Integrated Marketing: The Key to your Campaign’s Success in Southeast Asia
Expanding your brand’s horizons towards Southeast Asia will be more efficient deploying an integrated marketing strategy – here’s why.
Industry giants such as Google and Facebook are focusing their marketing efforts towards Southeast Asia – for good reason.
This is because Southeast Asia is set to become one of the most lucrative markets in terms of its internet economy. According to a recent study undertaken by Google and Temasek Holdings of Singapore, the region’s internet-based economy is set to mushroom to the tune USD200 billion by the year 2025.
Staggering – in spite of the relatively low internet penetration that the region has historically shown compared to Western markets.
And it is only set to grow as internet use picks up across all sectors – nowhere is this more evident than seeing the rapid increase of internet use in the region’s most well-developed and fastest-growing economies such as Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. A study by WeAreSocial pegs a gain of 80 million new internet users in the region for the year ended in 2017 – and growing.
However, economic growth is just as diverse as the cultures and the market behaviors in the region are – which tends to open a can of worms as to how best navigate the complexities and specificities of a market that has, for the longest time, experienced relatively low internet penetration statistics.
This relatively low internet usage poses a barrier for brands and marketers – apart from many other cultural and linguistic barriers that they will inevitably face – yet it is one worth breaking for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.
And breaking through the barriers is achievable through the use of a fully integrated marketing strategy that is tailored to the unique, fast-growing, and exciting market that is Southeast Asia – and I will explain to you exactly how.
Integrated marketing in a nutshell
Put simply, integrated marketing is, as the name implies, an integrated, holistic approach to marketing that puts a premium on ensuring that your brand’s message is consistent among both online and offline segments, and more importantly, across all platforms. Ensuring consistency and strengthening your message across all channels towards a unified front will drive consumer behavior towards positive action and better all-around results. In today’s increasingly complex marketing environment oriented towards technology and data analytics.
Accompany your target audiences towards the sales funnel
Integrated marketing calls for strategic deployment of campaigns on different channels. In the case of Southeast Asia, this would comprise your search engine marketing, your programmatic campaigns, social media channels, mobile advertising, etc, – and crafting its message consistently across these aspects towards reaching your target audience throughout the customer journey lifecycle and guiding them through the purchase funnel will be much easier.
Considering the heavy investment in mobile and programmatic advertising in the Southeast Asian region (which, in turn, will propel its online advertising market to unheard-of heights), and the region’s constantly growing number of internet, social media, and smartphone users, an integrated approach is definitely the way to go.
Maximize your brand’s exposure and your brand preference
Pursuing a fully integrated marketing strategy will also do wonders for your brand in terms of garnering consistent exposure that engages your target audiences at every possible front your message is being broadcasted – be it online, offline, or through mobile. Pair it with a consistent message across the board, and you will have a strategy designed to resonate with your audience, stay relevant, and most importantly, strengthen your audience’s brand preference towards the end goal of boosting your profits. This is no small feat considering that the Southeast Asian market tends to switch from one channel to another, and from one brand to another just as quickly – which is just one of the many intricacies you need to deal with in the market.
Deploy your strategy using a fully integrated and localized approach
Focusing only on traditional and conventional marketing strategies could spell ditching what the best medium is for a specific message or a particular target audience. The thing is, you cannot go with a marketing-by-the-numbers strategy expecting what’s good for the goose to be just as good for the gander – at least not in Southeast Asia. Managing cross-channel campaigns in a holistic manner optimized on unified insights with data and content coming from each channel is your best bet.
Ultimately, utilizing a fully integrated, fully localized approach to marketing will affect the goal of getting a positive return on your marketing investment, all while addressing the core needs and wants of your target market – and get just better across-the-board results for your brand and your bottom line in Southeast Asia. Make it a cornerstone of YOUR brand’s marketing strategy in the region moving forward.
