As a business owner and entrepreneur in Malaysia, things have not exactly been smooth sailing in the past year or so. The Covid19 pandemic and movement restriction orders have placed all sorts of challenges in the path of businesses.
With conditions like these, it’s always a wise decision for business owners to come out of their comfort zones and explore online marketing.
Having an online presence isn’t just helpful; it’s essential for business survival. This is because most people are turning to online shopping to minimize their need to go out to crowded places.
Experts have predicted that Malaysians will spend as much as RM51.6 billion on online purchases by 2024. This significant increase from just RM36.1 billion in 2021is driven mostly by the presence of the pandemic.
However, even if the Covid-19 pandemic comes to an end, the new normal of online shopping and purchasing is not expected to end or dwindle down. This spells a significant chance for Malaysian businesses to grow, via social media marketing.
Why Do Malaysian Businesses Need Online Marketing?
Social media marketing in Malaysia is nothing new. In fact, it has existed since the time the internet became widely accessible.
Some of the top social media sites in Malaysia include Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Currently about 86% of all Malaysians are on one social media platform or another.
This is the main reason why businesses need to have an online presence. As a company, you need to be where the consumers are. It will allow you more opportunities to reach out and increase brand awareness.
Here are some reasons why businesses, whether big, medium or small, need to start their social media marketing strategy:
1. Adapting to the new normal
As the world experiences unprecedented change with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses have to do their best to adapt to the new normal.
As more and more people do their shopping online, it only makes sense if businesses turn to social media to market their goods and services.
Recently, we have seen the trend of Facebook live streams appear, whereby vendors would conduct live streaming sessions to introduce various products which can be bought by customers who leave comments and messages booking those products.
2. A cost saving marketing strategy
One of the leading benefits of social media marketing has to be how cost-effective it is. In all the main social media platforms, you would be able to start a business account for free.
Some platforms even provide special features for businesses to begin expanding their marketing campaigns easily. These include mechanisms to create ads, send mass messages to followers and gain analytical insights. Most of these basic features can be accessed for free.
3. Gain wider brand awareness
With traditional marketing campaigns, you can reach only a limited number of people. Your target market is often those who are geographically close to your business.
However, with online social media marketing, you can reach a significantly wider audience. In fact, you can now reach beyond your usual target market and geographical location.
For example, if you are a business with a Youtube channel, your content can be viewed by people all over the world. This will increase your brand awareness beyond just Malaysia.
4. Better access to big data
When crafting and deciding on a marketing campaign, you need the help of analytics. Analytics is data about your visitors and potential customers, including their age, location, gender and preferences.
Additionally, analytics also highlights the performance of your content. It can show what type of content performs better, and when the best posting time should be.
All this data is available to business accounts on social media. You can then use the data to improve your social media marketing strategies easily.
How Malaysian Companies Can Use Social Media for Marketing in 2021
There are many companies in Malaysia that still do not know what social media marketing is. For those who are beginners in the social media marketing scene, there are definitely some strategies that can help you.
These social media marketing tips will help you plan effective social media campaigns, for both the short term and long term.
1. Determine which metrics matters to you
Metrics are the analytical factors that measure different aspects of your social media interaction. In simple terms, metrics determine how well (or otherwise) your social media marketing is doing.
Some common metrics include the amount of visitors to your page, how many people like your content, what the conversion rate is, or what the return on marketing costs are.
The first step you have to take in any social media marketing campaign is to focus on one metric. Use that metric as a gauge of whether your strategy is working, and work to improve your campaign until that metric improves too.
It’s important not to get caught up with ‘vanity metrics’ which may look important to your business, but turn out to be insignificant.
2. Use reports to analyze what marketing strategies work
When you establish a marketing campaign, you need feedback to know whether it’s working. In any case, you’ll need to perform a post-mortem when your campaign ends to elicit its effectiveness too.
Once again, the way to do this is by turning to your analytical data and metrics. You should be looking at reports on sales, conversion rates, profits and the like.
If your marketing strategy is working well, these metrics should be showing an improvement and you should be achieving your goals.
If you are not hitting your goals, you need to go back to the drawing board and use analytics to help you determine what went wrong and what you can do to improve.
3. Build your own brand voice
Having a brand voice means having your own brand personality. It’s important to form your own character as a company that is unique and different from everyone else.
This brand voice will be the factor that sets you apart and will allow people to recognize your products and services better.
Having a unique brand voice can take some time to develop. Therefore, you shouldn’t worry if you cannot solidify that brand voice overnight.
One of the first aspects that can help you determine your brand personality is determining who your target market is. Once you can pinpoint your audience’s backgrounds, genders, age groups and more, you’ll be able to craft content better suited to them.
4. Great customer service is key
With great social media marketing comes great responsibility. It’s not enough just to have good and relevant content. You also need to provide those that engage with you with great customer service.
One key aspect of customer service is responsiveness. This includes answering questions and queries that come in almost immediately. This helps build brand loyalty and respect towards your company.
Usually, members of the public who are interested in your products or services will leave messages on your social media accounts. The more efficient you are at answering these queries, the higher your conversion rates will be in the long run.
5. Ensure that your have regular content
Regular content is necessary for several reasons. Firstly, it brings in a constant stream of traffic to your page. This is necessary so that you keep up the interest in your page among your regular followers.
Another reason for producing and posting content regularly is to attract new visitors to your page. You can achieve this by posting more varied content.
Posting content on a regular basis can be challenging. That is why most social media platforms allow you to schedule posts beforehand. This way, you can create several posts at once for the entire week or several weeks at one go.
Having the ability to schedule posts over a period of time means that the social media platform will be able to publish your content in a future date and time. This frees up your time for other tasks so that you don’t have to camp in front of the computer everyday and post your content.
Choosing The Best Social Media Platform for Marketing in 2021
Every social media platform is different for business owners. Therefore it is up to you as a marketer to familiarize yourself with these channels and how to do social media marketing on each of these platforms.
The following are some of the top social media sites in Malaysia, attracting different demographics of Malaysian users according to age and gender.
Facebook is the leading social media platform in Malaysia, with almost 26 million users in 2021. The reason for this is because Facebook allows users to post a wide variety of content.
Users are allowed to network with one another and post up videos, pictures or texts on their account, which can be viewed by other users.
There are plenty of user engagements going on too, whereby users can react to each others’ content and leave comments.
As a business, Facebook allows you to have a Facebook Business account for free. With the FB business account, you have access to various Facebook marketing tools, content creation tools, analytics and business growth tools.
One Facebook marketing strategy that is extremely useful to entrepreneurs and companies is the ability to create and monitor ads.
On Facebook, there are many different formats of ads you can run, including video ads, photo ads, slideshow ads, carousel ads and more.
Additionally, you can also enhance your marketing on Facebook by boosting the reach of your posts so that it reaches beyond your account’s followers.
Ads and sponsored posts will require a certain fee to publish, but Facebook allows you to determine your target audience by age, gender, geographic location and interests. The smaller your target, the less costly it is.
This versatile aspect of Facebook marketing in Malaysia is what makes it attractive to many SMEs.
On the other hand, the current trend of Facebook live streaming allows smaller business owners to engage more closely and intimately with their customers.
This feature is popular among SMEs too, as it allows them to showcase their products and interact with customers in this era of social distancing.
Instagram is a social media site that is based on images. Its users post mainly images and short videos, which can be viewed by their followers. These followers can like and comment on the image or short video.
Instagram marketing involves getting a business or creator account and placing ads in the form of Instagram ad posts and stories. These will appear in the between the content that users subscribe to.
Marketing on Instagram involves understanding how their user algorithm works. The more a user interacts with your account, the more your stories will appear on their story reel.
Therefore, as a first step to improve your Instagram marketing in Malaysia, you can find ways to increase the amount of interaction on your page via interactive content.
Various Instagram marketing tools are also available to help you create visually stunning content that will turn heads and encourage engagement.
TikTok
TikTok is the social media platform with the youngest demographic of users. A large majority of TikTok users in Malaysia are below the age of 30.
TikTok has TikTok marketing tools for business, which allows you to have easy access to marketing tools. These include resources for creating the various TikTok ads, like branded hashtags, brand takeovers, branded effects and in-feed video ads.
One organic TikTok marketing strategy to gather more views and visitors is to take part in viral TikTok challenges and to use popular TikTok hashtags. This strategy is free of charge, and will drive traffic to your content too.
Twitter is a very unique social media site in Malaysia, in that it attracts many users who are more aware of current trends and issues.
Your Twitter marketing strategy should therefore be more informed and current, to make your brand relevant to what’s going on in the world.
Any Twitter marketing tips should include the advice to use trending hashtags in your posts. Posts on Twitter are limited to 280 characters per post, including spaces.
Using trending hashtags puts your account in the feed of anyone looking up that trending hashtag. Twitter trends change every hour, so it helps to be alert and use the trends to your brand’s advantage.
Linkedin has a very specific set of users, which include professionals and executives. LinkedIn is a place for these people to network with one another.
The way LinkedIn content works is rather similar to Facebook, in which you can view the posts of those in your network in your main feed.
As a business, LinkedIn marketing is very much content driven. You can expand your reach by posting content that’s relevant to your niche industry, including leadership and career advice, professional tips, and the like.
Social Media Marketing Is Essential In The 21st Century
The benefits of social media marketing are numerous. You may have the best content, such as the best Instagram pictures, the best TikTok videos or the best YouTube content but if you don’t market them well, nobody will know about your brand at the end of the day.
One of the most important aspects of having an online presence as a company is to be genuine and relatable. As long as you stick to being transparent and honest, this will help you decide on what to post on social media.
At One Search Pro, we are always ready to help craft your first Social Media marketing strategy and plan your brand voice. Contact us to begin your ground-breaking social media marketing campaign today.
