5 ways for Singaporean firms to master online strategy

Much like having a smart phone, being online has become a necessary evil. In fact, considering that virtually every major and small brand has a digital presence, it probably is not optional anymore.

But this is not all bad. On the most basic front, digital marketing makes good business sense because it is the most widely-used and cost-effective media channel available to reach your market locally and globally while being a great research tool.

However, the kicker here is that having all of this will only enable you to remain competitive in your market.

What I’m saying is that if you want your business to be truly prosperous, you will need a good online strategy.

But what does this mean to you? What do you need to do to formulate a good digital plan? Well, if you have no idea, fret not. You are not alone and perhaps more importantly, there are ways to help you.

So, just for you, here are my 5 best tips to help you master your digital strategy for a truly successful business.

1) Segment and Customize

Now, a good digital strategy maximizes whatever contact your brand has over the net-space.

Considering that an online presence will always be there until you decide to take it down, the perpetual access your current and potential clients have to your brand presents you with a great opportunity to super-charge your business performance.

In order to capitalize on this, your outreach needs to be targeted at the market that is most likely to both pay attention to your efforts as well as be susceptible to your marketing message.

In putting in the effort to segment your pool of clients and subsequently customize your approach will be worth it when you rake in the more profits at a faster rate.

This is because by customizing your digital presence to cater to the needs and wants of your prospect groups, you heighten your chance at converting sales and building brand loyalty through your digital portals that will ultimately boost the success of your business.

2) Diversify Your Outreach Channels

In many instances, businesses tend to flounder even with a digital presence because they rely solely on one digital channel.

When businesses focus all of their efforts on a single web portal or Facebook business page, they tend to close themselves off from other potentially effective interaction avenues.

Considering that you need at least seven touch-points with potential clients before they even start to trust you, this digital strategy is quite frankly, suicidal.

However, on the flip side, utilizing multiple platforms maximizes your chances of interacting with your market and influencing them towards adopting buying behavior as well as adhere them to their brand by building stronger bonds with them.

Now, the thing here is that there is no need to be on all of them because it will be too overwhelming for prospective clients and cause a serious strain on your resources.

However, there are some fundamental platforms that can boost your company presence if done well.

First of all, you need a website as the main resource in positioning your brand and allow you to perpetually connect with your audience.

Websites are also usually seen as a digital shop-front. So, if you are planning to have one, it must be optimized to serve as both a branding and a sales platform.

Unfortunately, unless you have a team of web developers like I do, it would be quite impractical to make constant changes to a website. Instead, a great secondary platform is a blog.

While not as fancy as a full digital portal, a blog allows you to share regular information, articles and developments to educate and build trust with customers.

On that note, another essential platform with this function is Facebook.

Facebook is unique and important because communication can be conducted almost instantaneously; meaning that there is no time lag in communications between your brand and fans.

Combined with its interactive capabilities and easily-modified nature, this highly-effective function, Facebook can serve as a platform for you to give real-time information and solve issues in addition to posting event pictures, sharing customer testimonials, showcasing new products and even conduct activities to develop a strong relationship with the fans over the internet.

3) Break Brand Norms

Here’s a no-brainer: Boring branding is a key cause of poor sales.

The logic is simple: a normal product with very good branding will create have loyal relationships with clients while a good product with boring branding is doomed to languish in the market place because no one will be interested in it or feel any connection with the company.

The kicker is that digital marketing can make or break your brand in this way. You see, in today’s business landscape, consumers are far more likely to do research on your brand, product, and industry before anything else.

This means that all digital outreach you embark on must be have your branding and your business must be branded well.

In the former, all digital marketing collaterals, from photos to videos and even Facebook posts must be consistent in tone and message to capitalize on the overall strength of your current branding.

In the latter, the key to good branding is to be unique not in terms of products or benefits, but in terms of the way you want to be seen in the minds of your market.

To accomplish this, you must conduct research on your competitors. Upon compiling all the information necessary, you must then seek to be different from them in certain key aspects.

Decisions on what these key aspects are is subject to your marketing needs, product or business nature, and industry.

In any case, differentiating your brand will be worth it because, quite frankly, fitting into the general branding of your industry is about as interesting as dishwashing water.

4) Educate, Impress and Convince

Ever heard the phrase “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”? Well, the way to a client’s heart is through building trust.

The bad news is that we all know trust, at best, is difficult to earn. The good news is that in developing a trusted relationship with clients, your digital presence is one of the very best ways to do so.

So, how do we create trust online? Well, the simplest way is to start sharing tips and insights to your consumers across selected digital platforms.

Through educating your market base with genuinely useful information, you will be seen as an authority in your field as well as a generous provider of important knowledge.

This combination will subsequently impress your clients and hence break down their resistance towards your brand.

Progressively, as they become more convinced of your brand’ credibility and its value in their lives, they will develop greater trust and a stronger relationship with you.

To do this digitally, the easiest way is incorporate a blog in your website. With this blog, you can compile the most common questions and problems from your prospects and start building relationships by answering these issues them with reports, videos or blog posts.

Many of my students incorporated a blog and have generated a bigger response from their clients through these regular sharing.

5) Get Endorsed

One major issue about all marketing is that consumers will always be somewhat skeptical of what businesses say because these brands are the only source of information.

The key to solving this credibility issue in the digital space is to reinforce your statements with real endorsements that legitimize your claims.

In this role of building credibility, your digital strategy is a greatly important because as previously mentioned, potential clients are likely to search online about your brand before making a decision.

The trick here is to have a multi-pronged strategy across all your available digital platforms.

For your website, one of the most common and most effective ways is customer testimonials. This generally involves statements from your clients about their experience with your company and the positive benefits of adopting your brand.

This is a powerful technique especially in boosting trust because it reassures risk-adverse clients that they are not the first “guinea pigs” to a product they haven’t tired.

To do this, you must set up a proper system to request for frequent testimonials from your customers in both real-life and virtual reality.

On social media, you need to either find or create something called a “super-fan”. A “super-fan” is an incredibly loyal advocate of your brand and that champions your brand benefits, encourages positive engagement on your social media wall, as well as attempts to help you resolve problems between you and other fans.

However, be warned that in order to maintain their enthusiasm, you must incentivize them on a regular basis. Not doing so may leave them bored with your brand or worse, turn them against you the long run.

Another powerful trick is media coverage. In the sub-conscious of your target market, your credibility goes up a few notches when you are featured in the media.

This is because the perception of the media as a credible resource of information breeds the impression that it will not be endorsing a product without merit.

To do this, you must study the different media platforms and seek to provide useful insights to the editors in order to be covered.

Once you are featured, prominently highlight your media media coverage on your website and other available platforms.

The final way is through associations talks. Appearing and becoming connected with an association can do wonders for your company. Similar to media coverage, being allowed to provide information, training or services to a well-funded and sizeable association will create the image of you as trustworthy brand.

Through attending association meetings, you can develop relationships with the committees and create a special training session or seminar for association members.

Following that, take plenty of pictures and post them on your website. In addition to finding prospects in these associations, the word-of-mouth marketing generated from this can drive hot prospects to your website and be convinced about your brand with the evidence available.

Ultimately, after helping hundreds of businesses revamp their digital strategy, I believe that these 5 tips to empower your digital strategy will help you achieve the greater success with your business that you deserve.

Now that you know how to do it, time to get started, no?