Digital Media is dramatically changing so fast, especially throughout South East Asia. It’s already making a big influence to everyone and changing the shape of advertising.
The digital environment have changed a lot as well. Since more than half of the population (South East Asia is home to over 650 million people) is already connected online, digital marketing has become mainstream. The growth of it’s population is still increasing because of the access to public wifi and telco promotions of mobile internet. With that, businesses are quickly bringing their brand and products online!
Companies are also investing more in e-commerce. This is the transaction of purchasing and selling products online. As we advance to a generation who no longer carry cash or wallets, more and more consumers are using digital payments such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, PayMaya and GCash. A recent study in the Philippines shows that PayPal are used by more than 25% of consumers are already using cash-less payment systems as their method of choice. This is because of convenience, security and more payment options.
Digital Marketing & Social Media
Social Media is now the best source of discovery. It’s where people congregate so it’s a major medium to get customers. Businesses realise that this is now a cost effective and highly measurable way to advertise their brand and products to where people gather the most.
Instagram is consistently booming at a very fast rate. They announced last year that around 800 million people use the application each month! More people will be migrating from apps like Snapchat & Facebook to Instagram since they created a new feature, Instagram Stories, where you can post photos and/or videos for a short period of time. A lot of
business to consumer brands prefer Instagram better than any other social platforms and it will be no surprise if it’s going to be the new go-to channel for social media marketing in 2018 and for the coming years. You don’t need to primarily transform everything digitally, but the very least is to have presence. If consumers are online, why aren’t you?
Businesses are also starting to build their own mobile applications now. It helps improve customer engagement, create a direct marketing channel, cultivates customer loyalty and more. Traditionally the process of finding an App Developer then working with their team to build an app would take months and often cost from $20,000 to $100,000s, which isnt really viable for small to medium businesses. We constantly received requests for apps from businesses, and although we were able to leverage our development teams across Europe and Asia, the price was still prohibitive. This was one of the reasons we decided to build AppFactorie, to enable Small business the ability to compete again!
Digital marketing will continue to evolve, so always make sure to align your business’ objectives and goals to it. Digital delivers. Dont get left behind, it will hurt!
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