Enabling omni-channel marketing for all SME businesses in Singapore

This post is sponsored by FirstCom Solutions.

There is no doubt that many business owners are aware of the benefits of tech as an enablement for their businesses. We’ve seen companies explore means to digitise – be it in the form of creating an eCommerce website, implementing interactive customer relationship management (CRM) systems, to enhancing marketing outreach via digital channels such as paid ads on search engines or social media.

While business owners are aware of the benefits, they see the act of going digital as only a good-to-have, and only a few have truly invested the time and effort to embrace it long enough to reap the benefits. It is not unfamiliar to hear anecdotes of suggestions to improve business operations with tech met with rebuttals to retain the status quo or to have the project shelved when other things get going.

It will probably take a century (or more) for business owners to truly digitise, but the rise of COVID-19 accelerated the whole process and forced more small and medium enterprises who are operating to take the digital leap as their survival now depends on it.

As more businesses jumped onto the bandwagon of digital advertising space, they saw an increase in competition vying for a finite pool of consumers through limited ad spaces, which lowered their returns on their marketing spend. The cold hard truth is that pursuing a silo digital marketing strategy is not the way forward for SMEs that want to continue expanding their enterprise.

Today’s digital business landscape demands a few key skills from local businesses looking to succeed. Owners must be keenly aware of their digital marketing strategies, know how to build online communities, create compelling content, understand how to run effective ad campaigns, convert leads, as well as make use of data to improve overall performance.

Running a digital ad nowadays has become pretty much self-explanatory through the online help available on ad platforms, but it takes more than following instructions to get more traction with the same ad spend. 

What about the creation of assets that aligns with the businesses’ target audience for better ROI? What about understanding the data available to come out with insights for better business decisions? There is no self-help on that.

Rather than putting all their eggs into the virtual basket, SMEs must also make use of offline and traditional marketing (unpopular opinion) while venturing into the digital space. 

Digital marketing should be used to gain brand awareness and acquire new customers, and businesses should concurrently work to improve the existing customers’ shopping experience and retention rates by unifying all aspects of the business with CRM. 

The constant flow of new and returning customers offers businesses with more key performance data for real-time actionable insights that enable better business decisions. After all, why pump in all the budget just to get the customer to make the first purchase?

For years, FirstCom Solutions has been focused on helping SMEs kick-start their digital journey, transform their operations, execute digital campaigns on their behalf and share the skills and expertise necessary for them to attain success in the future. 

From January 2020 to date, we have helped more than 750 SMEs run more than 1,000 digital campaigns – growing our team at the same time. Now, we have over 200 local full-time members ranging from Google and Facebook-certified marketing executives to creatives such as writers and designers, professional content producers, and not forgetting, a passionate management team.

While many companies are struggling or hesitating to start their first digital campaign, the competition is fast leaving them behind. In today’s landscape, digital marketing must be incorporated into an overall marketing strategy, integrating digital advertising, traditional advertising and an automated CRM system to track operations.

Businesses must have a robust CRM to see the recency and frequency of their customers to enable them to run more comprehensive omni-channel campaigns, making use of digital channels such as SMM and EDM, alongside traditional marketing tools such as SMS marketing and out-of-home marketing. This is the way forward for local businesses to bring in new customers and retain existing ones.

Data is key to connecting with new customers and building lasting relationships with existing ones. We encourage business owners to get started right now – start digitising your operations, start marketing online and offline, and get your own CRM so everything you do can be measured and calculated to determine your true customer acquisition cost and value.

How much does it cost your business to get a new customer to spend again? What types of reward systems do you see the best results with? How much do your customers spend on average? Is spending 30% of your revenue on a specific sales channel getting you the ROI you desire?

A business owner must be able to answer these questions to improvise. Knowing your customer value and acquisition cost can dramatically change the way you invest in digital and traditional marketing. 

This data is the fuel that will drive your business decisions and business growth. And if you find yourself in a situation where you’re not able to assess and run your business at this level – you might be heading for a business crisis.

The businesses of today run in fragments. With parts and pieces online and offline, is it any wonder why business owners find it hard to comprehend and understand the big picture?

That’s where FirstCom Solutions comes in to help. We’re focused on helping our local businesses overcome immediate digital marketing challenges and helping them plan for continuity and sustainable business growth in the long run. 

Having assisted more than 5,500 SMEs for various aspects of digital transformation, we know the challenges of SMEs better than most. You need only call us to arrange for a consultation on approaching your challenges – you’ll be surprised the answers might be simpler than you expect.

The writer is Jim Giam, founder of FirstCom Solutions.