Online marketing in Malaysia is on the rise!
A quick search on Google trends shows the demand for online marketing or digital marketing over the past 12 months in Malaysia:
We have previously written an article on the current state of online marketing vs traditional marketing, do check out the article to have a clearer idea of where to allocate your marketing budget.
With the shift towards online marketing, we have decided to share the types of online marketing platforms that are working well in Malaysia, as well as the 5 strategies that you can apply for your business today.
Ready to learn something new today?
Let’s jump right in!
The 3 Phases of Online Marketing
1. Picking a reliable web hosting company in Malaysia
2. Create a website to generate leads and sales
3. Marketing on the 3 major platforms
Online Marketing Malaysia – 3 Major Platforms
Before we discuss the key online marketing strategies, let’s discuss the context of the major online marketing platforms.
While there are plenty of online marketing platforms in the market, these are the 3 that is currently working well in Malaysia, based on our experience of running marketing campaigns for our clients:
1: Google
We will start with the biggest online platform, Google.
In most cases, Google will have a higher conversion rate as compared to social media as it captures the buyer’s intent.
For example, we usually go to Google when we need a solution, such as – “where to travel”, “best restaurant in kl”, “teeth whitening in pj” and so on.
Due to this, Google is able to be a lucrative middleman to connect potential buyers to businesses.
Buyers have a problem and are ready to buy, while businesses that appear on Google will have the opportunity to convert these searchers into customers.
There are two components of Google marketing:
- Google ads
- Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”)
Google ads are the results which appear first on Google, followed by SEO.
Here’s an example of Google ads:
Once the ads are shown, it is followed by SEO results:
These are all organic results where you won’t have to pay Google.
So the question is, should you go for Google ads or SEO?
Here are some considerations:
For Google ads, you need to pay Google for each click as they are considered an advertisement placed on Google.
However, given the higher conversion rate on Google, you could pay Google and generate profitable returns for your business, since the buyer is already seeking for a solution.
Google ads are also ideal for branding as your business name will appear on the first page of Google based on the search term you bid for.
As for SEO, you won’t have to pay Google a single cent and the clicks are free once you are on Page 1 of Google. The only caveat is, there is no guarantee that you will be on the first page and SEO typically takes about 6 months to 1.5 years to observe results.
If you have the budget, go for both Google ads and SEO to grow your business.
If you have a tight budget and need to see results fast, go for Google ads. On the other hand, if you are willing to wait for the long-term without paying for ads, SEO is a great option.
2: Facebook & Instagram
We combined Facebook and Instagram as these two platforms and context are similar.
While Google relies on buyer’s intent, Facebook and Instagram help grow sales by targeting people based on their interests, behaviour, and job title listed on social media.
Yes, Facebook has all of our data on what we like or dislike.
While organic reach is slowly declining, running social media ads is the way to go in 2019. You have to pay to play the game.
The good news is, the ads cost for FB and IG is still very cheap as the platform is newer as compared to a more matured platform like Google and YouTube.
Use the free Facebook Audience Insights tool to research the interest of your target audience.
Once you know their interests, you can start running ads to target them and increase the likelihood of them buying.
3: YouTube
YouTube is another ads platform to reach your customers.
The biggest difference is, YouTube’s focus is more towards video.
The major benefit of running ads on YouTube is you get free branding. How this works is, if a person skips your ad after 5 seconds, Youtube will not charge you for it. In fact, YouTube only starts charging when a person watches more than 50% of your video or 30 seconds of the video (whichever shorter).
With this, you can keep running ads and get more eyeballs to your product and service. On the other hand, TV ads will charge you a hefty fee for just a 10-sec advertisement.
YouTube is the clear winner for branding.
As for sales, you can target your video to people based on what they are researching online. This is called In-Market audiences. For example, if you are selling real estate, you can run Youtube ads to show your video to people who are looking to buy or rent a property.
This is another great method to target people based on what they are currently searching online.
Creepy? Probably, but here is where your business can capitalize on real-time data to drive sales.
5 Online Marketing Strategies for Businesses in Malaysia
We have come to the most interesting part of the article, where we will share the 5 online marketing strategies you can implement today:
- Run Google ads and SEO campaign for your main products and services
- Produce content tailored to each platform
- Run Youtube ads for In-Market audience and Custom Intent audience
- Setup retargeting campaigns to retarget people who have visited your website
- On Facebook, setup Lookalike Audience to reach people similar to your existing customers
Ready to Grow Your Business Online?
There are two ways to grow your business online.
You can either apply the strategies learned here and implement it yourself OR engage us to run the online marketing campaign for your business.
As one of the established online marketing agency in Malaysia, we have helped plenty of businesses to build a brand online, generate leads, and increase sales using the 5 strategies outlined above.
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article on online marketing in Malaysia.
With the attention rapidly moving towards online, whether you are a 100 years old business or 1-year-old business, you have to be online to reach your ideal customers.
So go ahead and start growing your business online!