Techblog
How to grow a traditional business with online marketing - Royal Insignia
Transitioning from traditional business practices to online marketing is a big step. If handled properly though it can lead to greater business growth. Here’s how one Singapore based SME managed to successfully transform its traditional business using online marketing.
Many traditional brick-and-mortar businesses still struggle to keep up with rapidly evolving technology and changing consumer behaviour. They are used to conventional marketing methods, which includes face-to-face interaction with customers, and mostly operate within a physical business premises. However online marketing does compliment traditional methods and help businesses grow in an increasingly competitive environment.
One company that managed to successfully implement online marketing as part of its overall business operations is luxury brand Royal Insignia, founded in 2000. The shift in consumer behaviour and growing competition prompted the maker of medals, jewellery and fine gifts to rethink its marketing strategy from mainly word-of-mouth and face-to-face customer interaction to online branding.
Everything starts with face-to-face interaction
“The first ten years of the business, my father went around, really knocking on doors around Southeast Asia and then Middle East. That’s how he expanded the business and its customer base in several countries. So the nature of our business has been that marketing is really through word-of-mouth,” says Rachel Hoe, Royal Insignia’s Director and Product Development Manager.
Unfortunately, word-of-mouth was not enough to achieve sustainable growth. In 2014, the business launched a digital marketing campaign to increase brand awareness and grow its customer base.
“Our customer base was exclusive and small. That put us in a very vulnerable position. People saw Royal Insignia mainly as a manufacturer of medals, but we were more. There wasn’t any brand awareness or brand loyalty. The solution was to create some sort of a brand loyalty in an industry where brand did not matter. That’s where digital marketing came in really handy, where customers could see us the way we wanted them to see us and the variety of the services we offer,” says Rachel.
Choosing the right digital tools is key
Choosing the right digital marketing tools depends on the company’s objectives. With these goals in mind Royal Insignia chose tools that allowed the brand to develop in existing markets and reach a wider customer base.
“The three main tools that we used for digital marketing were YouTube marketing, search engine marketing and display ads. Most of those tools were very visual in nature. They were perfect for a branding campaign,” says Rachel
The company’s digital marketing efforts paid off with tangible results.
“Because our digital campaign was focused on branding, we had a significant increase in visitors to our website within the first three months. On top of that our normal website enquiries doubled,” says Rachel.
When challenges arise, remember your objectives
Like any other campaign, digital marketing has its challenges. Businesses can be easily overwhelmed by the vast amount of new information generated. Royal Insignia found properly analysing and using the data generated through its analytics tools a major challenge.
“A lot of people think that executing a digital campaign is challenging. For us it wasn’t the execution. It was rather the analysis of the campaign. Google AdWords and Analytics give you an overwhelming amount of information. Our initial challenge was to make sense of this data,” says Rachel.
So how can companies embarking on a digital marketing journey overcome these challenges? Rachel suggests keeping the campaign’s main objective in mind will help companies stay on top of everything.
“I always ask the marketing team: What do you hope to achieve with this. Is this meeting your business objective? Is this communicating the right message? These questions will direct you not only through digital marketing, but also through what kind of data you choose to look at. So if your campaign is a branding campaign you wouldn’t look at conversion [rates]. Instead you would look at the number of visitors to your website. So really keep the objective at the core of everything you do.”
Try digital marketing; know when to pull the plug
To companies still sceptical about digital marketing, Ms Hoe suggest you just go for it and use all the help available from various (government) organisations to make it happen.
“I would encourage traditional businesses to embrace it. The investment is relatively low compared to other forms of marketing. Just do it and see how you get on. With digital marketing, everything happens in the blink of an eye. So you have to be very sure of what your objective is and constantly check whether the campaign is achieving the objective. When it’s not, you need to know when to pull the plug.”
Another important aspect that will contribute to the success of a digital campaign is establishing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), suggests Rachel.
“When we first started we didn’t have proper SOPs in place to govern the entire process. For example you need to know: Whose approval do you need? Who’s going to approve the budget you spend? Once your digital campaign is up and running you need proper SOPs in place for a successful completion.”
Digital marketing can lead to greater business growth, if done properly. Here’s how one Singapore based SME has done it:
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In his first ten years Royal Insignia founder Ivan Hoe relied only on face-to-face customer interaction and word-of-mouth to market his business.
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In 2014, Royal Insignia decided to use digital marketing to increase brand awareness and loyalty.
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They chose three main digital marketing tools: YouTube marketing, search engine marketing and display ads.
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They analysed the data generated using Google AdWords and Analytics to improve and optimise their campaign.
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When faced with challenges, they always returned to the campaign’s main objective.