Digital 101Learning the Basics

BY JENNY WIENEKE

Good day everyone, we are here today because the world as we know it has changed. Many of us sell our goods in bazaars, trade fairs and pasalubong centers but with the advent of the pandemic, our lives had been turned completely upside down.

We should not look at our situation from a negative view, in fact we should find the opportunity from this difficulty we are currently experiencing. Let us not be pessimists and see the light out of all this darkness. Because with difficul-ty comes opportunity. Our physical stores may have been compromised but this forced us to go into the digital arena, which, if you look at it, is less costly than what we are used to. We have been pushed to move our stores online, in-

stead of treating this as a setback let’s make the most out of it. To be able to sell online, we need to know the basics of Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is defined as the promotion of goods and services using electronic devices: cell-phone, laptop, desktop or even a smart tv which can access the internet. So basically it is just pro-moting your product or services using different tools. But what is promotions?

If you go back to the basic meaning of the word, Promotions is getting your customers interested in your product, getting them to buy your product and getting them to buy it again. Which basically boils down to Awareness, Trial and Retention. Now the goal of every seller is to make his customer come back again and again, hopefully creating a relation-ship with that customer. But to be able to do that, one should have a Digital Marketing Strategy…

A study was conducted by IPSOS in May and it was learned that out of 109.5M Filipinos, 94% are worried about COVID and what effects it will have on their livelihood, status and health. Ma-jority of these have said that they think things will only normalize in 2021 and that they will not venture out much until that time. What does that mean for us? What impact would this have on us entrepreneurs who rely on physical sales? One year is quite a long time for us businesses to wait for our market to return! What are we to do?

In creating a strategy, one should start by setting goals for the business. Do you want to just create awareness, meaning do you just want your brand and products to be known and create a list of cus-tomer leads or do you want to increase your sales or expand the area of availability of your product or service? These are just some examples of objectives. Identify what needs to be done. If you are a new brand or are introducing a new product, Awareness is always an objective partnered with sales.

Once you’ve set your goals, you now have to identify who you want to talk to, who you want to sell to.

As I mentioned earlier, the goal of marketing is to create a long-term relationship with your customer. Parang love lang yan, sana may forever. Because marketing is essentially “making ligaw” your customer.

As I mentioned earlier, the goal of marketing is to create a long-term relationship with your custom-er. Parang love lang yan, sana may forever. Because marketing is essentially “making ligaw” your customer.

So the girl is your target market and the boy is your product. The target market or your customer is actually a group of people most likely to buy your product. The customer is not the not necessarily the same as your consumer. The customer is the one who buys, the consumer is the one who uses it.

To know your target market you need to identify these information about them. Let me give you an example on millennials. Most of us target millennials as our customers so let’s see if doing so gives us better insight into the customer.

Millennial No.1 is a 30-year old single, call center agent while No. 2 is a 30-year old housewife with a home business and no. 3 is a housewife who is married to a car-penter. You see one cannot just lump the target market into a word like millennial, each one will still have differences which leads us to Psychographics

Target Market: Psychographics

Psychographics describe the inner workings of the target market, their attitudes, opinions, behavior, values interests and activities. If you go back to our 3 millennials, how same or different will they be if we look at their psychographics.

These millennials like to shop but they do it differently. Girl 1 can afford to shop at premium malls every payday and now more than ever, she is empowered by online shopping

for clothes, bags and shoes. Girl 2 waits for all the sales to happen. She is the type to wait for every flash sale on Lazada or Shopee waiting for the baby clothes and accessories she likes to go on sale. Girl 3 also loves to shop but she will seek out the Ukay Ukays as this is what she can afford and only does so when she has extra money to spare to buy clothes for her baby.

Given this we see the importance of really knowing who we really want to target as we have to be specific on who we are talking to on who our customers are because…

A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is but it is what customers tell each other it is. This means, our customers now have the power to con-trol how your brand is seen and understood because of social media. We need to know them so we can talk to them and tell them the right story about our brands and products.That is why we always talk to our customers, interview them, engage them, learn from them. We also learn from our competitors. Scan what your competition is doing. Looking at their efforts may give you an idea on how to differentiate your approach from theirs.

Now that you know what your goals are, have determined who you want to talk and sell to and have looked at your competitors you are now ready to build your online presence.

Building your Online Presence

Why create an online presence?

Pro’s • REDUCED MARKETING COST • INCREASED SALES • INCREASED TRAFFIC TO WEBSITE • IMPROVED RANKING ON SEARCH ENGINES • GREATER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT • OPPORTUNITY FOR CUSTOMER FEEDBACK • OPPORTUNITY TO CONDUCT MARKET RESEARCH

ABOUT CUSTOMERS • IMPROVED NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES WITH

CUSTOMERS AND OTHER BUSINESSES

Since we rely mostly on online sales now for our survival it is important to be visible and searchable online. Creating online presence means you are leaving your footprints on the internet and this is beneficial to us because : it reduces marketing costs, it increases sales, increases traffic to your website if you have a website, improves your ranking in google, engages your customer, allows you to get feedback from your customers and lets you get information from them and it gives you leads to expand your network. But just like in everything else, there are also cons to creating online pres-ence.

But... Be Prepared for this

CON’S• SOCIAL MEDIA IS IMMEDIATE AND NEEDS DAILY MONI-TORING• ADDITIONAL RESOURCES MAY BE NEEDED TO MANAGE ONLINE PRESENCE. • REAL BENEFITS MAY NOT COME IF ONLINE PRESENCE IS NOT WELL MANAGED• RISKS - NEGATIVE FEEDBACKS, HACKING, ETC

Managing your social media needs time, effort and resources. You really have to invest on it. A poor-ly managed social media presence will not give you any benefit. As mentioned previously, since social media empowers your audience to talk, you risk having negative reviews and comments and hackers.

Maintaining social media presence is not easy. It needs planning and monitoring. Online presence also allows people to post negative comments and feedback about your business but in a sense you can use this as an opportunity to assess whether what they are saying is worth changing or improv-ing on.

There are several components of digital marketing that gives you online presence. In the past, as a rule, one was required to have a website to be found. It is still important nowadays to give credi-bility to your business and so that the search engines, like Google, will find your brand or product easier. Which brings us to the next component SEO. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. When

you search for something on the internet where do you go…Google right? That is the search engine. The goal of all of us businesses is to be on the 1st page of Google. Kayo ba binabasa nyo pa yung 2nd and 3rd pages? Hindi na di ba so we have to make sure that when people type words related to our brand or product they will find us. Next is Social Media, this we know of and we will discuss more later about it. Video ads is also another tool plus email marketing and blogging. Among all of these the most accessible to us is SEO and Social Media. But for this module, we will focus more on social media and perhaps during our mentoring sessions we can discuss SEO.

According to a study conducted last Jan 2020, out of the 108.8M Filipinos, 73M are internet users and of that 73M 100% are on social media. And when we say social media, what comes to mind…Face-book

Social Media

What exactly is social media? It is the computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts and information by building networks and communities in the virtual world. Social Media is not only Facebook there is Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Linked-In,Pinterest, Google+ and now Tiktok.

Why Social Meida Marketing?

• Amplifies your content• Makes you stand out from the crowd• Networking • Can position you as an EXPERT, TRUSTWORTHY BRAND• And the best reason - It’s AFFORDABLE

Aside from ¾ of the population in the country being on social media, the use of it allows you to am-plify your content, meaning it makes your message reach more people. If done well, it also makes you stand out from competition and grab attention. It gives you leads and expands your network. It allows you to shape your image as your customers are very responsive to what they see and hear. But most of all, social media is the most affordable marketing tool.

These benefits are achievable if you plan your social media campaign. Many of us think that creat-ing a Facebook Business page and flooding it with our products is enough to get us noticed. That is where we sometimes fail. One needs a strategy for social media as well. You need to know Who you are talking to, What you are going to say, Where you are saying it and How.

The most important item to determine, as we have established earlier on is to determine who your target audience is. Or in the case of social media, who or what is your Buyer Persona.

We can’t stress enough the need to know your market so use Facebook to your benefit. Use the insights and analytics of your page to get to know your audience. Scan the comments and inquiries via Mes-senger and stalk your fans. Always get emails of your customers as you can use this as leads for email marketing and ad targeting.

How to Know Your Audience More

Do you know your audience? The most basic way is Facebook. Just click more and that drops down the insights where you can see general informa-tion on whether your fans are male or female, what age group and what ar-eas they come from. For more info on the psychographics of your audience you have to do some stalking so that you could arrive at a personification of your target which is the Buyer Persona. It helps for you to be talking to a person rather than just statistics.

After you’ve identified who your audience is, you have to determine what message do you want to convey. What about your brand do you want to say? But before we go into messaging do we all know what a brand is?

Brand

A brand isn’t just your logo or your packaging, it is the overall experience and impression of your customers of your product. It expresses your value, your promise. Your brand reflects you.

For people to be able to understand your brand, your messaging should be consistent, relevant and relateable to your audience. That is why it is im-portant for you to know who you are talking to so you can adjust or tweak your messaging accordingly. Just like our exercise earlier on the millennials, one message may not be relevant to all 3 women so you have to know who

among them is your target and how do you craft your message in a way that would attract her.

People relate more to personalities than just brands. Just like you, it is easier to talk to a person than just a picture so you have to make your brand personality come out in all your social media posts. What is brand personality? Brand personality is your brand as a person. What traits and key words best describe your brand if it were someone, a person? It is also important that you commu-nicate your unique selling proposition, your differentiator, your value added and your promise. This is what makes up your brand and this is what you should make everyone aware of.

What is a Brand?Tokyo Tempura’s personality is the Fun, Approachable and Reliable friend because we want to be welcoming to everybody and what has always been unique to us is that we provide “Murang Tempura”, I know marketers say that price point is not a differentiator but in our case the proposition of “Murang Tempura” goes beyond price. It promises quality, accessibility and variety of tempura a promise not delivered by anyone else.Which brings me to our elevator pitch, like I always say in my branding lectures, you need to prepare an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch summarizes your brand promise, who you are talking to so that when you are asked, “What’s your business?” you have a ready answer and will not be grasping for what to say. Once you know this, then that will be the message you will convey in your social media content as it summarizes your USP or unique selling proposition.

Content Marketing

Once you’ve built your Facebook Business Page, it doesn’t mean that you will automatically get sales out of that nor get the desired awareness and engagement you want. You should plan your posts. We are all guilty of just flooding our page with product posts but we have to make the posts relevant to our target market.

What Should You Post• Product Pics• Behind the Scene Pics• Quotes• Tips• Testimonials• Reviews

• Offers/Discounts• New Products • Events• Videos• Seasonal Posts• Interesting Facts

When you post product pics, tell your customers in the caption why your product is perfect for them. Are you addressing a certain need of theirs? Post something attuned to the times, as we said we are here to create a relationship so be memorable, be consistent, be relevant, be caring, be sensitive. Be transparent.

Once you’ve created a plan on who to talk to and what to say, let us now tackle where you what channel you will use to market your brand.

We’ve learned previously that out of 109.5M Filipinos on the internet 71% of them are on social media, which means ¾ of the population of the Philippines can be found on social media. Despite this, many argue whether it is best to use the traditional way of marketing to reach customers. Do you know that there are 2 ways of marketing? There is such a thing called as outbound and inbound marketing.

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing refers to the traditional way of marketing that reaches out to people to see if they are interested. You tend to interrupt the potential customer with content they don’t always want. It is you, the company or brand that starts the conversation. Examples on outbound market-ing are TV, radio, billboards, print ads, spam emails, cold calls, as well as trade shows and seminars. You push your message far and wide hoping someone listens to you, a very expensive way of reach-ing your customer. Why, because every day, each average person is bombarded by 2000 outbound marketing interruptions and they have already figured out how to block them out. So you spend and they don’t listen.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing attracts potential customers through interesting content tailor-fit to them. You help yourself “get found” by your customers. You draw them in to you through creative content that answers what they need to know. While Outbound marketing bombards customers with content that they don’t want, inbound marketing forms connections they are looking for and solves custom-er problems.

To compare the benefits of the 2 out-bound marketing, basically tv com-mercials are avoided by 85% of people. Despite this, tv networks are making hundreds of millions out of advertising costs, Given the high ad fees, there is smaller return on your investment be-cause the conversion rate into sales is quite low despite the expensive costs. One 30-seconder TV ad costs P350,000 and a billboard along EDSA costs P250,000/month as well, Have you really gone out and bought after seeing an ad along EDSA or on your favorite telenovela? If yes, you are 1 of the mil-lions targeted. But the most glaring disadvantage to outbound marketing is that 71% of the popula-tion have already migrated to the digital space. If ever they do watch TV, it is just in the background while they are browsing on their phone or their laptop.

With Inbound Marketing, the messaging and the targeting is more focused. People are attracted to you because what you are saying is relevant. The ad rates are much, much cheaper and as such your ROI is higher. Since messaging is focused, the leads that you get out of inbound marketing have a higher conversion to buying your product or service because they are already interested to begin with. They have already been searching within that industry for a solution to their problem so all you need to do is be found.

So as we saw earlier 73M Filipinos are on social media since January and by July actually, after the ECQ, it increased to 76M, it is a no-brainer that we should be where everyone is, we should be on social media.

In order for your content to be most effective, go where your audi-ence is. Not surprisingly, you don’t need to be on every social network to reach your audience. You just need to be on the right ones.

In fact, did you know that 71% of social media users buy products from brands that they follow online? Because they trust these brands and have a relationship with it they are more likely to buy from them. And besides where do you learn your news from? Where do you see your trends from? Social Media, that is why it has been found that 7 out of 10 consumers prefer a business with so-cial media presence. And when consumers see people liking and recommending a brand and its products, they get curious and try it. That is why 50% of shoppers have been influenced by a social media network recommendation.

As you will see the influ-ence is strongest among aged 25 through 44. They use social media for re-searching brands. If you’re not on social media, you’re not legit.

Posting on FacebookLet’s take a look at the No. 1 social media platform in the country. The Phil-ippines has been tagged as the social media capital of the world 76M of us are already on Facebook. Therefore we should learn how to maximize this channel for selling our products by doing the following:Let’s take a look at an example close to home. When lock down happened, Tokyo Tempura had a major problem because majority of our outlets, actually 98% were located in malls. We had to do something and spotted an opportunity for taking our fried tempura into the homes even with the closure. We sold our frozen items as kits that people cooked from home, and positioned it as bonding moments with family, and promoting staying safe indoors with family. These posts generated high engagements because they were relevant and timely.

Being positive and having clean layouts also contribute to the appeal of a page. Let’s take a look at the FB page of Tokyo Tempura and Master Tempura.

At the height of the pandemic, we wanted to give some positive news to our audience so we showed them that despite everything that happened some outlets are still opening and that we are giving away free franchises to anyone who wants to own one. This garnered 10% engagement which is re-ally high based on a 7% global engagement benchmark.Since our brand persoonality is fun, we also put the ocassional games and trivia.

Using videos will create excitement and show transparency on your products and also entertains your audience. Reposting reviews of vloggers and influencers also gives more credibility to your brand.

Include Photos & Videos• Photo Resolution 800 x 600

People react to good pictures and nice images. Make sure the pictures that you post are good. If showing your products do not just take a picture of your pack-aging and post it. You have to make sure that it is aesthetically pleasing and cre-ative. Let’s again compare Tokyo Tempu-ra and Master Tempura

And lastly, please remember that almost 90% of our population use mobile phones to access social media therefore your posts should be mobile friendly. Be available, what does that mean? Check your audience insights again and find out what time of the day, day of the week your audience is online and post during those times not when you just want to. Also be available for comments as you have to answer these.

To summarize: Keep things positive, provide relevant information, include nice images, make sure posts are easy to see and read on mobile, always respond to your audience and be available. Now let’s look at Instagram as the next emerging social media platform fit for selling here in the Philippines.

How to post on Instagram• Editing - Have a consistent look and feel - Branding• Rule of Thirds - Put the subject only in 2/3 of the screen• Captions - Use relevant captions to grab attention• Use of Hashtags - Use at least 11 (original and curated)• Reply - Conversational dialogue

On Instagram it is important to have a consistent look and feel so this is where your personality comes in. If you are a fashion brand and you want to be glamorous then that is how your posts should look. Going back to Tokyo Tempura, our style is to show the product going places in differ-ent situations featuring people with the products cooked by actual people who bought our kits and showing actual customers enjoying the product. Admittedly, our instagram is not the best yet but compared to our competitors I believe we are getting there.

Don’t worry if you do not know how to create content thee is a tool that can help you lay-out nice posts with templates. All you need to do is replace the photos and text. You don’t have to use your products all the time. If you cannot shoot, it is also ok to use photos from image libraries that don’t charge royalty fees. Canva helps you create your posts. And if you need photos you can get free images from unspalsh.com, pexels.com and pixabay.com

And just as a guide to the requirements of the different social media platforms, I leave you with this list for reference later.

EngagementBefore we end this section, we need to discuss about engagement. What is engagement? Hindi po ito yung nagpropose magpakasal ang isang lalaki pero malapit na rin yun dahil Engagement as defined online measures the public likes, shares and comments for an online business on social me-dia. On Facebook, engagement means all possible ways of interacting with your Page (call-to-action button, profile clicks and other tab clicks), Page posts (comments, likes, shares), Direct messaging and page mentions.

And these are the types of content that people inter-act with, meaning your posts should feature primari-ly images and videos

You need to make your audience react to you and these are the types of content and reasons why they do…

How do I get good Engagement• Have great content• Network with influencers• Ask creative questions• Contests & Giveaways • Games• Authenticity > UGC• Respond to ALL

You can determine the engagement rate of your posts by dividing total engagements on a post di-vided by Total no. of followers x 100 (ER = Total Engagements/No. of Followers x 100)

To have a good social media strategy you have to balance out getting user generated and organic content with paid posts and ads,

So always remember when selling your brand or products on social media, always know your target audience first so that you know how to talk to them, Be consistent with your brand messaging, Be where your market is, Plan your content and Engage your audience. Hopefully by doing so you cre-ate loyal customers and Ambassadors out of them.

*This EBook is prepared by the ITSPAC training team. www.it-spac.com

*No part of this publication maybe reproduced, except for brief quotations,without the permis-sion of the author.