Most businesses collects data.

In the first half of 2019 alone, we saw 4.1 billion records exposed in data breaches. The rise of data breaches and increased privacy concerns has caused world leaders to implement laws like Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in Singapore and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU.

Many marketers in Singapore are familiar with PDPA, but did you know that the GDPR may apply to your business too?

We have seen many breaches happened this year, and just last month we saw two of such cases in Singapore. International beauty brand Sephora suffered a data breach and had 3.7million customer records leaked.

Although this may be due to threat actors, however, some data leaks are due to internal staff mishandling of customer’s data. Another data breach that happened last month was Swedish furniture giant IKEA, and this breach was caused by an internal mistake. IKEA apologised to Singapore customers affected in a data breach, where a promotional mailer sent out included 410 customers e-mail addresses inserted in the wrong message field, allowing all recipients to see the email addresses.

So, why does data protection matters to marketers?

It is obvious that such incident, regardless if it was due to threat actors or internal error, would cause tangible and intangible losses for a business. This year alone, Singapore companies were fined a record $1.28 million due to PDPA breaches. Financial losses aside, businesses also have to bear to cost of reputational loss, the cost for Public Relations to recover from an incident and the worst of all, customer’s trust.

Do you agree that it is important for marketers to do their part in understanding the law that protects consumers? Let me know in the comments below!

All marketers knows the importance Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) in our marketing campaigns. It is how our business communicates our message across all marketing channels to deliver a consistent customer experience.

In the past, when we talk about IMC, we focus on traditional media. However, in this digital age, social media has been increasingly gaining importance as a channel to consider for our IMC plan.

According to Coulter and Sarkis, the factors to consider when choosing a media channel for your IMC plan are Quality, Time, Flexibility, Coverage and Cost. Marketers should always take these factors into consideration when crafting their IMC plan.

If you are wondering if you need to include social media in your IMC plan, I have listed some of the pros and cons for you.

The good

If you have been thinking about adding social media to your marketing campaign.. here’s why you should do it!

• Lower marketing cost
• Wider customer reach, they can be any where in the world!
• Increased traffic to website = better search engine ranking
• Ability to adjust marketing plan according to customer’s attitudes and response to the campaign.
• Word of mouth – beware though, it is a double edged sword..

These are just some benefits out of many but it’s enough to make marketers excited. Now, how about the cons of social media channel as our communication tool?

The bad

• It takes additional resources *time* to evaluate and monitor these channels
• Lead Time v.s. Exposure Time: certain channels *like Twitter* takes a short time to create but also has a short exposure time, if consumer miss it they may never see it again!
• Risk negative publicity, like these companies..

And here are just some of the cons of social media!

Is is too much to take?

I definitely think the pros outweighs the cons when the channels are handled carefully as there are many proven successful brands on social media. Do you also think that the pros outweighs the cons? Let me know in the comments below!

Don’t we all get a “Google it” moment every day?

From searching ‘Best restaurant in my area’ at lunch to ‘How to open a wine bottle’ at social events.. I definitely do at least one google search every day. These are what Google call the Micro-Moments. And, what exactly are micro-moments?

Google defines micro-moments as moments where users reflexively turns to their device, usually mobile, to get quick answers or find solutions to a problem.

To give you a better idea, here’s a short video showing the micro-moments in our daily life.

Why Micro-Moments Matters?

Mobile device is forecasted to drive 80% of global internet usage in 2018. Mobile device has become a huge part of consumer’s information search with 78% of mobile searches for local business information resulted in a purchase.

There is an urgency for marketers to understand the micro-moments that occurs for their product, and deliver an accurate answer to user’s problem. 

As Google says, brands needs to ‘Be there. Be useful. Be quick.’ in order to be successful in catching consumers in their micro-moments.

With mobile marketing being increasingly crucial to our online success, brands need to understand user’s behaviour when searching for their product. Digital marketers need to optimise their brand for mobile devices by incorporating mobile marketing into their digital strategy.

Thankfully, RedStag Fulfillment has came up with 32 research backed tips to how marketers can optimise mobile marketing in an infographic!

By incorporating these tips to your mobile marketing strategy, it increases the efficiency for consumers looking for solutions online, and hence increases the chance to convert a consumer to a customer. These tips can definitely help marketers increase brand’s visibility on search engine and encourage sharing of brand’s content via mobile device.

With consumers increasingly relying on mobile device to readily find answers on-the-go, marketers should definitely learn the micro-moments and adopt these tips to their strategy. Don’t you agree?

Have you ever wondered why or how content like the Old Spice ad or Gangnam Style music video went viral?

The 6 STEPPS Principle

Jonah Berger, an expert in word of mouth and viral marketing has identified 6 STEPPS to a successful viral marketing in his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

How did THIS went viral?!

Now.. let’s look at this video hoax of a marketing campaign for Holiday Mooloolaba that went viral!

One might wonder, how did THIS spread?!

According to Berger’s 6 STEPPS, this video fits the principles of Emotions, Public and Stories. And how so?

In the video, the girl Natalie tells the story of how she met the man of her dream and later lost contact with him but only to find out that she is pregnant 6 weeks later! This “story” was newsworthy to the media outlets as it hits home emotionally and made people sympathise with her. Not only that, the video’s youtube URL was shared on various Facebook community page making it “Public” and easily shared. In a bid to help Natalie find the man, people shared the video leading to its virality!

Campaigns such as the Holiday Mooloolaba video may gain virality, but the public backlash should be taken into consideration. Afterall, is the negative public opinion worth it for the brand as consumers felt cheated?

What about.. The Three Rules?

Berger’s 6 STEPPS definitely highlight how marketers can make it easier for ideas or content to spread. However, in my opinion, there are other factors that marketers should keep in mind when producing a campaign.

In the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, author Malcolm Gladwell discussed how the Three Rules of Epidemics help to spread ideas like wildfire.

Berger’s theory suggests how we can create content that spreads whereas Gladwell’s theory focus more on the environment required for ideas to spread.

For instance, the Law of the Few in Gladwell’s theory, whereby word of mouth through Connectors, Mavens or Salesmen is required for ideas to spread. This is definitely necessary, and in the Holiday Mooloolaba viral video, the news outlet acted as a “connector” to the audiences.

Conclusion

As marketers, both theories from Berger and Gladwell should be considered when we are coming up with ideas for our content. Berger’s theory help us to create content that are relevant to the audience while Gladwell’s theory help us consider the optimal environment for our ideas to spread.

Is there a theory you prefer? Share your comments below!