm and leg. Unless you know exactly what you need or you’re prepared to pay a lot of money, this might be your best option. Contact us at Brew if you’d like to start a conversation.
Knowing what type of agency to engage is just the start. Your agency choice can make or break your campaign – they will be the one carrying most of it out, after all.
Here are some questions to ask any agency you consider for your digital marketing campaign:
- Ask them about experience in your industry. Sure, a lot of industries are very similar, but some are vastly different. Make sure they have real experience in your industry or one that is very similar.
- Ask to see case studies. Don’t just look at the results, look at the scenario and tactics as well. Make sure they haven’t just had a brilliant copywriter make their mediocre campaign sound good. Dig deep into the details if you can.
- Ask for referrals. Unfortunately, marketers are skilled at making things look and sound good. So ask for referrals from clients they’ve served in the past.
- Ask about costs up front. You don’t have to ask up front, but it’s important to know how the agency or freelancer prices their digital marketing services.
How Will You Define Success?
Before you roll anything out (or allow an agency to roll something out), make sure success is well-defined.
One of the biggest mistakes we see people make is throwing money at digital marketing with no clue whether or not it’s working.
So before you launch, consider a few things:
- Your Primary KPI. What’s the metric you’ll look at when all is said and done? In our example, it was revenue increase. Make sure you’re tracking this accurately!
- Your Lagging Metrics. When we set goals in step 1, we put together a few objectives that would help us reach our stretch goal. Track these as well, and give each one a target and a deadline.
- Create a Dashboard. Once you’re tracking everything accurately, make sure all shareholders on the project can track progress in the same place. A dashboard that all have access to is your best bet.
What’s Next?
Once your campaign is complete, and you’ve evaluated how things went, it’s time to ask, “What’s next?”
Another mistake we see companies frequently make is to try a 1 month digital marketing campaign in Singapore, get mediocre results, and then write off digital marketing forever.
Digital marketing success comes from months and years of experimenting, testing, tweaking, and trying again. Over time, your campaigns will become more and more efficient.
Go into the campaign with a long view in mind. Here’s to your digital success!
