Google’s 10 Tips for SMEs to Leverage Digital Marketing

In Singapore, 88 percent of consumers used a store locator on Google to find a business, and look to the Internet to find a place to dine at or to purchase a particular product. With the growth of search and social, it has become increasingly important for SMEs in the Asia Pacific, to leverage the digital platform well to increase their scale and reach.

Google has shared some tips with Digital Market Asia on how SMEs can reach new customers in Singapore and export their products and services globally.

1. Get online
The most important step in going online is to make your business discoverable by your customers. Google My Business, a tool by Google, provides SMEs with a free listing and simple website that will help them show up on Google searches and drive traffic to their stores.

2. Make your mobile experience great
According to recent research, 50 percent of people expect a site to load in less than two seconds. In Singapore, the average site takes 9.32s to load on mobile, which puts Singapore behind the rest of Asia Pacific at 8.48s. Not having a mobile-optimized site is like shutting the shop front door to customers, just because of the device they’re using. Google’s Test My Site is a free, online tool that provides businesses with a detailed report and specific steps on how to make websites faster.

3. Keep an eye on the trends
When it comes to content – be it for marketing or for information, it is important for SMEs to know what’s popular. Google Trends allows SMEs to see what people are searching for in Singapore and worldwide, which can help you understand the popularity of different topics and products.

4. Broadcast your business
Three out of five users in Singapore find YouTube useful to search for products and 41 percent are influenced by YouTube on which brand to buy. With the growing popularity of videos, it has become a useful medium for SMEs to engage and find new customers.

5. Invest in paid ads for new customers
After a business has established an online presence, many will want to promote it. Paid ads on platforms such as AdWords can help businesses reach potential customers worldwide when people search, watch videos, and browse online content relevant to their business.

6. Promote goods to customers using e-commerce sites
Google’s Shopping Ads are image-based ads that help shoppers find the products they’re searching for and quickly connect with the merchants who sell those products. Small businesses that don’t have an e-commerce platform on their website can partner with online retailers to list their products for them.

7. Identify new markets for expansion
Google’s Global Market Finder tool analyses data from Google Search, Translate and AdWords to help SMEs compare the cost of acquiring a new customer and helps them to determine if exporting to a new market is a good idea for their business.

8. Measure your online marketing
It is also important for SMEs to measure their marketing activities to know what works and what does not with tools such as Google’s Analytics.

9. Training for digital leaders
Google has launched Squared Online for SMEs as a training programme developed by Google and AVADO covering topics across social media strategy, digital advertising and data analytics.

With support from SPRING Singapore and the Infocomm Media Development Authority, SME-sponsored trainees may claim up to 90 percent of the course fees on successful completion of the course.

10. Join export masterclasses
Small businesses looking to expand their footprint overseas can sign up for free export masterclasses led by Google and its partner agencies.

Source: Bizbilla Blogs

B2B Marketing Techniques

In this Internet Era, Digital Marketing has reformed the B2B dealings to the path of success with comfort and generally known as customer centric approach. The marketing techniques involves SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SMM (Social Media Marketing), SMO (social media optimization), Internet marketing, email marketing, content marketing, Marketing Automation, Mobile marketing, remarketing and paid search advertising.

Businesses need to focus on the emerging B2B strategies of 2016 to drive their business towards prosperity. The trending strategy is to automate your marketing network to integrate the available marketing techniques like email marketing, CRM, content marketing, SEO, analytics in a single platform that makes the prospects and lead to follow up regularly with automated messages.

Content is important to reach the customer as it will give better idea and enable them to know the concept of what they are reading. Some effective forms of content that reach our prospects are ebooks, downloadable guide, direct mail with brief and valid information, playing video with valuable and crisp sentence. These are some valuable content marketing ideas to take your business to the path of success.

Social media marketing is effective tool to promote your business for the view of global audience. As the world is totally depended on internet, every business has a social account to widen their business network which results in high traffic conversion to your site. Buy Buttons are featured and decisive marketing strategy is used to make your leads buy the product that they prefer directly through the social sites and search engine.

Mobile marketing is another important marketing tool which will reach your lead instantly anytime. Pay per click, remarketing, social ads are some more marketing techniques that are trending in this business year. Registering in an eminent B2B marketplace will connect you with universal buyers, sellers, suppliers, manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers and retailers for developing your business in the path of prosperity.

It is the right time for businessmen to choose the suitable marketing tool to promote their business/products and take their business to the path of victory.

Latest Social Media Marketing Trends

The social media is becoming trending than ever and is influencing the business very much where a businessmen could buy and sell their business online via social media.

Social networking forums are the best way to get connected with target audience and understand their specific needs. Today we have enormous social media marketing tools that enable us to share information about our service and get instant feedbacks about business.

A survey depicts that 94% of marketer’s find increasing brand awareness via social media marketing. Nowadays, sales via social platform is gaining popularity.  The top social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest have come up with buy buttons which enables the marketers to track sales directly.

Mobile users can shop their desired product online. Think periscope, instagram, snapchat are the trending social medias that enables user to view and upload live videos to have a lively experience.

Online publishing platforms like instant articles and in-post search engines will make great impression in upcoming days. More and more social apps will be evolving enabling users to get all their needs satisfied and give marketers an opportunity to interact with their target market leading to a rise in mobile and ecommerce market.

The other upcoming new social networks include Ello which provide ad-free social network that is being “owned” by advertisers, Yik Yak which focuses on unidentified post exchanges on physically adjacent people and Tsu which offers revenue sharing on popular posts.