There is expected to be over 8.2 billion hand held mobile devices active by 2018. Therefore brands have to up their game to make sure that their retail systems are kept up to date as the mobile consumer is looking for more ways to access shopping online. Brands really need to make their content easily accessible. Even before shopping online, 90% of consumers were using their mobile devices to find out the location of a specific shop and its opening times.

As shown in the mobile consumer data graphic below, the main focus point of mobile commerce is mainly on transactions; however it is more than likely that this will soon expand to include the whole of the retail experience. Loyalty coupons, access and parking are just some of the ideas proposed to change in the future. Brands want the retail experience to be looked at as a whole to provide the consumer with the best experience possibly, which would encourage them to come back.

Social media has become another strong point of the new mobile generation. It bridges the gap between the in-store experience and friendship towards the consumer. It is important for brands to make the most of this platform as it allows them to be more personalised so they can relate to the consumer. Many consumers feel underwhelmed by many brands attempts to target them, as they are more than often targeted at a mass audience. Therefore using social media can help them overcome this barrier.

As the data graphic shows mobile data is becoming more of a representation of the consumer’s lifestyle. They are using mobile data to create an idealistic lifestyle. As a result of this, by 2018 it is predicted that 69% of mobile data traffic will be from video. This shows the huge shift from text to visuals. Apps that allow consumers to send short video clips are often more appealing than sending a text message. Mobile web data is the future and will continue to be a huge consumer of traffic.

Credit: data graphic produced by the vouchercloud discount site

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Singapore mobile search advertising represented 24.3% of total search advertising click share, according to Marin Software’s latest annual report.

The post Singapore Mobile Search Average CPC, CTR appeared first on Incitez.

UPS released  UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper: A Customer Experience Study for Asia and Australia on September 26, 2013. The survey explored the online shopping behavior and omni-channel retailing.

The overall satisfaction of Singaporeans’ online shopping was 51%, lower than U.S. with 85%, Europe with 78% and China with 60%. Most complained areas of online shopping were delivery dates, lack of convenient locations for collection and return policies.

Delivery

Singaporeans tended to have the highest carts abandon rate during online shopping, as high as 81%. Further study showed the key reasons for abandoning the carts were high add-up total costs in the carts, long shipping time or not provided shipping service. 55% said shipping time over 8 days would increase the abandon rate.

Besides, as for tracking packages service, 97% Singaporeans regarded it as essential or nice to have.

Return Policies

Right after free or discounted shipping on the ranking of most important aspect, over 60% Singaporeans regarded easy return policies highly to make a purchase.

Omni-channel

They survey founded out 65% would use smartphones while about 75% used tablets to purchase during a three-month period.

70% Singaporeans wanted to purchase online then ship back for free or return the product in a physical store. 51% also expressed their wishes for location-based coupons sent to their mobile phones.

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C-level executives are stepping up their own involvement in shaping and driving digital strategies, shown in a recent McKinsey survey. Executives surveyed list digital customer engagement as top strategic priority, who report notable progress since deploying engagement practices in 2012.

The survey found the top six digital customer engagement practices deployed at scale across enterprises this year:

1. Positioning and branding material consistently across online and offline channels
2. Using advanced customer targeting to advertise
3. Making personalised information or targeted offers accessible online
4. Engaging customers through social-media channels before, during or after a sale
5. Creating branded applications and games for the web or mobile devices
6. Running experiments on web site to test effectiveness of messages and offers

It usually takes enterprises quite some time to develop a fit digital strategy for the organisation where support and leadership from senior management are essential.

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B2B businesses are conventionally harder to market than those selling to consumers, which especially requires strategic planning and phases of digital marketing tactics across channels.

A recent report by RAIN Group shed some light on  factors that separates B2B sales winners from their challengers; bringing something new and valuable to the table is the most important thing that top sales people do differently.

Factors Most Separating Winners from Second-Place Finishers

These factors are found most crucial to B2B sales winners:

1. Educating the prospect with new ideas or perspectives
2. Collaborating with the prospect
3. Persuading the prospect they would achieve results
4. Listening to the prospect
5. Understanding customers’ needs
6. Helping them avoid potential pitfalls
7. Crafting a compelling solution
8. Depecting purchasing process accurately
9. Connecting personally
10. Overall value from the company is superior to other options

Other  key takeaways from the report:

• The sellers who won the sale don’t just sell differently; they sell radically differently than the sellers who came in second.
• Solution- and consultative-selling approaches need to evolve in important ways, especially to open the door for sellers to drive their own demand and create their own opportunities.Fundamentally, however, these approaches aren’t dead. They’re not even mostly dead. Sellers and companies that dismiss the core concepts of solution sales and replace them wholesale with something else place their sales success in grave danger.
• The sellers who win have distinct patterns for how they sell. Rain Group categorized and labeled these patterns in the Three Levels of RAIN SellingSM: connect, convince, and collaborate

In my experience helping B2B businesses succeed online, every company needs to develop its unique approach. When sometimes it’s difficult to get started, companies can get help from agencies or start with a framework, test and improve form its own strategies.

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According to Nielsen research, women aged 13-34 like aspirational, off-beat and humorous ads while women between 35 and 54 year old like family themed sentimental ads.

The post Advertising That Appeals to Women appeared first on Incitez.

However, smartphone users in Singapore recorded the lowest CTR  (1.8%), and so are CTRs on tablets (2.4%) and computers (2.4%).

According to an October 2012 study from Netbiscuits, Apple was the favored brand among Singapore mobile Internet users, with over half of mobile internet traffic going to iOS; another 43% went to Android.

Marketers in Singapore should be more serious in mobile search; make sure a well defined mobile search strategy is in place and work hard enough on integration.

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Indonesia digital ad spend will increase faster than Asia-Pacific’s overall regional growth through 2016, according to eMarketer.

The post Digital Spend Growth in Indonesia 2011-2016 appeared first on Incitez.

Sponsored Story

Previously (and right now), the sponsored story appear on the right-hand side. But, it will appear as a sponsored story on the right-hand side and it can also appear in news feed on both desktop and mobile. All of these placements are on Facebook’s homepage.

Premium Ads

Premium ads on Facebook helps you maximize the number of people interacting with your brand and talking about you, while unlocking the power of fans and their friends.

For Facebook users not connected to your brand, your story will appear on the right-hand side of their  homepage as an ad.

For your fans and friends of fans, your story will appear as a sponsored story on the right-hand side, and it can also appear in news feed on both desktop and mobile. All of these placements are on Facebook’s homepage.

According to Facebook, placements in the right-hand side and in news feed on Facebook’s homepage have an average of 5x-10x more engagement than all other places on the site.

Reach Generator

Currently, if you don’t have run any ads on Facebook, only about 16% of your page’s fans see your posts on Facebook. But, you will have something called “reach generator”, which Facebook guarantees to show to 75% of a page’s fans over the course of the month.  It allows advertisers to pay Facebook on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a CPC or CPM basis, to sponsor one page post every day

Logout Promotion

Facebook is also offering a  ”logout experience” page that it will show people immediately after they log out on a computer. This comes with a big price though; it’s reported that it costs $700k PER DAY!

Next Steps

Here are a few things you should do if you haven’t.

Redesign your Facebook Page as it transits to timeline layout. Social media maven Mari Smith created a map of the advanced layout with labels explaining how to manipulate all the features; or, you can check out an e-book here.

Before you make any changes to your Page and change to timeline layout, create a report of the current Page performance so that you can compare it with the timeline layout one once you make the transition.

Update your content strategy.Keep in mind the changes of advertising on Facebook on the engagement and influence; better yet, try the premium ads for a few weeks, adjust and update the strategy. And, don’t forget that photos and videos drive 2x engagement.

Last but not least, continue measuring, testing and improving.

Bonus: you can also use a demo tool from Facebook that you can use to create sample Premium on Facebook and view it as people on Facebook would see it.

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According to a new Nielsen report on the changing Asian media landscape, Asian countries rank amongst the top globally for media consumption with four of the top five nations for home TV and online video usage located in the region.

Asian countries also took all five spots when it comes to mobile video usage, among which Singapore ranked number five in Nielsen’s Mobile Video Usage Index with over 3.5 million mobile video viewers (compared to 3 million TV viewers and 2.5 million Internet video viewers).

40% of online consumers in Asia Pacific claim to view online product reviews for purchase decisions. Consumers in Vietnam were most likely to turn to online reviews before making a purchase decision at 81 percent, followed by Chinese (77%) and Thais (69%).

Although online advertising has a higher average return on investment and digital advertising accounts for 14% of global advertising spend, budget allocation to digital platforms in Asia Pacific is failing to keep up: it accounts for less than one percent of total spend in markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

However, it’s also a period of time you can utilize the low-budget allocation on digital in this region as when many companies shift more budget from traditional marketing to digital, it will cost you a lot more.

Online Video Advertising Opportunity in Southeast Asia

Incitez just partnered with PPTV, one of China’s biggest online video platform with client software on PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices, to provide low cost video advertising opportunities in Southeast Asia. If you are interested to find out more, please download the brochure below:

• English
• Chinese

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