Wish to improve your social media marketing game in Singapore?
Do what every marketer has done since time immemorial: learn from the top brands and adapt their strategies and tactics for your business.
With one of Asia’s most digital and social savvy populations, Singapore witnessed the meteoric rise of social media marketing as one of the preferred ways of reaching out to consumers.
Leading brands like Coca-Cola, Singtel, Changi Airport, Scoot, DBS Bank, and various government agencies have launched social media marketing activities to increase brand awareness, educate consumers, strengthen engagement, and trigger sales.
Beyond these top brands, start-ups and Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the food and beverage, fashion, beauty and other industries have used innovative content to continually capture the hearts, minds and wallets of their customers.
Let us take a closer look at a few of these examples, and see what we can learn from them.
NTUC FairPrice Supermarket
Yes, Singapore’s leading “auntie” brand of supermarket is killing it on social media. And I love how they’ve incorporated their social mission into their Facebook page.
#1 Social Brand Storytelling
As a social enterprise, NTUC FairPrice’s mission isn’t just to make profit but to help ordinary workers to afford basic necessities. I like how they share little stories of their staff on their Facebook page – doing so helps to humanize the brand.
Courtesy of NTUC FairPrice
#2 Useful Instructional Videos
Taking a leaf from American organic retailer Whole Foods Market, FairPrice has started to share short videos which teach their customers how to cook certain dishes. This one featuring Jambalaya fried rice looks positively mouthwatering.
Telco Circles.Life
Giving incumbents Singtel, Starhub, and M1 a run for their subscribers, hotshot mobile service company Circles.Life uses gamification and pay-as-you-use fees to change the game.
For a start, just check out the home page of their website below. I love how clean and simple it is, and how easy it is to navigate and understand.
However, what I’d like to focus on here are two great things they are doing on their social channel.
#3 Online Gamification
Since the company first launched a couple of months ago, Circles.Life have used various forms of gamification to reward users. Launched as a contest among users with leaderboards showing the top “players”, the telco has generated a huge amount of social traffic using this strategy.
Here’s a recent example called the Cash Referral Challenge. All players need to do is refer their friends (using a referral code unique to themselves) and they stand to win cash.
#4 Responsive Social Customer Service
Launching creative and fun contests alone isn’t enough. In the dog-eat-dog world of telcos, consumers can easily switch from one service provider to another, shopping for the best deal for themselves.
While Singapore telcos generally do well in social customer care, Circles.Life’s super responsive associates are impressive. Have a look at how quickly they responded to a customer’s query on their Facebook page below:
Singapore’s Changi Airport
Yes, our national airport has been on my radar for the longest time. In fact, I’ve used Changi Airport as a “model example” of how companies can use social media effectively.
Once again, I’d like to highlight two examples from this social media luminary.
#5 Beautiful Eye-Candy Visuals
Social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are increasingly dominated by visual content these days. This is why an aesthetically stunning Instagram account like Changi Airport can consistently rack up strong engagement numbers in terms of likes and comments.
Have a look at some of their images on Instagram.
And this lovely cinemagraph of their sunflower field with an aeroplane in the background.
#6 Newsjack Relevant Content
Regular readers of Cooler Insights will know that I’m a big advocate of newsjacking – when done right. Last year, Changi Airport did just that when they created an “Arrivals” board when Joseph Schooling won Singapore’s first Olympic Gold. This was widely shared on Facebook and Instagram, and went hugely viral.
#7 Handy Guide for Customers
Do you know that Changi Airport has a blog? Creatively named Now Boarding, it regularly features useful articles and guides to Singapore.
Have a look at one of their recent articles sharing places where you can get good Zi Char (local Chinese cooked dishes) in Singapore.
Courtesy of Now Boarding
OwnDays Singapore
OwnDays has transformed the business of eyeglasses and made spectacles great again.
Unlike traditional optical shops which have imprisoned their eyeglasses behind glass showcases, OwnDays has boldly displayed them in their shops for easy access by their customers. The retail brand is also known for their everyday low prices and no questions asked customer service.
#8 Feature Your Stylish Customers
What I love about OwnDays is how they’ve focused their content on their customers. While their Facebook page does have new products being featured, they do also showcase their eyeglass wearers in all their four-eyed chic.
Here’s an example below taken from their Facebook Page.
#9 Offer Thoughtful Tips
As one of the world’s most myopic nations, many Singaporeans have poor viewing and eating habits. We spend so much time looking at our screens (I’m certainly guilty!) that our eye sight has gone bonkers.
This is where little tips like these remind us what to eat and do to keep our vision.
#10 Partner Complementary Brands
There is an ancient African proverb which goes like this:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
In the relational world of social media, it pays to work with complementary brands. OwnDays has partnered with leading online fashion retailer ZALORA. Here, you can see how both brands can be fashionably mixed and matched.
Courtesy of OwnDays Facebook
Conclusion
As social media continues to grow in influence here in Singapore, consumer brands and businesses should do their best in creating compelling content, engaging their communities, and caring for their customers.
What I’ve highlighted above are four examples of brands which have embraced social media marketing to improve brand awareness, trigger Word Of Mouth (WOM) and virality, and more importantly, be relevant to their customers.
Now that you’ve read these case studies, the ball is in your court. What will you do to make your brand a social media star just like the ones above?
Nice article! A perfect example on how companies are utilizing social media marketing to propel their business to the next level.