The effectiveness of digital marketing in Singapore

Marketing is concerned with creating demands and satisfying the needs of the customers. Digital marketing has been an integral part of marketing as a whole. The competition is very intense in any sector and companies are taking the help of various marketing tools in creating demands and attracting customers towards their products and services. Digital marketing has become very popular in today’s competitive market (Strauss 2016). It is the mostly used marketing tool by marketers to increase their reach to the customers. It effectively uses the power of internet that helps in satisfying the needs of the customers in various innovative ways. It gives the customers a new way to connect with the brand of their choice. The world has changed a lot because of the internet. Digital marketing helps to leverage the traditional forms of marketing but in a digital fashion. Various advantages like generating leads in a very short time, increasing the website traffic, purchasing products through online and improvement of internal communication have made digital marketing a significant strategy for the companies to increase brand loyalty (Bones and Hammersley 2015).

Digital marketing is the effective use of technologies that assist the marketing activities for the sake of improvement of computer knowledge by matching the needs of the customers (Nguyen 2016).  Online reviews help the companies as a part of it overall strategic marketing strategies (Khan and Siddiqui 2013). Digital marketing tools are more effective than the traditional form of marketing in terms of empathy (Helm et al. 2013).  Internet is continuously trying to explode all over the world, as the digital is becoming an important source of competitive advantage for both business-to-business and business-to-customer marketing (Leeflang et al. 2014). Retailers have the chance to improve their marketing strategy by enhancing their Facebook page appeal through the creation of interactive applications, adding more games and contests that will be able to attract more customers which acts as better responsiveness (Di Pietro and Pantano 2013).

Message sharing behaviors of social media users are attributed to the self-enhancement need (Paquette 2013). The experience of users increase in enjoyment and self-esteem when they make themselves adapted to the social media, which acts as a motivating sign for marketers and businesses (Pai and Arnott 2013). There is a relationship between the perceived brand orientation and service quality with respect to online marketing (Casidy 2016). The tangibility, reliability, responsiveness and empathy have important effects on the undergraduate customer satisfaction level (Long 2016). There has been a high importance of service quality for improving the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in a business (Kaynama 2015).

Advantages of digital marketing over traditional forms of marketing

The companies in Singapore are very efficient in proper utilization of digital marketing tools for the marketing of their products and services. The overall digital marketing scenario in Singapore has been great in the year 2016. So, the expectations are very high from the companies in 2017. The market in Singapore is getting very competitive like any other countries and the companies are trying to adapt themselves to the continual changes in the market. Singapore is quite successful in digital penetration and use of digital technologies. The percentage of internet penetration in Singapore is about 80% whereas the position of Malaysia is second. The youths are found to be the maximum internet user of the country. The usage of digital technologies and consumption of online information are very high in the country as majority of the Singaporeans are having smart phones and tablets. There has been a highly digitalized society in Singapore (Sidhu, Yeoh and Chang 2015). APAC Consumer Barometer has stated that around half of the internet users in Singapore watch online videos on a daily basis and the companies are trying to take this as an opportunity to promote their products and services. Singapore Business Review once published a report that revealed that the various business organizations in Singapore are employing the different digital marketing strategies like usage of Facebook as a platform for advertisements, search engine optimization, paid search and various application marketing to enhance their reach to the customers.

Singapore has seen the rapid evolution of newer technologies like Snapchat, Instagram and Pokemon Go. Many companies have adopted these technologies to enhance their brand awareness among the customers. Instagram has been a very popular and major platform in Singapore, just next to Facebook.

There are five variables of online servqual. They are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy (Feng et al. 2014).

The tangible variable includes equipment, some physical facilities, personnel and communication materials. The reliability variable is all about the ability of the online media to perform and provide service so that the customers can get the service accurately dependably. Responsiveness is the variable that deals with the helping the customers by providing the required information and prompt service. Assurance is transferring the knowledge and their ability to create a sense of trust and confidence among the consumers about the digital marketing tools. Empathy is the care and attention that the online media is giving towards the customers.

Analysis of marketing strategies using online reviews

Digital marketing has become very popular for most of the organizations and people all over the world because of the advancements in information technology. Consistency acts as the measure of reliability. The online sites have consistently provided assistance to the customers in finding out relevant and important materials and information. The companies have been quite successful in their marketing strategies of using social media as platforms to reach to their customers. Online marketing also reduces the time of sending or receiving information than that of the offline tools.   Google, Facebook and Yahoo have become some of the trusted sites for most of the organizations in terms of marketing their products and create awareness about them among the customers (Gloor 2017). The reviews of customers after usage of the products and services help the firms to analyze about their strategies. The young generation spend most of the time in the internet because of the increased usage of smartphones and most of the organizations have regard this as a reliable and convenient platform of marketing for a faster reach.

Online marketing is very successful in providing assurance to the customers about transferring the accurate knowledge able to bring confidence in them. Knowledge is the core of marketing (Arnett and Wittmann 2014). Different firms are providing adequate details about their products and services on their own websites so that it will be easier for the consumers to know the features of the products. Online shopping sites like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal give the facility of shopping by viewing the products online, sitting at home or in office. Previously, people used to visit the shopping centers and purchase products but now the online sites have provided enough assurance to them about the quality of the products. Some of the search engines like Google has eased the problems of many people by providing relevant and correct data that have increased their dependency on them. People feel very confident about the data that they view on the websites or various sites online. This has increased the popularity of digital marketing. Different digital technologies help to ease the problem by providing various facilities like Google Maps do in finding any place instantly.

There is a relationship between online media and empathy. Online marketing helps in the communication through emails and online chatting and exchange information between people at a faster pace. The link between the social media and empathy is relegated to some websites and personal blogs to provide personal opinions (Labrecque et al. 2013). The online media entails a mean for the online users to exchange, share and create information. It also helps to create online communities where people of similar interests discuss with important topics. It is been noted that self-disclosure through online is more accepted than face-to-face conversations. Social media like Facebook increases the likelihood of getting more support and emotional comfort by people (Nolan, Hendricks and Towell 2015).  

The five variables of service quality and their relationship with online marketing

Internet marketing is a very significant part of digital marketing. Responsiveness of online marketing is very high as far as the customers and the organizations are concerned (Cornelissen and Cornelissen 2017). The various social media like Facebook and Twitter help the customers to interact very fast. They are able to share views and ideas in a very short time. The organizations promote their products online and get more responses through the online media rather than the offline or traditional modes. Various job portals are able to attract more customers or receive greater responses than the traditional form of marketing like newspapers. From the point of view of the customers, they are able to learn or know things quickly than the other media. Students, going for higher education are not always able to pursue courses from the institutes because of location problems. This problem is solved by the introduction of online education courses by the institutes. The queries of the students are responded at the earliest and this has increased the popularity of online media across the globe. The companies after promoting their products online or selling them through the offline modes are able to get a quick feedback from the customers after their purchase. This helps them to formulate their strategies regarding the product.

The tangibility of an online media is the physical appearance of the website through which the companies used to sell products, the design of the website, how the information are given on the website and whether that is adequate for the customers. Many companies fail to market their products through online because of the inadequate information on their websites and irregular management of it. Customers have very less time to visit the stores for their purchase of products and online purchase have increased with days. The e-commerce companies are playing a major role these days and customers have the options to purchase products online after viewing the details online. There should be adequate information about a product on the websites.

Llao Llao is very popular in Singapore but they are facing some problems. The first problem is inadequate information on the website. People are not able to get the proper information about the product or any changes of it as there is a lack of proper website management. The reason is that the company is not spending much on the content marketing as the feel that the product is already very popular in the country. This is a lack of their marketing strategy. They are unable to promote the content.  

The yoghurt of Llao Llao is very popular in Singapore but the company must consider one thing that content marketing is very essential for the company for proper marketing of the product. The company must introduce important information in their websites so that customers are able to get the proper information about the products. The design of the website must be appealing to attract the attention of the customers (Ibrahim, Shiratuddin and Wong 2013). Responsiveness of the company must be very good and it must address the reviews given by the customers. Content marketing is now shifting towards the paid promotion.   

The company is not good at online marketing and the delivery is very slow. They are unable to market the products through the social media. This is affecting the lead generation of the company and their customer base is not increasing. They are unable to collect the visitor data. So, it has affected to nurture the prospects into sales to reach the goal of digital marketing. They have the problem of optimizing the landing pages, which has also affected their higher conversions. The product is very good but the digital marketing has not been quite successful in the country. The company is not able to provide assurance about the product to the customers.  

The company needs to increase their conversion rates so that more customers can purchase the yogurt in Singapore. It must increase the responsiveness if any customers have any queries and that should be addressed immediately. Llao Llao needs to promote the product through the social media platforms like Facebook that will help the company to reach to a large section of the people. They should keep a budget for this promotion strategy and take the help of advertising agencies so that the ads look appealing.

The company is not good in email marketing. It has failed to communicate with the customers or new people through online. This has severely affected their sales and the customer satisfaction level is drastically reduced. They have failed to communicate through email communication which has been their lack in marketing strategies. Email marketing is an important strategy to attract the attention of the customers, which the company has failed. The company never thought of putting stress on email marketing. It failed to communicate through mobile or SMS. They have only focused on the stores for selling the yogurt.  

Email marketing is a very important strategy to attract the customers. The company should resort to email communication with the customers so that loyal relationships are established between them. Email provides the facility of the maintenance of a database on a daily basis and helps to position the particular product in the minds of the customers. Llao Llao must have a separate department that will look after the online marketing of the product. The department must send emails to the customers and also SMS to them so that people become aware about the product. Since there are many competitors of Llao Llao in Singapore who are planning to manufacture the yogurt, the company must make proper use of the email marketing and SMS to connect with the customers on a personal level. This marketing strategy will help them to keep a track of the customers and increase the reporting facilities. Return on investment is very high in the process of email marketing. Email marketing may help the company in lead generation.

Conclusion

It has been inferred from the report that online marketing has been an integral and important aspect of digital marketing tools. The popularity of online marketing has helped the various organizations in promoting and selling their products and the customers are able to search and purchase them without any hindrances through the various online marketing sites. The report makes a detailed analysis about the five variables of service quality regarding the online media. Responsiveness, empathy, tangibles, reliability and assurance put forward the various aspects of social media and online marketing and how they are providing assistance to people all over the world. Responsiveness has discussed about faster the customers are able to receive their information and reply through online than any other modes. Reliability takes into considerations the fact that how much people can rely on the social media and the data and information available on the online sites. Empathy, assurance and tangibles have also been described. Some of the problems of digital marketing of Llao Llao yogurt in Singapore have been mentioned and some recommendations have been provided.   

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