Internet 2.0 has brought about many interesting and helpful things to businesses. People have become more and more reliant on bigger companies like google or youtube.

However, this comes at a cost, the privacy of consumers. Up till now there is no rule about consumers and how they can protected. It’s still a very grey area even till now (year 2020). But certain things are made certain and if you’re not aware, your business might just end up breaking the law or even ethical standards of Singapore.

Singapore has 2 main guidelines to abide by when doing digital marketing where ethics are concerned.

1. Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)
2. Singapore Code of Advertising Practice (SCAP)

So how does it apply to small businesses?

1. Truthful representation

As a business one code of ethics is truthful representation. Which means that advertisements should not mislead in any way by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise.

Small businesses should not lie about different claims or benefits if they are not true or factual. Businesses should also not lie about different facts about the product or prices in the business, it should not even mislead customers about the implied meaning of the advertisement.

Also an advertisement should be stated clearly as an advertisement.

2. Reviews that are disguised as being from impartial sources are not permitted

When using reviews to advertise for the company, it is illegal to use partial sources and disguise it as an impartial source. For example, there is a rise in fake reviewers who get paid to leave high reviews to boost the ranking of their products in places such as TaoBao. Even though positive reviews give a 9% increase in sales, however, it is illegal to do so according to SCAP.

3. The use of services and methods that fraudulently boost user engagement is prohibited

According to SCAP, using methods to boost user engagement is prohibited. So things like buying followers or bot followers to boost your likes or shares on a post so that the algorithm will boost your post is totally illegal. One example of this is when politicians from Indonesia, India and Thailand having fake Twitter followers, they do this to give their messaging a boost. But if put in a Singaporean context, this would be illegal.

4. Do not collect unnecessary data from consumers.

Today, vast amounts of personal data are collected, used and even transferred to third party organisations for a variety of reasons. This trend is expected to grow exponentially as the processing and analysis of large amounts of personal data becomes possible with increasingly sophisticated technology. With such a trend comes growing concerns from individuals about how their personal data is being used. Hence, a data protection regime to govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal data is necessary to address these concerns and to maintain individuals’ trust in organisations that manage data.

The PDPA is meant to protect consumers from organisations that would want to take their data to use it for their own personal gain. Like for example, companies selling customers information to an insurance company for telemarketing purpose.

Now if it’s found that a company violates the PDPA, the company will need to pay a fine of up to $10,000 SGD for every case.

What happens if you do decide to risk it and be unethical?

According to ASAS, marketers who fail to comply with the guidelines will be instructed to amend their marketing communication and failing to withdraw them altogether to avoid misleading consumers.

They will also risk the withholding of advertising space or time by media owners, as well as the withdrawal of trading privileges from advertising agencies.

Marketers who fail to comply with the guidelines will be instructed to amend their marketing communication, failing to do so will result in removal of the ads altogether.

In the case of bloggers, they risk the withholding of monies by their agencies. In extreme cases, there is the additional sanction of adverse publicity through the publication of details of the outcome of ASAS’ investigation.

Under certain circumstances, Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) may also take further action under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act.

Conclusion

Don’t be unethical and although it’s hard to compete with larger companies with seemingly unending budgets, it is still very possible to be at the top of your marketing game so long as you are creative.

It’s a well known fact that in order for a brand to be successful you need to get the customers involved in Co-Creation as you want your brand to be part of their lives in a meaningful way. However, as much as we would like to engage with our audiences, there are a few things that needs to be done in order for your digital marketing to fit well with your Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) and your overall marketing plan.

1. Know what is your brand identity.

Brand identity is the face of a brand. A brand is an emotional and even philosophical concept, while brand identity is the visual component of a brand that represents those larger ideas.

Brand identity includes logos, typography, colors, packaging, and messaging, and it complements and reinforces the existing reputation of a brand. Brand identity attracts new customers to a brand while making existing customers feel at home. It’s both outward- and inward-facing.

It’s vital that brand identity be consistent. Because it’s representing and reinforcing the emotions of a brand, the message portrayed by brand identity components needs to be clear, and it needs to be the same no matter where it’s displayed.

If you are going into co-creation without knowing what your brand identity is, you are going to let your community define who the brand is. This is very dangerous for the brand as it might potentially lead to no control over your IMC and your other marketing messages or even worst mixed messages from the company.

An example of losing control over your identity is the case of new coke. To put a long story short, coca-cola conducted several taste groups to evaluate their new product “new coke”. Though majority of people loved the taste of new coke, when their new coke product launched it failed tremendously. This was a failure on Coca-cola’s part as they did not trust in their brand identity and instead changed based off the customer’s Co-creational efforts.

So as marketers, how can we apply this into digital marketing? Make sure your digital marketing strategy supports your current brand identity rather than simply what customers say.

2. Attaching your brand to the wrong things

As a brand you will have tons of sponsorship opportunities and potentials for collaborations even if you are a very small business. This however, comes at a cost. If you somehow match with the wrong type of business and it doesn’t benefit you. You might want to stay away from those kinds of collaborations even if it is suggested to you by a customer (who might want to help co-create the brand).

One good example of a mismatch of a failed brand collaboration is when Disney tried to collaborate with a cherry brand by making it branded with their Hannah Montana show. With no real connection between cherries and the Hannah Montana brand, it’s clear that this move from Disney can be classified as a branding blunder. Don’t fall into the same trap: choose your own brand affiliations and products with care.

When you attach your brand name to something, it should reflect and be compatible with your brand’s values and voice. When a brand partners with another company or product that doesn’t directly relate to or mesh well with their own message, it can seem inconsistent and untrustworthy to consumers.

3. Remember that as a digital marketer, your audience is the world.

Meanings and translations across different cultures can mean drastically different things. Remember when you do campaigns or come up with slogans you are marketing to the world. As such, co-creation across different cultures must have proper market research.

One brand that failed to do so is Pepsi. Pepsi launched in China with a word-for-word translation of their American slogan: Pepsi brings you back to life.

Unfortunately for Pepsi, the direct translation of their slogan turned out to actually mean, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” You can probably guess that this didn’t go over well with consumers in China, where ancestors are revered.

The key takeaway? There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to global branding. Something that works in one place might spell absolute disaster for your brand in another location. If you think you might one day want to take your brand global, it’s best to sniff out potential issues in advance — and be prepared to localize your message. All these must be taken into consideration when marketing to the world.

So in conclusion, BE CAREFUL when you are using Co-creation. Proper market research and understanding of your own brand’s IMC is crucial to be successful in properly co-creating your brand into the lives of ordinary customers.

How do you search for information on where do you want to eat? Or even for information for how to do something? The answer in our digital age is most likely to GOOGLE IT! But how do you end up on top of a google search when you are competing with giant industries and conglomerates? The answer lies in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

If you’re a small business, it is very crucial to know how to use SEO. Why? IT’S FREE! At least financially. Unlike Search Engine Advertising (SEA) or pay per click advertising, you don’t have to pay to get your website on the search engine! However, with that being said, there are over 200+ criterias to getting you on top of google’s list. What are some critical criterias to know so we can implement it into our websites?

1. Frequency

The frequency of various keywords in your website does help in boosting your SEO standings. It will give the algorithm a signal that, the keyword is what your website is all about. If you keep talking about “social media” or “digital marketing”, your ratings for your website is going to increase when people search about “digital marketing”. The danger with posting your keyword too frequently is that google may block you from being on their search engine due to spam. So be sure that your keyword is frequently used, but not abused.

2. Speed up your website

Page speed is a ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm. Study from Strange loops shows that a 1 second delay in your page load time can lead to 7% loss in conversions. So what does that mean for your site? If you earn $100,000 in a day this means you could lose about $2.5 million dollars of sales in a year. YIKES.

So how can you speed up your page? A simple tool that you can use for your business is to use Google’s pagespeed framework. This link from google will tell you what you need to do once you key in your website and show you what and how to remove unnecessary clutter on your page that is slowing it down.

3. Links

You can boost your web searches by having other websites link to you organically. How would you do this? Have a collaboration with other websites and get them to link to your website! You can also link other relevant websites to related sites to boost both of your SEOs. By doing this, google’s algorithm or spiders will pick up that your sites are related or relevant and will thus boost you up with the keywords are typed in the search bar.

4. Use analytics in your website

After defining your search engine optimization goals clearly, you need software to track what’s working and what’s not.

Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other private web analytics software solutions can help you track your success.

Tools like Crazy Egg also show you where your site visitors are clicking and how they navigate away from your site.

You should have these web analytics in place, even before you send the first visitor to your site or landing page.

5. Using big data tools to research on keywords people look for

Google trends is one way to compile a list of keywords to help boost your Google ranking. Also using Google adwords keyword planner is a good way to see what words people us and their search volume. You can just use it to see the suggested keywords and use it in your site. These big data sites can help your website be more relevant in what people are searching and therefore boost your SEO ranking.

6. Using meaningful URLs

Search engine spiders will usually get confused if they see a link that does not make sense to them.

Stay away from page URLs like this:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272531

Remember, search engines follow search users.

Brian Clark once said that Google bots are like infants who need to be spoon-fed regularly. And, he’s right.

Even in this age of search evolution, including RankBrain, search spiders are still programs, not humans. You need to guide them accordingly.

Brian Dean’s structure is what people should be doing and what I ended up doing as well. He ensures that only 2-4 words are included in any URL.

This makes the URL memorable to the user, search engine-friendly, and easy to type. Copyblogger does the same thing:

You can learn more about optimizing your page URLs from this infographic:

In Conclusion:

There are many more optimizations that you can use to improve your website. But as a small business these are things you can do for free to help you improve your webpage. Here’s to see a higher ranking from you at google.com. CHEERS!

Are there anymore SEO techniques that are easy for small businesses to implement? Comment below!

To be a small business, it can be a daunting task to grow especially with bigger players in the market using big data and implementing Internet of Things (IoT). But what does this mean for smaller businesses? How can they survive and what must they do to survive in an increasingly digitized world?

In this article I will be looking at different trends in the Big Data and IoT age and will pick out what smaller businesses can do to take advantage of the opportunities that IoT and Big Data brings.

1. Invest in SEO and SEA

With the rapid increase in technology, wearable technology is becoming increasingly popular. What this means for small businesses, is that organic searches on google or any other search engine will only show minimal results on smart watches and other wearable technology. This means that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is becoming more and more important in digital marketing to get your company’s search result on top of other competitors as they will only be able to view the top searches on their wearable technology before losing their attention span.

What this means for smaller companies is that it is of paramount importance that your marketers know about SEO and how to navigate it. Thus, small businesses can choose to send marketers for courses that teach marketers SEO and SEA or hire marketers that already know SEO and SEA.

2. Time to target the Gen Xers and the Boomer Generation

Gen Xers and boomers have been left behind from a marketing Point of View due to all the bigger companies targeting the Millennials. However, due to the rapid advancement of technology, Gen X and the boomer generation may not be able to keep up. There are reports by Pewresearch indicating that technology might be too complicated to fix and that the unconnected individuals may be disenfranchised. This means that there is an opportunity to target Gen X and boomers that may feel that way and businesses can find a way to cater to those needs.

Businesses that lack in the capability to target Millienials through digital means can change their marketing strategy to target those that are not so technology savvy like gen X and Baby boomers instead. It may also work to their favor as Gen X and Baby Boomers have the most spending power due to working for most of their adult lives.

3. Use free Big data available for the public

In these days everyone is leaving a digital footprint. Though there is a lot of unstructured big data, however there is a lot of ways for smaller businesses to harvest these information for free. One way is using google’s publically accessible big data tools such as Google trends (where you find out what people are searching for on google) and also Google public data (Where you can find out information about statistics if it is publically available).

Also another free site that you can go to is Gapminder where you can find data and statistics about Economy, Education, nutrition and so on for many different countries.

Since marketers and companies can use these statistics for free, they small businesses can easily use these information to figure out trends and analyse what is the best direction to take their business in or what kind of niches they can exploit so that other competitors cannot take advantage of them.

Overall, there are many ways that small businesses can take advantage of the IoT and Big Data. I’ve have just given 3 trends that I foresee are likely to arise due to the development of technology and what small businesses (or large businesses for that matter) can do to exploit these opportunities and threats.

What do you think about IoT and Big Data? How has it helped you and how do you think it will help businesses? COMMENT BELOW!

“Oh! there’s an app for that” is a phrase that we might commonly hear a lot! But that begs the question, if there is an app for that, isn’t there A LOT of apps in the market right now? According to business of apps, in 2019 there are 2.6 million apps in the google play store and 2.2 million apps in IOS. Wow. Those are A LOT of apps. 90% of them are also FREE apps which mean that Digital marketers are extremely crucial in helping these apps stand out!

So what can companies do to help apps stand out?

Let’s first take a look at successful free apps and then apply digital marketing theory to them to find out what are the different trends that people are looking for in apps these days!

According to Apple and CNET, the top most downloaded apps for 2019 are as follows:

1. YouTube: Watch, Listen, Stream
2. Instagram
3. Snapchat
4. TikTok – Make Your Day
5. Messenger
6. Gmail – Email by Google
7. Netflix
8. Facebook
9. Google Maps – Transit & Food
10. Amazon – Shopping made easy

Looking at these successful apps, what are the different trends we can see?

1. From the top 10, most of them are slow timers.

From Kaplan, Andreas M. (2012), model of classification of mobile social media applications, we can see that 5 out of 10 fall into the category of slow timers (Youtube, instagram, Gmail, Netflix and Facebook).

What does this mean for future applications that might be popular? It might indicate that what people are looking for apps to fill up their time when they are relaxing. Where time is not an issue and location is not an issue.

However, there is still a market for quick timers as Snapchat and TikTok are still in the top 5. In fact, in the top 5 apps, all of them are non location sensitive. So what it means for app developers is that the most popular apps are not made to be location sensitive. So developing less location sensitive apps would be effective and popular.

2. All the 10 apps follow the 4 I’s of digital marketing

According to Kaplan, Andreas M. (2012), The 4 I’s mobile social media are Individualisation, Integration, Involving and Initiation. All 4 of these I’s are created to do one thing which is to improve user experiences on the app. When you engage with users and add value to their mobile experience, it will in turn be better for your brand.

TO INTEGRATE:

You integrate your activities into your users lives by solving a problem that they may have in their lives. Most of these apps in the top 10 solve problems that people may have in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

The age now redefines what it means to have an app fulfill your safety needs or your need for belonging and love. With apps slowly replacing these needs, it is a good way for mobile app developers to integrate users lives into their app instead of giving something they may not need.

TO INDIVIDUALIZE:

Most company use cookies to get information about the users so that they can better predict what the customers want and need. All of the above apps in the top 10 do that so that they can better know the needs of the consumer to help them accurately find what they are searching for. Companies that can capitalize on consumer-company has very high brand value, in fact, a report by Business Insider, confirms that people do want apps that use AI to instinctively know what they are searching for.

TO INVOLVE:

The most effective mobile social media campaigns therefore often involve the user in some form of interactive story or game to create a shared experience between the company, the user, and possibly even the user’s own social network (Kaplan 2012). Therefore, app developers should seek to involve users together with their own company. An example of this is when facebook always reminding you to wish someone a happy birthday or when spotify shows you what is your most listened song in the decade.

TO INITIATE:

User generated content helps to fulfill self actualization needs and apps can capitalize on this. Apps like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat encourages user content creation. Apps that encourages content creations like these are what people are looking for and help people to relate more with your brand. App developers that create apps that can encourage user generated content will generally be more popular.

3. Videos videos videos.

Out of all of the top 10. What can you see being in common with most of them? Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 all have a platform that facilitates videos being posted. This is not a coincidence as top app developers have figured out that 82% of consumer internet traffic will be about videos by 2022. If you are an app developer, why not try to develop an app that will facilitate videos?

Here are some good reasons for facilitating videos in your apps:

1. Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared than all-text content.

Video is a brilliant tool for getting the viewers locked on. It is incredibly easy to consume in comparison to a long-winded essay. We’re all guilty of passively scrolling through our feeds on social media but only the most compelling content tend to get our attention. Video allows you to be concise and capture the interest of viewers in the first few seconds.

2. Marketers can make virtual handshakes with their audience

Videos are a virtual handshake with your audiences. Audiences have shown interest if they’ve watched a video all the way through. Marketers can then guide them to take the desired action, even with something as simple as “to find out more click here”. This makes it easier for your app or platform to be shared as it is good for businesses.

3. Track Brand Engagement

As an app, most apps can only make money by the information they have off customers. You do that by tracking brand engagement. By developing analytics into your video players in apps, you can find out what customers like and dislike and what time they prefer to have on their videos. Making it easier to individualize.

There we go! We have studied and figured out what are the different trends that make people like mobile apps! What do you think! COMMENT BELOW NOW to tell me what you have found the most interesting part of what is being share in my post! What else did I miss out? Tell me below!

Citation References: Kaplan, Andreas M. (2012). “If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile
social media 4×4. Business Horizons, Vol. 55(2), 129-139

Hello internet. My name is Marvin Ng Yu Shen. I am currently a final year student majoring in Marketing for the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

I will be posting on several thoughts I have about Digital marketing. Most of my examples might be from Singapore because that is where I am based, but on the most part I will be sharing my thoughts, feelings and understanding about digital marketing, the landscape of business and the development of digital marketing.

Today, I want to share on how far the digital marketing has come since it’s initial stages. From the first banner ad posted by AT&T and fast forward till today where there are many different kind of digital advertising avenues.

So how effective is digital marketing? According to Statista, revenue for digital marketing is growing significantly from 168 Billion dollars (USD) in 2015 to a projected growth to 332 Billion Dollars (USD) in 2021.

What this means is that as the market continues to expand, more and more marketers will seek to expand their knowledge and skills to want to know how to advertise digitally.

This blog is meant for those marketers who wants to know about digital marketing and the nuances of the new age from a millennial’s perspective.

Stay tuned for more exciting and thought intriguing blog posts!