The N-House Community had the privilege of hosting Adrian Heng for our weekly Entrepreneurship event. Adrian is an adjunct Associate Professor in NUS Communication & New Media Department and was also the Vice President, Communications & Marketing and Head, Southeast Asia until recently.
Introduction
When it comes to marketing for start-ups, the digital space is going to be your best friend. It is a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing strategies. However, one common misconception about digital marketing is the effectiveness of dumping money into social media to get your posts featured or your brand advertised. In fact, Adrian has mentioned 2 key things about Digital Marketing we should take note of: creating content that is interesting and knowing your target audience.
Creating Content that is Interesting
Many start-ups simply hire an artist to design a poster for your brand to be pasted around spaces, digital or not. However, digital marketing is not all about this. What is important in digital marketing is creating content that is interesting to your audience and attracting their attention. You want people to keep remembering you for something you did, and this requires something out of the norm. For example, everyone is giving free laptop stickers in their convention booths. However, who is giving out Glow in the Dark stickers? Just this simple change makes you stand out from the rest of all your competitors. Digital Marketing Professionals have to take things out of the box, instead of sticking to the conventional ways.
One way you can deliver interesting content to your audience is to embrace the fact that you are a start-up and take advantage of that. As a start-up, while you have less financial and market power as a start-up, you also hold the power to do things big companies cannot, at least in the field of digital marketing. Big companies like OCBC are locked into certain brand guidelines, which they can get away with if they are a start-up. One example of these guidelines is that big companies cannot be seen by public eyes that they are bullying a small company. This will create negative publicity for the big company. Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, made use of this fact during the starting years of his new airways company. He printed a huge empennage (the tail fin of an aeroplane) sticker for Virgin Atlantic Airways, snuck into the London airport, and covered one of the British Airways’ aeroplanes. This created huge publicity for Richard and Virgin Atlantic Airways. At the same time, British Airways could not sue Richard as they could not be seen bullying a small company (at that time). Whilst this is not directly related to digital marketing, adopting such a methodology in the field of marketing is proven to be effective.
Know your Target Audience
Your target audience is key. You can have the best people creating the best content working on the best idea, but if you do not have enough knowledge on your target audience, or do not address your marketing efforts to them, it would only end up having minimal effects. It is not just about knowing who your target audience is, but rather knowing the insides and outsides of their digital life. You have to know what appeals to them on social media, and what does not.
Adrian was a digital marketing consultant for a Real Estate company. Before, the company simply went onto Facebook and posted about their spaces on their Facebook Stories for users to check out. Then, they only had a click through rate of 15%, and their followers were growing at a mere 5% a month. He then advised the company to stop posting about themselves, because that is not what the social media is interested in. Instead, they should be talking about the market, show off their insights about the Hong Kong economy, talk about the regulatory space in Singapore. Just over a few weeks after they adopted his advice, they increased their followers significantly, not just in Singapore, but across the whole globe. Facebook users were clearly not interested in their spaces initially. However, when they stopped talking about themselves but instead the market, showing that they know more about the market space more than the competitors, there was a lot more interest in them.
Knowing your target audience can also allow you to make a decision on which specific social media platform to target. For example, if you are selling a $1 million insurance package, you would not want to market about it on Facebook. It will usually turn people off instead, as Facebook users are usually there for casual purposes like knowing your friends’ activities. You would want to market it on LinkedIn instead, where people use it for business purposes, thus attracting other businesses about the package. A general rule of thumb is that, for Business-to-Business (B2B) companies, you would want to market yourself on professional social media platforms like LinkedIn, whereas consumer brands can consider marketing themselves on casual social media platforms like Facebook with fun and good-looking pictures.
Digital Marketing is simply a small part
Marketing is all about the experience. Ultimately, digital marketing is only a small part of the whole marketing strategy. When you gain traction in the digital space, instead of just simply continuing what you are doing, you have to leverage on that and bring them over into the real life. It is only then can you give them the full experience of your product and your company.
Likewise, if you were to hold an event, bring them over to your digital space as well to retain them. Keep them updated about your companies’ activities and share more insights with them to keep their attention on you.
Through Adrian’s many years of experience, he has learnt that there is no guaranteed route to success, especially in marketing. Social media will keep on changing, and we need to be brave enough to try new things. Observe all the things around us and contemplate upon them more. Look at ads and think questions like why is that ad interesting, why is that ad bad, can we take the concept and take it for our own needs. We have to keep on adapting, changing and evolving.
Many thanks to Adrian once again for coming down. We hope that this session has helped to clarify your understanding about digital marketing in the current age, and we’ll see you at our next Wicked Wednesday event!
