Web Design, Digital & Social Media Marketing in Singapore

Not just rich media, make it entertaining please.

// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns

Social media marketing may be the buzz word now and with reports of decreasing CTR, paid media may not be that sexy. But banner ads are not dead. Thanks to Shalabh Pandey, I found a French crime TV series called Braqupo on his blog illustrating the good use of video, audio and animation on a rich media banner.

An excellent recipe for engaging, entertaining and dun-find-it-intrusive banner ad.

Social Media Marketing – A new business opportunity for digital agencies?

// November 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Campaigns, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Digital agencies are probably getting more enquiries on social media marketing lately. Clients have been asking what can they do on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. All of a sudden there seems to be a huge demand but is this an opportunity for digital agencies to monetize or it is a wake-up call for us to understand the need to stay relevant in this ever-evolving digital space.

At the end of the day, the agency job is to equip the clients with a strategy in connecting with their customers, a platform to do that, best practices in managing it and tracking metrics to allow R.O.I. reporting. But the actual implementation is still very much by the client. The only possible way to monetize is a retainer fee to help the client stay on the intended path, or help them in making tweaks to fine-tune the entire strategy.

So if you ask me if there’s money to be made here, I will probably say no. As an agency, knowing how to deal with social media allows you to integrate them into your digital strategy, making your outreach campaigns more viral, more influential, more human. Social media marketing should be seen as part of your client digital strategy and it is key that the agency is able to harness this to build better brands via the digital space.

Jetstar Asia’s radio ads – Example of content marketing

// October 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

On my way to work in the morning, the Jetstar Asia’s radio ad always catches my attention. I think it resonates strongly with my belief in content marketing. 90% of the ad talks about highlights of the destination, content that tourist visiting will like to know. That’s an excellent example of content marketing. You share contents that are relevant to your potential customers, allow them to consume these contents, over a period of time, build a relationship and influence a sale at the end of the day.

I was hoping to get more information on the ad about nightlife in Taipei from their website. To my surprise, there was indeed a free travel guide for Taipei that I could download for free. 2 thumbs up!

I see an extension to this radio ad campaign to the digital space by publishing these guides onto a Jetstar travel blog, allow their customers to comment or share experiences and thus, completing the entire experience. The blog posts which are search engine-friendly (if they are properly crafted) will also help drive relevant traffic to the website.

I will fly Jetstar the next time I visit Taipei. ;o)

Google SideWiki changes the world wide web to a singular Social Web

// September 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

Google recently launched the SideWiki plug-in for firefox and IE browsers. With SideWiki installed, anyone can now contribute comments to any webpages. Yes, any webpages. That effectively converted the entire world wide web to a singular social web that empowers consumer to comment on anything & everything.

The SideWiki feature adopts a user rated system that determines the ranking of each comment. Comments that are voted ‘useful’ gets a higher ranking. Abuses can be reported to Google so the folks there can review the offending comment and decide if it should be removed.

Brands hesitant in embracing the social web now has a new challenge right at their doorstep. SideWiki has basically created a comment box on all their webpages allowing anyone to pen their views. Think about your competitors posting a comment that focuses on the weaknesses of your product and emphasizing their strengths over yours. Think about happy customers complimenting your staff for a pleasant experience at one of your outlets or a unhappy customer complaining about the quality of your services. Can you ignore these like you used to because it is happening elsewhere and not on your website?

This is major step forward in the transition of the world wide web to social web and there is more to come. The key is to start learning how to embrace the social web, understand and accept that your corporate website has became a platform where consumers can now openly discuss, comment and compliment you. Listen to the consumers and address issues to deliver a more consumer-focus, consumer-centric and consumer-driven service / product. Equip your people with skills in handling positive and negative feedback and not sweep them under the carpet.

Video : Did You Know 4.0

// September 22nd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Agency Management, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Ain’t you glad you are in this exciting business? ;o)
Tip – Great stats for you when preparing your decks!

Video – Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

// September 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

This is a great video on how social media will change the way we see, understand and do things. It is also a great tool to use to convince brands the power of groundswell and the need to understand it. The takeaway piece for this video is the need to understand and adopt the ‘mature way’ of embracing social media.

btw, you should make it a habit to view one video a day from ted.com. I sure made me smarter. ;o)

Incentives for your hardworking team

// August 25th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Agency Management

Monetary incentives for the team as a form of reward, motivation and recognition is part and parcel of agency management. Do it right, morale will be boosted, productivity will increase and teamwork will be enhanced. Do it wrong, not only it will be counter-productive, relationships within team mates and departments may be affected. Didn’t you hear $$$ is the root of all evil?

Assuming the agency has the following departments/ teams:-
1) Business development / Sales
2) Account servicing / Project management
3) Creative / Technical

Here is the recommendation:-

1) Divide the agency into 2 groups. Put BD as one group, the rest as the 2nd group.

2) Business Development – These people brings in the dough, or should I say new dough. They ‘run’ the marketing department of the agency, making sure the agency is always on the radar and sales leads flow in on a regular basis. They follow up on leads, cultivate them into business opportunities and eventually brings in business.

The commission structure can be structured based on the projected profit for each job. First, the costing for each project needs to be proper and the method to proper costing for digital projects can be found here. The commission for the business development team is based on a certain percentage of the the profit margin. For example, if the base cost of the project is $10,000 and the mark-up margin is 1.8x @ $18,000, the profit margin is $8,000. If the commission is fixed at 3%, the commission payable upon awardment of the project is $240.

Commission should be payable for jobs from new clients for the next 6 consecutive months after the 1st project. Reason is that for new clients, they usually start with small jobs and progressively increase the volume. This will also create the motivation for BD team to follow-up with the client until a more robust relationship is forged. Even though over this 6 months, it can be argued that it may be the Operations team doing most of the job, it is clear that they are also remunerated accordingly.

3) Operations (comprising of AMs/PMs and Production) – The key is to motivate the team to be more efficient, prudent and even to push them harder to put in a few more hours per week. After all, they are the ones delivering at the end of the day.

If the total overheads of the agency is $30k per month, the team will be required to produce work worth that amount. This means that the monthly billing to clients need to be $30k before the incentive scheme kicks in. Incentives are tier-based. I will show you how it works:-

Agency’s overheads = $30k
Monthly billings = $30k to  $40k (first $10k profit entitles the team to 5%) = $500
Monthly billings = $40k to $50k (2nd $10k profit entitles the team to another 10%) = $1k
Monthly billings = $50k to $60k (3rd $10k profit entitles the team to an additional 12%) = $1.2k
Monthly billings = $60k and above (Every additional $10k entitles the team to 15% for each $10k)

Assuming the billing of this month is $80k, the incentive will be calculated as:-
1st $10k profit @ 5% ($30k to  $40k) = $500
2nd $10k profit @ 10% ($40k to $50k) = $1k
3rd $10k profit @ 12% ($50k to $60k) = $1.2k
4th $10k profit @ 15% ($60k to $70k) = $1.5k
5th $10k profit @ 15% ($70k to $80k) = $1.5k
Total incentive payable to the team = $5.7k

One important point to note is that any outsourced work will have to be deducted off the profits as accordance to the sequence it is being paid out to the external suppliers.

Synergy among different teams
To some extent, structuring the incentive scheme this way creates synergy between the BD and Operations team. Operations will now be willing to push a little harder for sales pitches since whatever that will be brought in will goes into their billable work as well.

Possible pitfalls
Bear in mind that this model is a $-driven model. It does not encourage quality of the work being done. Instead, teams may overly driven to deliver and neglect quality, from customer service perspective to production quality perspective. To ensure the loop is closed, other feedback mechanisms need to be in place:-

1) Customer feedback form / survey
2) Awards

These feedback mechanism be incorporated into the criteria to evaluate individuals for promotions, remuneration reviews and variable bonus at the end of the year.

Not just $$ please…
At the end of the day, it is not just money that motivates people. Middle level managers who lacks managerial skills or motivational skills may solely relying on this as the key driving force and that’s 99% going to backfire. Understanding of individual team members’ need is important. Structuring proper rest/recharge schedule for all is key to rejuvenation. Workshops, seminars and conferences are brain food for the people. When it comes to motivation, think macro and micro.

Are digital agencies in Singapore embracing social media?

// August 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Agency Management, Social Media Marketing

Social media changes the way we do businesses. At least, that’s what most digital marketers believe and preach. We have always been telling our clients here in Singapore the importance of listening to the clients, building relationships and establishing trusts online. So how about ourselves as digital agencies?

Marketing
I did a quick search on google “digital agency singapore“.  The 1st page contains 5 local digital agencies (I have filtered out those non-agency results):-

• Profero Singapore
• Above 1
• Adwright
• Oasis Interactive
• Method Media

There is no doubt that all these agencies are established and respectable companies that serves some of the best brands in the Singapore. My question is – if we are are digital marketers, shouldn’t the agency be embracing digital media to the fullest, including social media? Blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter feeds, facebook, etc….

People
Like our clients, we started off with people that are not exactly into social media. There is a phase where existing team members need to ‘educated’ on social media marketing and I have been through that myself. Implementing social media to a group of team members that have their primary jobs to perform is not exactly the easiest task around. People that live on social media do not need to be reminded to tweet, update their blogs, tag their friends of flickr & facebook… I would see the shift in recruitment criteria in digital agencies to include being ’sm-savvy’ as one of the primary criteria soon.

To be continued…

Banking & Social Media in Singapore

// July 14th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Social Media Marketing

Banking and Social Media

I chanced upon an article shared via Twitter a couple of days ago. It is called ‘Social Media and the banking Industry’. The article touches on statistics on the adoption of social media as part of the banks’ digital strategy as well as some examples on how they were implemented. I was just talking to a good friend whom runs a financial institution in Singapore about the use of social media for banks. This blog post is for you bro.

The use of blogs for knowledge sharing with fellow team members across organizations has been adopted by many corporations for years. However, for the banking industry, we have yet to see blogs as a form of social media marketing tool being embraced by banks and financial institutions. I’m going use Wells Fargo as an example to showcase how blogs can be part of banks or financial institutions’ digital strategy.

Wells Fargo was the first bank in US to launch a corporate blog in March 2006. It has now expanded the use of corporate blog as a key platform in listening, understanding and communicating with its customers. It takes courage within the hierarchy of a bank to do this and they have my deepest respect.

The roles of the blogs run by Wells Fargo is to communicate. To communicate in a personal, non-intrusive way. To enable a conversation between the bank and the customer. To allow the bank to listen and know what the client wants and expects.

In the case of a merger between Wells Fargo & Wachovia, the blog not only allows merger news and information to be disseminated, comments from the ground are also heard and addressed. If such concerns are widespread, the following blog post will address them in greater detail. Adopting a blog approach in their digital PR strategy in this case facilitated listening and allows ‘questions’ from turning into ‘issues’.

The blog also focus on specific products like the student loan. It engages potential customers with good and useful content,  allowing banking relationships to be build from college years. That relationship is eventually the key factor in more businesses when the student graduates.

Banks need to wake up to the call of groundswell. There are numerous forums and online communities in Singapore that are talking about banking products and services. Choose to ignore gets you out of trouble momentarily, choose to listen allows you to learn insights of market demands, choose to engage will give you the leading advantage over the rest of the pack.

Will the Twitter craze hit Singapore?

// July 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Twitter in Singapore

I asked myself this question before I decided to take the plunge into the world of tweets. I cannot find statistics of twitter users in Singapore. I asked around and most of my peers heard of twitter, probably got an account but has never used it since then.

The question is our mind is – who the hell what’s to do what you are watching, eating or playing with? I can do take on Facebook, I can share that on my blog so why twitter?

I recalled 10 years back when Blogs hit the shores of Singapore. People where asking, who the heck with the right frame of mind will want to publish his/her diary online? And who would want to read them?

Today, blogs have evolved. It has taken over corporate websites, spearheading the frontlines of digital marketing for various companies, allowing them to share their thought process and beliefs with clients. Blogs has became an integral part of digital marketing, a powerful tool in SEO and a necessity for promoting thought leadership. Would those would ridiculed the thought of a Weblog10 years back be left wondering how mypoic they were? I was one of them. my friends.

I see Twitter as a form of blog -micro-blogging. I didn’t coin that that word. With the emergence of multiple social media channels, consumers and companies will find it more an more difficult to devote their precious time to these channels. Maintaining a blog is time consuming task. As such, we are seeing a hybrid of blog and tweets. Blog sites can now pull twitter feeds real-time. Integrating these 2 channels allows content to be updated regularly. Tweet content that are shorter, or a hyperlink to a good read somewhere, etc. Blog content that are longer and requires more efforts in articulating your points.

Twitter will take roots in Singapore. Soon.