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December 24, 2020July 23, 2023

5 Digital Marketing Trends That Will Go Widespread in 2021

The year 2020 has nearly come to an end, and it passed by in a blink of an eye in a way we never expected. With the pandemic affecting everyone around the world, 2020 has brought a new challenge to every aspect of business, including digital marketing. Digital marketers are pushed to their limits to come up with an out-of-the-box strategy in order to keep their business afloat, and this resulted in new marketing trends.

In 2021, we can expect digital marketing to spearhead most business strategies. The trends that we see in 2020 will most likely evolve and be brought over to the new year. In fact, we have listed 5 digital marketing trends that will boom in 2021 and the reasons why you should incorporate them into your very own marketing plans.

1. Video Advertising on Social media

We have witnessed many changes and updates on social media platforms this year, and it is a big improvement for marketers. From Instagram Reels to Twitter’s Fleets, each platform worked endlessly to put out the best features where users can express themselves through videos.

This is not only for the individual user, but is also a huge opportunity for brands to use this to their advantage in their marketing plans. Not only promote products but also to engage with the community. Video advertising can, however, help to explain about your product or service in a better way than most other formats.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Business

When we talk about AI, we all agree that it is something that will occur in the future. But in fact, AI has been used in the industry for years, not only in terms of technology development but also for business as well.

AI has been implemented in different ways all across the marketing process — just look at AI for content marketing for instance! With advanced software and hardware development, it would not be a surprise to see AI as an integral part of many brands’ marketing strategy in 2021.

3. Google-verified listing for local search engine optimisation (SEO)

Local small-owned businesses are arguably the ones that faced the hardest time fighting against this pandemic. Having a presence on the Google My Business profile is the best way for such businesses to have a digital presence — even if they are not previously active on any digital platform.

Having a profile on Google My Business gives you more visibility to users searching for a particular product or service that you offer by suggesting your shop’s geographical location to them. It is also important to verify your Google listings and keep them up to date to ensure visitors see the most recent and relevant content to them. Such a profile will also help local businesses ensure a better chance of making it as the top search result on Google.

4. Voice search

The rapid development of Google Home services, Alexa and Siri has made our life easier by using voice-controlled technology to perform various actions. Next year, it is possible for business and marketer to optimize their presence for voice search. Features sich as using natural-sounding language, forming queries into question phrases, targeting long-tail keywords, and having a mobile-friendly website will ensure easy usage for consumers using voice search.

5. Social E-Commerce

We have seen the shopping tabs features added on Instagram and it surely helps businesses to promote their product. The latest addition sees the shop tags included in Instagram’s Reels videos as well. This not only allows brands to engage with their community but also for the community to shop directly from the video.

Linkedin is another platform which has also included a new function, the ‘Products’ tab, on company pages, which helps them to highlight their featured products. This update, coupled with the increasing amount of time people spend on social media, is a great opportunity for businesses to spread their presence across all available platforms.

These five trends listed above might not encompass the entire spectrum of trends for digital marketing that will happen in 2021, but they are worth watching for and perhaps even to adapt to them. These trends can help your business grow in terms of increased site traffic, lead generation, or increased sales, to name a few.

At the end of the day, businesses need to adapt with the upcoming trends and come up with a bulls-eye strategy in order to succeed in their marketing. Defining the perfect marketing strategy might be hard for some businesses, but there is always a way. As a digital creative agent, MIU helps businesses find their way toward success. Want a more detailed and tailored approach for your business to welcome 2021? Contact us now!

December 22, 2020July 23, 2023

5 Easy Tips for Hosting a Powerful Digital Event

Events may have taken a back burner in most businesses’ marketing plans, but that will soon change. Despite Covid-19 having held everyone back at the start of 2020, many companies soon learnt to adapt and make the most out of the situation at hand.

Slowly but surely, we’re seeing a rise in event marketing again. This time, events are going digital.

You may be wondering, what are the differences between holding a physical event versus a digital one? Are there any benefits or costs to doing so?

Well, this is the right article for you.

In the current economic situation, we have seen plenty of brands starting to go digital ever since Covid-19 changed the way businesses were run. Industry events are perhaps one of the areas most affected by this change in the business landscape.

Perhaps the biggest issue here is the concern that not every physical event will be able to translate into a digital event seamlessly. Certain events such as expositions or live demonstrations rely heavily on the face-to-face aspect to succeed.

That being said, it is not entirely impossible to conduct a virtual event and still manage to reach your promotional goals. Before you start planning, let alone marketing for your event, ask yourself this question: Am I providing timely and relevant content to my audience? Will hosting a virtual event help my business reach its goals?

If the answer is no, you might want to reconsider hosting a digital event just for the sake of promotion and sales. However, if you answered yes, feel free to carry on reading.

Now that we’ve cleared that out of the way, it’s time to delve into the steps that you can (and should) take to make your virtual event a success. After all, your event is only as good as the guests that attend.

Multifaceted marketing plan for digital events

1. Create a unique event page

Having an event page for your event is so important as it gives attendees a place to go to for more information. This could very well mean a lead conversion! In fact, your event page can also act as many things including drawing potential attendees who are curious but still yet undecided about your event.

The last thing you want is for people to click away from your event because they were unable to find more information about it or buy tickets to attend. Make sure your event page is user-friendly and has a simple but enjoyable user experience. It would also be preferable if you were to include a clear call-to-action to help confused users navigate your site. Read our post here for how to create an effective CTA button!

2. Create content that promotes your event

Although you should take note of SEO (search engine optimisation) at every step of the way, I daresay this is the part where it will benefit you the most. From large content chunks such as blog posts and articles to bite-sized content such as a brief description, SEO can go a long way in promoting your event.

Knowing the keywords that people use to search for events allows you to optimise your content to include those keywords. Keyword Tool is but one example of a tool that can help you get started on your research. You can always browse Google for more if the Keyword Tool doesn’t address your needs!

3. Use email lists to your advantage

With an email list already in hand, your first step to promoting your event is easily in reach. But don’t just mass email to everyone on your email list — use it to your advantage.

Email marketing is one of the places where it makes it easiest to segment your audience. Know your consumers’ preferences and what they want to see. Through information like this, you can market your event to those who you know will be interested in it. If your event is going to touch on multiple topics, segment your audience into groups based on demographics, shopping history, or other factors.

By personalising the emails to suit your audience’s needs, it sends the signal that your brand cares about its consumers and wants to bring value to their lives. This would help your brand gain a more favourable impression in the long run.

4. Leverage co-branding opportunities

Also known as co-marketing, this is a trick that works often for virtual marketers — as such, it is fairly common to see it being used in the marketing plans of most businesses. Partnering with another brand or a sponsor to promote the event can help increase exposure for it.

Through lead-share marketing, both brands associated with the event stand to gain. This allows both companies to get access to the same leads that would be generated during the event itself, driving registrations and sign-ups. In fact, this is not the only way to widen your audience — you can also ask brands affiliated with your event to promote it on their channels. Win-win!

If you want to go a further step, you can even seek out individuals such as professional speakers or anyone in your network to speak at your event. The more people that post about your event, the greater the word-of-mouth marketing will be.

5. Share on your social media

Make sure to generate as much buzz as you can around your event. Social media is the key driver for word-of-mouth marketing, which in turn translates to more press. Make sure to link your event page in all your posts so that visitors know where to go for further information. It is also best to include a CTA in your posts as well to nudge them to take the next step as soon as possible.

You can even ask your employees and colleagues to share about the event or even just pass the link around. However, it helps to go an extra mile and send them images, videos, as well as coverage of the event in order to boost a variety of different promotions. Provide incentives by hosting contests that reward individuals for such solid event promotion to encourage them to share healthily!

Here’s an extra tip: when it comes to promoting your event on social media, it goes a long way to create an event hashtag for it. Of course, branded hashtags will always help no matter what you’re promoting — but this is particularly so for events. Having an event hashtag will tie all your social media campaigns together and help potential attendees quickly find your social media channels.

We get it — hosting an event is not easy, be it a physical one or a digital one. It may seem like there are plenty of steps to take. Why not let someone else handle the details for you, while you sit back and reap the benefits? At MIU, we focus our marketing efforts on getting our clients to achieve their goals — be it awareness, sales, conversion, or lead generation. If hosting an event is what you believe your brand needs, we will be there to help you in every step of the way. Click here to get a free consultation from us — no hidden conditions!

December 17, 2020September 4, 2023

CTA Button: the Do’s and Don’ts

How to improve your CTA button

Arguably, your CTA button is the most important aspect of your landing page. To put it quite simply, it is the point of conversion for consumers. Without a CTA button, how are you able to convert visitors to your webpage to a customer?

That being said, not everyone is able to understand the best way to present a CTA button on a landing page. CTA, or call-to-action, refers to an instruction to the audience that is designed to provoke an immediate response. In marketing terms, the next step that you want your audience to take.

CTAs can take the form of many things — not only buttons — but in the case of a landing page, a CTA button is pretty essential. So: what makes a CTA button good? How do you win your audience over with just a simple button? In this article, we’ll explore both the factors that make a CTA button effective as well as areas to avoid.

Wishpond has created a very helpful guide on the best words to use in your CTA button, ranging from “Sign up free” to “Shop now” and more. There are plenty of phrases that you can include in your CTA button to nudge your visitors into action. We will list and explain some of it below. However, these phrases are not the only way to make your CTA button more effective. Here are some other tips that have been known to work:

The Do’s

1. Keep your CTA button above the fold

We cannot stress this enough. If visitors have to scroll down in order to catch sight of your CTA button, you’re clearly doing something wrong. There is a huge possibility that most of them might click away or close the tab before they would even consider scrolling! When that happens, you will lose out on converting a huge chunk of your audience into your customers.

2. Use action-packed text

As mentioned briefly, certain words are better able to trigger your audience into taking the action that you want them to. Words like “get”, “reserve”, “try” and “join” are more action-oriented and more likely to give you the outcome that you want. Keep your action words related to your CTA — in other words, what step you want your audience to take.

3. Create a sense of urgency

Another important tip that A/B testing has proven to work is that a CTA button with a sense of urgency is more effective than ones without. CTA buttons that include words such as “now”, “today”, or “limited time offer” have a higher conversion rate than ones that don’t. When you create a sense of urgency around your CTA, visitors will be more likely to go through with it for fear of missing out (trust us, it’s a psychological effect).

4. Surround your CTA button with white space

Avoid cluttering your CTA button with plenty of graphics, text, and images. Your visitors would not know where to look. Instead, have a healthy chunk of white space surrounding your button. This will make it pop and call visitors’ attention to it.

5. Use first-person text

Michael Aagaard, who has been researching conversion rate optimisation as his main focus since 2008, found something interesting in one of his case studies. In one of his studies, he believed that the positive determiner “your” would work better than “my” when used in a button. After all, most websites refer to their visitors in a second-person perspective.

To set about proving his hypothesis, he conducted a test on two live websites, one using the pronoun “your” and another with the pronoun “my” in the button. To his absolute surprise, his hypothesis turned out to be grossly inaccurate — second-person performed 25% worse than first-person text.

This didn’t stop Aagaard from concluding the test, however. Instead, he conducted further tests on many other websites and landing pages and found that CTA buttons using “my” consistently performed better than those that used the word “your”! Indeed, even negative results can provide important insights just as much as positive results do.

6. A/B test your buttons

Just as we explained in the point above, A/B testing is extremely crucial — whether or not you get a positive or negative result. At the very least, A/B testing can help you decide which of two options is the better one. On the other hand, you might be able to take home some valuable insights with you! Take everything as a learning point and analyse every available information — who knows what discovery you’ll stumble upon?

Now that we have gone through what makes a CTA button effective, it’s time to look at what makes a CTA button ineffective. After all, it benefits to look at both sides of an issue.

The Don’ts

We did some research and these were the common mistakes made when coming up with a CTA button:

1. Your CTA button is hard to find

Again, make sure that there is plenty of white space surrounding your CTA button, and always keep it above the fold. Don’t give them a chance to leave your page before they can even take the desired action! Make sure the text in your CTA button is large and legible and avoid burying it in graphics.

With these points in mind, it will no doubt help visitors to recognise your CTA button instantly and allow them to be clear on the next step they should take.

2. You have more than 1 CTA

This is an absolute no-no. When visitors have to choose among many CTA buttons, it will leave them disoriented and paralysed by the options. In such a case, many would choose to actually leave than take any single one of the actions you place before them. This behaviour actually has a term to it — the paradox of choice. A study done by Sheenar S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper backed up this idea. They found that the less options there were, the more people purchased.

3. You’re not using the right colour

This may come as a surprise to many, since there isn’t actually one specific colour that performs better than the others. Sure, if you want to nitpick, orange and blue have been observed to get more clicks than the rest. However, both colours are not a foolproof way to increase your conversion rate.

Ultimately, your CTA button must be in a contrasting colour with your website’s background. Without a strong contrast, it will be easy for visitors to miss your CTA or dismiss it with a mere glance.

4. Your CTA button is not mobile-friendly

Consider what percentage of your audience is viewing your website through their mobile devices. As the number of people who access the web via mobile increases, the bigger the audience potential could be — potential you might be missing out on.

If your website and CTA button aren’t optimised on the mobile, chances are you’re not going to get anyone to convert. User interface and user experience is a key factor of digital marketing — and if the experience is awful for your visitors, they are not going to stay.

With all that being said, we hope that you learnt something from our article as to how you can improve your CTA button. One of the most important components you have to remember is to always A/B test your button. When you do A/B testing, you will be able to avoid plenty of flaws and mistakes that you could have potentially included in your official landing page! Alternatively, let MIU do the work for you, hassle-free.

December 11, 2020August 7, 2023

Coca Cola’s Emotional Ad Warms the Hearts of Many this Christmas

One of the most challenging things we’ve had to face this year was the pandemic. With Covid-19 in mind, Coca Cola has thus decided to cancel its annual Truck Tour. In its place, they released an emotional commercial for this yea that warmed the hearts of many even in the absence of their truck.

The ad’s message is simple: make time for the people you love at Christmas, and give something that “only you can give”. Go on a journey with Coca Cola even as they will not be holding their Truck Tour this year.

Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi, who has also directed the likes of Star Wars and Thor, it is no wonder this advert touches our hearts so. Ranked the most powerful ad of the season by Kantar, Coca Cola’s ad beat the likes of many others’, including Disney’s and Tesco’s.

Over 3000 UK consumers were paired with LinkNow AI facial coding technology, which revealed that Coca Cola’s Christmas ad elicited the greatest response from audiences. Indeed, they deserve the title of the most powerful ad this festive holiday!

Not only that, but it was the top-performing in seven out of ten key measures, scoring 96 out of 100 in terms of long-term return potential as well as creating brand memories. It also gained a full score in terms of remembering the brand. Talk about effective!

With Covid-19 interrupting many Christmas plans this season, Coca Cola’s ad helped viewers to feel more positive about Christmas – the only ad to score in the top percentile (74 to be exact) for this metric. Beyond that, it also scored 88 for creating warmth and love for the brand and 93 for feeling different.

December 10, 2020June 14, 2021

Marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube

If you’ve scoured through many marketing articles, you have no doubt picked up on the fact that digital marketing is the new form of marketing. As internet penetration soars at a record high – and is still rising, the number of users on the internet is expected to increase.

Digital marketing provides brands with a way of reaching out to an audience that they might not traditionally have access to. As social media becomes a highly popular platform for everyone to connect on, businesses are able to use this opportunity to grow their audience and brand.

While digital marketing can span plenty of aspects, from SEO to PPC to email marketing, this article will discuss the details of social media marketing in particular. Read more if you want to find out how to use social media to your advantage!

Digital marketing on social media

Social media as a marketing strategy is all the rage right now. It has been proven that social media is often the driving factor (and one of the most influential) behind word-of-mouth and evangelist marketing.

In the information age, consumers often turn to the internet to seek answers to their problems and pain points. While this may be the best chance for your brand to put itself in the spotlight, it can also be a double-edged sword if your brand does not have much of an online presence — or worse, a negative one.

This is where marketing can step in to help. Managing your brand’s online presence is no easy feat, but it is possible to do it — and do it well. Of course, it helps if you understand what each social media platform is meant to do and how it aligns with your brand. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most versatile social media platforms as it is widely used not only for personal use but for professional matters as well.

Businesses can use Facebook to connect to their followers by sharing photos, updates and general news on their page. Fans of your brand may visit your Facebook page to explore events, check updates and more.

As of April 2019, Facebook was reported to have 2.38 billion monthly active users worldwide. It is an absolutely useful place to start building a fanbase for your brand. Remember to engage with your audience bty posting status updates, photos and more! Start by publicising your page and linking it everywhere, including your website.

Share your products, offers and services to keep your followers informed about your brand. Better yet, if you can invite them to engage in your posts by including things that nudge them to like, comment or share your content, it would do wonders for your brand.

Although you might be running a business page, it’s important to remember that plenty of your followers also use Facebook as a personal network to connect with their friends and family. Make sure your brand fits into this atmosphere rather than constantly hard-selling your products and services. This way, people will be more interested and engaged in your brand.

With Facebook Ads, you can check details like social graphs and activities to better understand your buyer persona. Knowing the preferences of your page visitors will go a long way in helping you market your brand, be it on social media or otherwise. Use this information to tailor your content to your main audience and turn them into leads!

Instagram

While it may have started as a personal social media platform, Instagram is quickly turning that around. Since it has been bought over by Facebook, plenty of business-oriented functions have been introduced to the app to help brands connect better with their audience.

With 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is a fantastic place to market your brand and improve your online presence. In Singapore itself, there are 1.9 million total active users — a huge audience that you can potentially market to!

Since being bought over by Facebook, Instagram has introduced many tools that can help businesses market themselves more efficiently in a non-salesy manner. From polls to FAQS, such tools supported by the platform itself can simplify the customer service process so much more — so take advantage of it!

When consumers are satisfied with their customer experience, they will naturally have a better impression of the brand and are more likely to patronise them again.

Twitter

Twitter’s 310 million users may pale in comparison to Facebook’s and Instagram’s user statistics, but make no mistake. The social media platform is a concise way to connect with your audience by serving them bite-sized information that they can consume on the go. In fact, 175 million tweets are generated in a day, making up for what Twitter lacks in the quantity of its platform users.

With 280 characters or less in each tweet, Twitter is a sea of content waiting to be read, followed, and re-tweeted. By allowing you to share quick bites of information and photos, the social media platform is a perfect vehicle to drive people back to your landing pages.

Since each tweet is often short and sweet, people tend to scroll through them quickly in an effort to consume as much as they can. When marketing on Twitter, make sure your content is enticing enough to capture your audience’s attention and make them pause on your tweet.

Try incorporating quotes, photos, GIFs or even polls related to the link you’re tweeting to get people wanting to read more. Remember to build relationships with followers — while people may follow you because they enjoy what you have to say, it is important to engage them in conversation as well.

Like you would on Facebook, ask and respond to questions, respond to mentions and direct messages. This not only personalises the brand but is a good way to show your customer service as well.

An important marketing function that you can adopt is to use hashtags on Twitter. They allow you to reach a wider (and more targeted) audience, as people who are searching for specific information often turn towards hashtags to find what they are looking for. Conduct some research to see what your buyer persona is hashtagging to make sure your posts will be found by the right people.

YouTube

Since it was bought over by Google in 2006, YouTube has become the leading video-sharing platform in the world. As one of the world’s most used search engines, Google has since incorporated its advanced technology and algorithm into YouTube as well. YouTube is now but another platform that the search gives priority to in its search results.

It is no doubt proven that videos are a lot more engaging and shareable than text content. Not only that, but they also help your search rank in Google. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

Creating videos for YouTube therefore matters a lot. You want to make sure that there’s a purpose and value to the video you are uploading, so as to provide high quality content for your audience. Keep in mind your production value as well. Both the video and audio of what you upload should be crisp, clear, and easy to understand. No shaky cameras!

YouTube gives you a gateway to be an educator in your industry. Upload webinars or videos speaking on important topics that further the education of your audience. When you position yourself as the source of important industry news, people will naturally flock to you for trusted updates and information. In return, your brand will gain a reputable name for itself.

Hashtags on YouTube are also another important aspect that you can take note of when posting your video. Though they are not often talked about, hashtags can actually help your video go a long way in finding the exposure that it needs. Read more about our guide to YouTube hashtags here.

All in all, no matter what social media platform you choose to engage with, the best tip is to use whatever is available to you at hand while keeping a customer-centric view. Your brand will go much further this way and your consumers will thank you in the long run.

December 8, 2020July 23, 2023

6 Simple Tips for the Most Effective Headline

While I was researching what makes a good headline, one question kept resurfacing: what is the difference between a headline and a title? I think it is important to answer this question before looking into the elements that make up a great headline.

You see, headlines and titles serve similar functions and are similar in many ways, so there is plenty of overlap between the two. Many marketers can easily make the mistake of assuming they are both the same, but there is one aspect that sets the two apart.

I’m sure you’ve seen the title of this article before you clicked on it. The title serves to tell you what this article will be about — it is more for the benefit of the reader. Headlines, while also meant to grab attention, have an implicit aim of getting the reader to take an action — it is more for the benefit of the marketer.

Here’s a twist — the title of this article is also the headline. As I mentioned, there is quite a bit of overlap between headlines and titles, and this manifests in the way that titles can be headlines, but not all headlines are titles. To put it simply, titles fall under the umbrella of what headlines are.

So how does one differentiate between a headline and a title? Generally speaking, titles are used for articles and any type of long-form content. Headlines aren’t as restricted to the content that they are attached to. For example, imagine the banner of your landing page, which contains a short phrase that is meant to instantly hook your visitors. That may not necessarily be considered a title, but it is your headline.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the next step is to look at the elements that make up an impactful headline. Headlines are so omnipresent in marketing that it is important to do them right. From landing pages, to blog articles, to social media posts (really, the list is endless), headlines are everywhere. So here’s what we found about what an effective headline should include.

1. Use numbers

Headlines with big, obscure numbers at the start tend to do much better than those without. Almost every headline guide will agree on this. In fact, A/B testing has been conducted previously on the same exact headline, the only exception being one has the number written out and the other has the number spelt out. And the one with the number written out always wins.

2. Put impact words at the front

Trigger words like how, why and what tend to draw in more readers than most other words. Especially when placed at the front of your headline, it is more likely to enable or persuade someone to click on your article and read it. Just make sure that your headline either starts with trigger words or numbers, because it rarely works well if you try to do both at the same time.

Here’s a really good example to help you decide which to choose should you ever face a similar scenario:

Simple Tips for the Most Effective Headline

The two titles, “10 Simple Communication Tips That Can Help You Ace Your Job Interview” and “How to Ace Your Job Interview with These 10 Simple Communication Tips”, both mean the same thing. However, on mobile devices such as the email inbox, long headlines are very much likely to get cut off. Subject lines get truncated after about 45 characters in the mobile inbox. Similarly, headlines get truncated after about 60 characters in search results. This is why it’s extremely important to put the keyword within the first handful of characters in your headline. Readers would be able to see the benefit and value of clicking into your article clearly.

3. Incorporate emotional words

Using powerful adjectives will draw out emotion from your readers, which might then nudge them into taking an action. Words such as free, incredible, effortless, and painstaking all have high emotional value in them. When emotional adjectives are used to describe pain points, your readers would be more likely to feel a sense of connection to you and/or the topic at hand.

The Advanced Marketing Institute (AMI) has created a headline analyser that looks at the emotional marketing value (EMV) of your headline, which is a gauge for how likely your headline will be able to elicit an emotional response from a reader. By eliciting emotions, you are more likely to get your readers to like, share, and engage with your article.

In fact, studies show that headlines that elicit positive emotions are more likely to get your reader to take the action you want them to. This is as the positive emotions give readers an additional boost and help them imagine a better outcome.

4. Create a sense of urgency

Developing urgency in a headline by including words such as ‘now’ or ‘today’ is more likely to push your readers into taking action. For instance, “10 Ways to Boost Your Career Today” is a lot more compelling than “10 Ways to Boost Your Career”. In a fast-paced society, everyone desires instant gratification and wants to see immediate results.

You can also create urgency by implying the effects of ignorance, as seen in the headline “5 Mistakes You are Making Right Now”. This offers the reader something that they can do or change right now to give them the efficiency they are seeking.

5. Use power trigrams

Trigrams are groups of three words. In the marketing field, there are many common trigrams that appear in headlines. But which ones are actually effective?

A few years back, Steve Rayson of Buzzsumo conducted a study where he looked at typical trigrams that appear in headlines. When looking at how it correlates with social media engagemen, he found that certain trigrams encourage more social engagement.

6. Write multiple headlines and read them aloud

This is basically self-explanatory, and while it isn’t something tangible that you can include in your headline, you should always follow this step. Having multiple headlines allows you to compare and contrast, whereby you might be able to notice what’s lacking in the ones that don’t seem to flow as well.

Ultimately, headlines show up everywhere. From your blog title, to your subject line, headlines are the ones doing most of the work. They are your opener; the attention grabber. Marketing would not be marketing without a good headline. Find out more about how you can improve yours by connecting with us.

December 3, 2020October 5, 2023

Traditional Marketing Versus Digital Marketing

In this war between digital and traditional marketing, the former seems to be winning.

Looking at marketing patterns over the last decade, digital marketing has clearly pushed to the forefront. When it comes down to a choice between digital versus traditional, marketers have slowly but surely turned away from traditional platforms in favour of digital marketing.

Between 2018 to 2023, digital ad spend in the US is expected to increase by 85%. That’s because consumers are increasing their screen time, and it is a trend that is only predicted to continue. It is no wonder marketers are turning to digital platforms to achieve their marketing goals.

But why exactly is digital marketing winning the popularity race? And what does this mean for marketers?

Before we take a look at the consequences this has on marketing, it is best to understand what the differences are between the two.

Benefits of digital marketing

Digital marketing has risen to the top in recent years due to many reasons. For one, it offers a higher ROI as compared to traditional marketing, in part due to the potential for engagement. With traditional marketing, it tends to be a one-way communication channel where audience feedback is slow or cannot be collected. Furthermore, digital platforms provide options (e.g. share button) where it is easier for the audience to pass around a particular piece of content — traditional platforms do not offer this option.

It should also be mentioned that digital platforms are a lot more flexible as they allow changes to be made on the spot, whereas the content in traditional marketing cannot be easily updated. It may take days for news to reach consumers.

Another thing to take note of is the reach of traditional marketing. While it is great for connecting with your local audience, if you desire to broadcast your content to an international audience, traditional marketing has its limits. This is where digital marketing excels in.

Additionally, digital platforms also allow marketers to sort out their targeted audience based on their location, interests, purchase history, recent site activity, and many other factors. This ability to filter out different consumers allow marketers to tweak their strategy to be even more specific to the group that they are targeting, ensuring a higher rate of success.

Benefits of traditional marketing

That being said, ttraditional marketing provide certain factors that digital marketing do not. Although digital marketing encourages two-way communication and is a much more cost-efficient method, there are aspects where traditional marketing beats out its digital counterpart.

For one, traditional marketing is a much more personalised approach. This is as traditional marketing generally involves a real person-to-person relationship. On the other hand, digital marketing can feel less personal because of how digitalized everything is, particularly if things are automated or assisted by any other kind of AI software or programme such as a chatbot. This is a pretty common sight to see on most websites today.

Research has also shown that it is easier for our brains to process and recall the information that we read in print. In fact, neuroscientists overwhelmingly agree that the benefits of reading from paper shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.

One study used eye-tracking technology and EEG to measure ease of understanding, persuasiveness, and attention in people exposed to ads on paper and on a digital medium. They found that content on paper is 21% easier to understand and that people reading paper ads are 70% more likely to remember the company which placed the ad.

When we put this in business terms, it’s evident that people are more likely to remember your offer if they’ve actually held a piece of paper promoting it. Although most of us are used to reading off screens, it can’t be denied that physical material engages with our spatial memory networks more than its digital counterpart. It also produces more brain responses connected with internal feelings, which suggests greater “internalization” of the ads. Since it involves more emotional processing, this may help memory and brand associations more than digital marketing is able to. Not to mention, traditional marketing is also easier to implement.

Content creation for each platform

Writing for traditional marketing can therefore differ a lot from writing for digital marketing. For one, marketers have to make sure that the content they write for traditional platforms are up-to-date and as accurate as possible since the content cannot be changed once it is published.

Consider also the type of audience that is more likely to engage with traditional platforms. These generally come from the older demographic, which means that the type of content you write may have to be altered towards their preferences.

There are also points to consider when writing for digital marketing. As the best channel to reach gen-Z and millennials, content on digital platforms has to stay fresh and trendy.

In recent years, numerous studies have reported on the potential impact of smartphone use on different aspects of cognitive functioning, particularly in terms of attention span. This means that the content written for digital marketing has to be short, to-the-point, yet attention-grabbing. We can see this manifest in how paragraphing in articles have become shorter in order to accommodate to the increasing number of mobile users (longer paragraphs will look more cluttered on phones and lose the reader’s interest!). Therefore, it is vital to understand not only how your content has to be adapted to the platform you use, but its intended audience as well.

What type of marketing should you choose?

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that it isn’t always one or the other. Both methods can go hand-in-hand with each other, and may even perform better. By digitally sharing traditional campaigns, you can take your offline marketing and promote it online.

Since both digital and traditional marketing has their own benefits, implementing a strategy that uses a blend of the two will inevitably bring about greater results. Wondering what kind of digital and traditional marketing strategy you should adopt? Contact MIU and transform the way you think about marketing today.

November 27, 2020August 7, 2023

KFC’s Cheese Makes Everything Taste Better

KFCheese. That’s the name of KFC’s latest ad campaign, which posits that everything tastes better with cheese. Everything — that is on KFC’s menu.

The alluring ad features KFC’s iconic food including their fried chicken, Zinger, fries and even local dishes as well. Knowing Singaporeans’ adoration with KFC’s cheese, KFC strategically developed their latest campaign around it.

With such a visual reflection of KFC’s cheese being drizzled onto everything, the ad clearly intended to arouse viewers’ cravings of KFC’s cheese sauce, together with various food dishes enjoyed by all Singaporeans.

Indeed, such an invigorating ad manages to demonstrate KFC cheese’s versatility across plenty of food dishes, and showcases its wide-ranging appeal.

Interestingly enough, the idea for this ad came about when one of the staff on The Secret Little Agency (TSLA) accidentally spilled some of the cheese sauce onto the brief. TSLA, who was recently appointed to be KFC’s marketing agency partner this September, was founded in 2007 by Nicholas Ye, who was just a 19 year-old university student at that time. An independent agency, TSLA has worked with the likes of Netflix, Circles Life, and the Singapore government.

Now, 17 years down the road, they are collaborating with KFC to promote the fast food chain’s signature cheese sauce — and have done a wonderful job at it too! In fact, if you looked at the ad close enough, you can see the KFC cheese sauce being poured on products from other fast food chains as well — a cheeky little move to imply that KFC’s cheese sauce just makes everything taste better.

November 19, 2020September 4, 2023

Artificial Intelligence for Content Marketing

What is content intelligence?

Content intelligence is something that has only surfaced in recent years due to the demand for marketing, particularly digital marketing.

For as long as marketing has been around, humans have been the ones churning out content for companies and businesses alike. But with technology advancing at such a rapid pace, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun taking over the positions that were once underfilled. Now, they have evolved to perform even better than their human counterparts.

As such, it’s increasingly become the norm for AI to take over all sorts of positions, even the ones that do not have manpower shortages. So long as AI can do your job better than you, you might just as well be obsolete.

In the marketing field, content intelligence is literally the use of existing technology to assist in content marketing. With better data analysing skills and more reliable judgements, AI has become a staple in content marketing. In fact, they are most commonly used in content management systems (CMS)!

CMSs offer plenty of benefits that address most of the pain points marketing teams face today. With software that transforms data into actionable insights, these systems advise you on what is the best strategy and tactic to adopt. Here are just some ways that CMSs can help you:

Predicting consumer behaviour
Publishing content on social media
Maximising conversions
Website designs

How does content intelligence change the way you market?

With machine learning, content intelligence is able to help improve your content marketing effectiveness. Following the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of all consequences come from 20% of the causes, so does 80% of conversions come from only 20% of your content.

Content intelligence is able to quickly identify the best-performing aspect of your content to provide a content recipe that you could follow for future content planning. This way, you can maximise results to get the best possible ROI.

Besides that, CMSs are able to predict the best timings and platforms to promote your content on. Distribution and promotion are just as important parts of the process as content creation itself and CMSs can help you to optimise such areas.

By analysing existing data and trends, content intelligence is also able to help you predict future trends and customer needs. A good CMS should be able to recognise relevant topics and help you decide what to touch on for your content.

Overall to conclude, content intelligence can help you in multiple ways, including:

Identifying the most effective content
Suggest optimal platforms and timings for distribution
Predict future trends and customer needs

Indeed, content intelligence is the future of effective marketing. Many companies are employing the use of AI in their marketing efforts, including chatbots, customer relationship management systems (CRM), and more. Start your journey with content intelligence and feel the changes it brings about with it today.

November 13, 2020December 3, 2020

SingTel’s Latest Deepavali Ad Reminds Us That There is Light at the End of the Tunnel

In line with Deepavali, SingTel has released a short film featuring two of its Hindu staff preparing for the festival. This year’s Deepavali celebration is definitely different due to the ongoing pandemic. However, all hope is not lost as SingTel wants to share in their latest ad.

With a sombre piece selected to play in the background, the camera follows as two of SingTel’s Hindu staff decorates for the holiday and shares their favourite memory of Deepavali. As we get an idea of what Deepavali means to them, the topic gradually switches over to the current situation and how Covid-19 has impacted them.

For these SingTel staff, they were unable to see their loved ones often for fear of putting them at risk. Having to work from home every day also meant that tensions at home were constantly on the rise and it was easy to clash with family members.

Deepavali this year, then, meant something even more than it usually did. A signifier of light and new beginnings, this festival is a good chance for everyone to put the bad behind them and come together as one. As one of them mentioned, Deepavali is a time to put all negativity aside and to only focus on the positive ahead.

This film aligns with SingTel’s ongoing brand campaign, which encourages Singaporeans to stay positive amidst the current climate, showing examples of how ordinary Singaporeans display tenacity in such trying times. If they can do it, so can you.

The ad, aptly titled “There is light”, follows behind SingTel’s other campaigns including the films “Keeping the spirit of Hari Raya alive” as well as “This is the year”, both of which were released a few months back to commemorate Ramadan and National Day respectively. Of course, the circuit breaker meant that these events had to be celebrated in a different manner than usual, but the spirit was still kept alive by our sheer determination and unity.

Similarly, the spirit of hope brought about by Deepavali can be applied to all of us as we look forward to the rainbow after the rain that is this pandemic. It could even be said to be a happy coincidence that Deepavali comes around as fewer infections occur, resulting in Covid measures easing up and a sense of normalcy returning.

This personal narrative definitely serves to add a sense of comfort and encouragement as a reminder that even the hard times will pass. Indeed, SingTel’s latest ad is a note to us all to stay together and to be there for one another, for that is how we thrive.