The Best of Digital Marketing Efforts in 2018

On the other hand, a badly executed branding campaign draws criticisms and sets the wrong tone for your brand going forward. Even the most well-known brands that employ branding agencies or invest thousands of dollars for a branding campaign to create one can flop in their branding campaigns.

To avoid making a mistake of your own, here are 4 rules to help you execute a successful branding campaign.

If you own a smartphone or have any mode of access to the Internet, chances are you have a Facebook account. And so do billions worldwide! Last we checked Facebook has an average of 1.45 billion active daily users. Sounds insane?

For marketers, while those numbers mean for potential, they come with a downside: everybody wants their post to be seen, and there are a lot of posts (an estimated 4:1 ratio of posts to people, in fact). If you don’t already know, organic reaches have steadily gone down through the years although Facebook’s not acknowledging it.

Why this happens isn’t just because of the metaphorical mountain that is the 4-billion-posts-per-day-on-Facebook burying your own post – it’s also due to Facebook’s Newsfeed Algorithm, which filters posts and does quality control to ‘optimise the user experience’ by showing them what’s relevant and interesting to them.

That algorithm doesn’t necessarily help the marketers struggling to get their fan-base to see their recent posts, however – and the less engagement you get the less likely Facebook will let your posts be featured on people’s News Feeds.

Sounds scary, but there are ways to outsmart artificial intelligence:

In early July 2018, Google announced another significant change in it’s ranking algorithms – one of which will be of concern for many businesses hoping to rank their website in Google’s Search Engine Results Page. And this involves your site’s mobile page loading speed. Just early this March 2018, Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing which uses mobile version of web pages when it crawls, index and ranks them for mobile users.

This time, the focus goes deeper into the site speed, worrying advertisers and business owners all at the same time. Whether you’re in Singapore, Malaysia or any part of the world, this change will affect you the same.

When we talk about talking selfies and stories on our socials, which side are you on? Instagram, Facebook or… Snapchat? When Facebook attempted to buy Snapchat recently, they were rejected despite a whopping bid of $3 billion. In response, Facebook leveraged on their acquisition of Instagram to compete against Snapchat, by launching Instagram stories or what’s widely known at Instastories.

Talk about life’s regrets.

With the purchase, Instagram’s platform soared in terms of the number of users and ads, while Snapchat struggled to keep up. Facebook also launched Facebook Stories to add options for the avid social media users. From there, Snapchat started to look more and more like an Instagram copy instead of the other way around, as they struggled to innovate to pull ahead of its ‘successor’.

Until now.

Snapchat recently launched a gaming platform, similar to WeChat, in an attempt to improve user engagement and move ahead of their rival. They released a series of Snapchat filter games and Augmented Reality (AR) games that users can play on the platform.

Most notably, the AR Tennis game against Serena Williams is a clear sign that Snapchat’s advanced AR technology is going to become their selling point.

Snapchat games provide an additional tool for businesses to adapt. (YAY!) That is always welcomed for creative people (*wink wink*) to adapt for marketing.

Does Snapchat still matter?

Well, it really depends.

Snapchat numbers have risen steadily over the past year, with more and more youths adopting the platform. We’ve to admit, they’ve got really nice filters. Heh. This means any strategy or business targeting youths have to take Snapchat into serious consideration.

Incorporating gaming has given other platforms (aka Facebook) a boost before and it should do the same for Snapchat.

What can businesses do with this information?

Consider playing around with Snapchat’s functions and ads viewing if you are unfamiliar with the platform. Businesses can also start looking into adapting filters and AR games to help their own cause.

Do keep the demographics of Snapchat in mind while developing and utilising them and tie in to your branding. It will be a waste of marketing dollars otherwise.

If you want to utilise them, and you are having trouble with incorporating into your brand, consult an agency to help you.