While over 84% of Singapore respondents use digital marketing to promote their products and services, only 17% of overall Singapore respondents strongly agreed that there is a link between a good digital marketing strategy and increased revenue – significantly lower than the regional average of 41% and other countries surveyed.
Nearly half (49%) feel their company's digital marketing strategy is not contributing to achieving their organisation's goals for 2023, reported HubSpot and LinkedIn in a survey conducted by Milieu Insight. These figures are the highest of any country included in the study, highlighting skills and knowledge gaps among marketers in Singapore that may be holding them back from realising the full potential of digital marketing.
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Another potential factor for low confidence in the correlation between digital marketing and revenue, or an organization's contribution, could be the lack of adoption of certain tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, which play a key role in tracking and measuring the results of marketing campaigns, the report said. This data helps brands understand how their marketing efforts are impacting business goals and better evaluate return on investment. Only 41% of Singaporean businesses engaged in digital marketing use CRM tools, the lowest among the countries surveyed.
“In Singapore, the rapid pace of technological advancements presents an opportunity for marketers to upskill. Upskilling and reskilling not only helps professionals adapt to change, but also allows them to leverage new technologies to improve productivity and results,” said Matt Tindale, head of Asia Pacific, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
When asked about the measurements they use to assess the impact of their digital marketing efforts, more than half (52%) of Singaporean respondents cited brand awareness as their primary metric, which differs from regional sentiment where the majority see sales or revenue as a key indicator of success.
“Survey results show that the majority of local businesses are focused on brand awareness, but the real challenge is translating that awareness into actionable growth,” Tindale said.
“Singapore is on the cusp of a digital marketing transformation, with our research showing that 60% of businesses are integrating AI into their digital marketing strategies. Success requires the use of effective measurement frameworks and tools that support data-driven decision-making, which is essential to maximise ROI,” he added.
This trend towards digital marketing is expected to continue in 2024. Among respondents whose companies do not have a digital marketing strategy, more than half (57%) said their company plans to implement a digital marketing strategy in the future.
Among Singapore businesses that are engaged in digital marketing, more than a third (35%) spend more than S$10,000 per month on related activities.
Currently, most businesses (28%) allocate between 21% and 40% of their monthly marketing budget to digital marketing, with similar investment levels recorded across all countries surveyed. Survey results show that more than a third of Singapore businesses plan to maintain their current level of investment in digital marketing in 2024, rather than increasing their budget – the highest percentage of any country surveyed.
Social media, content and search engine marketing are key channels
Among Singapore businesses that have a digital marketing strategy, the majority (62%) identify social media as their primary digital marketing channel, followed by content marketing (50%) and search engine marketing (49%).
Nearly half of these respondents (42%) ranked social media in the top three important channels for their digital marketing efforts. These results are in line with observations from another HubSpot study that identified social media as the preferred platform for shopping and brand discovery among consumers around the world, with the majority of brands surveyed attesting to the effectiveness of social media marketing for their business. In Singapore, nine in ten social media marketers predict that local consumers will choose to use social commerce and social search in 2024.
The rise of social media as a major digital marketing channel is also reflected in budget allocations and tools.
Among Singapore businesses with digital marketing initiatives, social media marketing receives the majority of their marketing budget (23%), with social media management platforms being the most popular tool, used by over half (51%) of respondents.
This coincides with the growing penetration of social media in Singapore, where an estimated 85% of the population are social media users, according to We Are Social and Meltwater's Digital 2024 Global Overview Report, making it number one in Southeast Asia when it comes to social media usage.
“Social selling and commerce are becoming increasingly popular in Singapore, providing a highly effective platform for brands to reach, target, and engage with audiences on a personal level,” said Kat Warboys, senior marketing director, APAC, HubSpot.
However, despite the growing popularity of social media platforms, brands need to avoid becoming overly reliant on any single channel, Worboys warns, with more than half of global customers now utilizing three to five different channels throughout their buying journey.
“Success will depend on brands establishing a presence on the channels their customers and prospects use, and leveraging a CRM platform to accurately measure the impact of their marketing efforts. This is essential to actively engage and provide a frictionless experience for audiences, regardless of channel,” says Warboys.
Besides social media management platforms, other popular tools among Singapore businesses engaging in digital marketing include CRM platforms (41%) and email marketing solutions (37%). An effective approach to digital marketing must include the implementation of these tools along with a strong marketing strategy to optimize results.
“As digital channels explode in popularity, the key to success is ensuring customer data is not scattered across multiple platforms. A potential solution could be the use of conversion APIs, which allow brands to accurately track and measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts on social media platforms. As conversion APIs are a server-side tracking option, they can still provide observable data that was previously limited by privacy controls, something marketers need to consider as third-party cookies are phased out. Having a CRM solution that can seamlessly integrate with such tools will enable marketers to make the most of the information collected across the customer journey,” Warboys added.
Explore transformative trends to drive sustainable growth for your brand. Digital Marketing Asia 2024 Singapore, taking place from 1-2 October, will bring together over 500 marketing professionals to discover transformative trends to power their brands, network with industry leaders, collaborate across industries, and discover real-world marketing success stories and powerful ideas.
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