The key to successful online marketing
Supported by the Selangor State Government, the Selangor Information Technology & E-Commerce Council (SITEC) is the only centre throughout Malaysia to provide courses in three languages to cater to the needs of fellow Malaysians from English-, Malay- and Mandarin-speaking communities.
According to event host Mr Salman Ahmad, since its establishment since 2015, SITEC has to date taught ninety-one e-Commerce courses to more than 300,000 individuals. Come next year in 2020, the Council is eyeing at opening another centre in Kota Damansara to focus on industries related to game development course and e-commerce.
Goh Boon Peng: Learn from the concept of growth hacking
The first speaker on 28 May 2019 was Mr Goh Boon Peng, SITEC Academy director cum founder of MyStartr. Goh brought up a very important concept of “Growth Hacker”. In layman’s terms, it means achieving exponential growth by using online marketing and related IT skills.
“It is a low-cost method which requires creativity. Some growth hackers could bring down the marketing cost – Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Like (CPL) – as much as ten to fifty times lower.
“The experience of Airbnb serves as a good example of growth hacking. During its earlier days, the staff sourced rooms from other websites to accumulate listings. Many rooms were still vacant as they did not show photos. The company let room owners take photos but the occupancy was poor – because the owners took photos of low quality. To make their listings look more attractive, the company hired professional photographers to take photos and subsequently, the rooms were rented out. They had a new method and the growth was significant,” Goh elaborated.
When it comes to growth hacking, Goh said that businesses with lower capital can actually spend more time to test different marketing methods by themselves.
“It takes more time, but you can monitor the changes by yourselves. These are the key steps: post something on your website or social media page, and monitor the statistics and analytic data. If there are no changes, come up with a new method and observe it. You don’t stop trying even you see changes; you strive for better results. You can even try different things once every month or week. When you do it weekly, you have fifty chances and methods each year to bring in big deals,” he added.
Goh also highlighted that this is a good method for smaller companies, and even large corporations such as Facebook hires growth hacker teams to constantly try to grow exponentially from marketing.
Stephy Yoong: Make business content mobile-friendly
During her sharing, the director of Stelix Media, whose business focuses on online marketing, advised the audiences to pay attention to the changes of the mobile age.
“This is the age of smartphones. About 80 per cent of Malaysians conduct online research to survey prices before buying something. Which is exactly why you have to make sure your company has to be there on the internet.
“There are three guidelines: be there, be useful, and be quick. Given the fact that YouTube is now the largest channel in Malaysia, you may focus on targeting this group of viewers,” advised Yoong.
She also highlighted that in Malaysia, there are 16.5 million unique users of YouTube – 6.6 million of whom watch YouTube on a daily basis.
“Be useful means your content has to be accurate and attractive. Be quick is definitely a must-have strength for today’s businesses. While YouTube is good for promoting your products for larger market, you may also consider email marketing – such as Gmail Ads – when you are selling niche and expensive products to consumers with higher spending power,” she added.
Yoong also highlighted Instagram Ads as another good way of marketing as Instagram Stories has had 300 million active users in 2017. For the participants of the day, the idea of focusing on YouTube and Instagram alone was a direct way to target a large number of potential customers.
Desmond Wong: Short and simple messages reign
The senior trainer from Lelong.my explained marketing experience from the perspective of branding.
“You have to make sure your logo, brand message and tagline are compatible and consistent,” said Wong.
He also highlighted an area where many businesses overlooked. “Make sure the colours are also consistent, because the colours represent your brand identity. Make good use of it and you can stand out from the crowd.”
He advised fellow entrepreneurs to always stick to the K-I-S-S technique. He said: “You have to keep your business messages short and simple. Most people have no patience nowadays. Instead of delivering your most important business message at the end of your three-minute advertisement, why not presenting it in the middle part so that more viewers see it?”
Conclusion: Never too late in online marketing
Tens of attendees have benefited from the e-Commerce class focusing on online marketing. It seems like more and more businesses are interested to achieve better online presence. The good news is: if you have missed the boat previously, it takes you only one click away to sell your products and services online. And the effort is certainly worthwhile.
