Last August 1st, Ship&co, a Kyoto-based integrated e-commerce shipping platform, held its first-ever E-commerce Connect in the city of Singapore. Billed as an avenue for today’s community of e-commerce sellers to connect with one another, the event brought together companies and individuals alike for an afternoon of insights, talks, and shared discussions.
Cardinal Digital, a Silicon Vallley-raised digital marketing startup headquartered in Singapore, was among the three companies to hold talks for the event. Staying true to its mission of bringing data-driven strategies and solutions to Southeast Asia, the company brought the event’s attendees one step closer to effectively connecting with their audiences. Alongside invited speakers from prominent courier companies DHL and NinjaVan, Cardinal Digital co-founder and CEO Natalie Nguyen held a discussion about Navigating Digital Marketing in 2019. Exploring the advancements in the digital marketing landscape, the talk centered on three main trends surrounding content, strategy, and analytics for small businesses in SEA to leverage in order to amplify their online marketing campaigns.
Acknowledging the ever-increasing impact of content in influencing today’s audience and in reference to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2019 Report (Kleiner Perkins), Nguyen shared that digital video time has doubled in the past five years. When compared versus the daily time spent in television, data has shown that audiences are beginning to switch their daily viewing habits to mobile. As a result, this continuous yearly spike in growth has allowed video content to become more prevalent and be distributed in large volumes and frequencies.
Nguyen also stressed the importance of authenticity, relevance, and clarity when creating video content, adding that one does not specifically need a professionally produced video to effectively communicate an idea. She also added the importance of keeping up to date with the latest trends and maximizing the value of the content by repackaging it into multiple different lengths and formats. Lastly, she noted the value of testing everything before publishing — from placements, audiences to content and formats.
For social media, Nguyen noted the significance of referrals through the platform as one of the highest acquisition channels that e-commerce businesses can leverage for their growth. Included in this is placing value on customer lifecycle management which can serve as a good indicator of a business’ performance. She also recommended engaging with the audience by putting one’s customers in the spotlight — through testimonials, post-purchase reviews, and user-generated content. By utilizing social media as a platform to amplify happy customers, a business can generate prospective leads and ultimately build a community of brand loyalists.
Lastly, recognizing the trend of growing cost for CACs online, Nguyen also shared three steps for businesses to ensure increased results: setting up analytics to enable data-driven decision-making, redefining lifetime value to customer acquisition cost as a core KPI, and investing early in search engine optimization or SEO to build and strengthen one’s competitive moat from the start.
