easy guide digital marketing in malaysia

Digital Marketing Malaysia – The Easy Guide for SME business in 2022

Are you looking for digital marketing for your business in Malaysia?

Not sure what is it and how it can help your business?

Should I use Google or Facebook marketing?

No doubt you will be confusing if you are new to the digital marketing Malaysia’s space.

This digital marketing guide is specially written for Malaysia’s business as digital media popularity is different for each country.

Let’s dive in now

Digital Marketing Malaysia – What it is?

In short, any kind of marketing that involve digital devices including mobile phone, laptop, desktop, digital billboard, TV & radio.

Digital Marketing in Malaysia

You may hear of internet marketing or online marketing. Indeed, it is part of digital marketing.

For Malaysia SME business, many often put lower priorities on digital billboard, TV & radio as the budget entries are higher. It is also part of outbound marketing strategies which target mass audiences.

For example, the big brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, Apple have the budget to reach a broad audience using digital billboard, TV & radio ads. It is suitable because every consumer is their target audience.

Imagine a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia baby store use outbound marketing to reach their potential customer. The effectiveness will be very low because the right audience only consists of parent that have babies.

On the other side, inbound marketing targets a specific group of audience. You only show your message to those who are interested in your products or services. With the rise of Google search engine and social media, it becomes easy for Malaysia SME business.

In this guide, I will focus on digital marketing services for inbound marketing in Malaysia.

The Benefits of Digital Marketing

It’s in 2020. A lot of things have changed compared to 5- 10 years back. Due to the popularity of mobile devices, search engine and better internet speed, traditional marketing method are no longer work. Everything moves to online. Fewer people read the newspaper or watch TV. Putting up banner ads or sending brochures is not cost-effective now.

Benefits of digital Marketing

If you want to grow your business in today’s competitive marketing, digital channels are the way to go. Here are the benefits of digital marketing:

  • You can reach a large target audience that interested in your products and services via the digital marketing channel.
  • You can enjoy low cost and higher return of investment. E.g. with Facebook ads, you just need RM 4-5 to reach 1000 users in Malaysia.
  • No more hard-selling anymore. You can use content + online traffic to attract potential customers to come to you. No more cold calling or attend network marketing to get more potential customers.
  • It is very scalable and no location limitation. You can increase the budget and target to more audience in different location via the digital channel.
With the impact of COVID 19 pandemic, digital marketing will become even more critical now. All the business activities and transactions will be done online with lesser close contact as possible.

Web design services are in high demand and shortly follow by digital marketing campaigns.

More people will search online and consuming more of their time on social media sites.

Implementing digital marketing strategies on your company is no longer a choice but a MUST now.

What are the different types of digital marketing in Malaysia?

Now, let’s see what type of digital marketing Malaysia’s strategies that you can use to reach your potential customer more effectively. Each of them might have their pros & cons.

SEO for Google Search, Map & YouTube Video

SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization. It is a process involving changes on your website (on-page optimization) and promoting your site to get more reference links from other high-quality sites (off-page optimization) to improve the organic search engine rankings.

It doesn’t cost anything like paid ads once your site ranks well.

For example, if you search for a florist in Kuala Lumpur, you will get the result as below. The SEO result indicates in the red box.

SEO Search Results

SEO can be applying on Google search engine result, Google map and YouTube (the second largest search engine after Google). Find out more SEO benefits here.

However, SEO is a long-term process where it usually takes 3-6 months to see the result. Unlike paid ads, you can get the result within days.

Google Ad/SEM – Google Search, Display Network (GDN) & YouTube Video

Google Ads (Search Engine Ads) refers to pay per click services. Everyone sees Google Ads every day and everywhere in Malaysia.

  • When you are searching for something on Google search engine, you will see the ads (Search Ads) appear on top of the search result.
  • When you are watching YouTube videos, you see ads (YouTube Ads) inserted on and off (and we always skip it!).
  • When you are checking free online email like yahoo mail or Gmail, you see the ads show up in between your message and on the sidebar. And when you are reading from websites like TheStar, SinChew and blogs, you see ads showing up. All these are part of Google display network (GDN) where you can place GDN ads.

For example, If I need plumbing service in Petaling Jaya, I will search for a plumber PJ in Google search engine to find the right plumber.

I have money ready in my hand to spend and fulfil my needs. Thus, you can quickly get the sales leads from visitor comes from Google traffic (Ads and SEO) because they need your product and services urgently.

For Malaysia SME business, Google Ads will be a good option to get started and look for quick result.

Social Media Marketing – Facebook Ad/LinkedIn/Twitter

Social medial marketing is another popular option to promote a business in Malaysia.

In Malaysia, Facebook is widely used compared to other social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn as the user-based and audience demographic is better compared to others.

Social media marketing - Facebook

Same as Google search engine, Facebook marketing also divided into Facebook paid ads, and free traffics from Facebook page or group.

But unlike the Google platform, Facebook is not designed to fulfil urgent demand from the consumer. You will not search a locksmith or plumber on Facebook, right?

You are browsing Facebook newsfeeds looking for news, jokes, funny video from family, friends or news website.

In between, you might see some interesting ads message trigger you to find out more.

We often say Facebook marketing help to create demand and not fulfil demand.

If you have new products or services that nobody knows, Facebook is the social media platform for you.

It has a vast audience, and you can set detail targeting based on their interest and demographics.

Content Marketing

Content is a big part of inbound marketing, where you can use content to show your knowledge & credibility.

You can use Facebook paid traffic to drive more visitors to read your content and slowly turn them into your customer. It is also useful to bring in free organic traffic once the articles rank well in Google search engine.

The content team will help you plan out the type of content related to your products or services and also attract the right potential customer to follow your brand.

Waze Ads

Waze is one of the most popular map navigation apps in Malaysia. Waze ads will be suitable for local businesses, especially the F&B and automotive industry. And you also need to make sure your company able to find in Waze app to ease your customer looking for you.

Waze Ads

To add your business location into Waze, simply register and verify a Google My Business (GMB) page. It will appear in Waze after some time once you verified your GMB page. Waze bought over by Google. So, business data in GMB will be shared in Waze as well.

Opt-in Email Marketing

This is not the old-time email marketing where you buy thousands of emails database to blast to unknown recipients about your business.

Opt-in Email Marketing

Never do this anymore. It brings more harm than sales to your business.

Your email will only either end up in the spam folder or being ignored by everyone. It doesn’t work anymore in today’s business world.

Opt-in email strategy gives the user some value in advance to encourage them to subscribe to your mailing list. The value should able to solve one particular problem of your potential customer.

This way, you can start to build the customers relationship with them. One day when they need the services, they will look for you first because they already trust you.

Mobile Marketing (Ads & Apps)

According to Statista report, there are 3.5 billion smartphone users in 2020. It definitely has its potential.

Mobile Advertising

If you wish to use mobile ads, just sign up with the right Mobile Advertising Networks and place your ads. Here are few popular mobile advertising networks: Millennial Media, AdMob (Under Google), Chartboost and Tapjoy.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps on Phone

I often heard many asked… Should I create a mobile app for my company?

The answer is NO unless your business is a platform like WhatsApp, Grab, Food panda or e-Wallet.

Ask yourself, how many apps you have downloaded for the past 30 days? Do you think others will download your app just to access some information or checking booking status?

Honestly, a mobile-friendly website plus email is more than enough to handle everything. I don’t recommend to build mobile apps for local business.

Chatbot Marketing + FB Messenger

The chatbot is getting popular nowadays. The main reason is the open rate is sky high, close to 100% compare to email. It works similar to opt-in email marketing where you get people to subscribe to your FB Messenger chatbot. You can then blast out your message to your audience.

Chatbot Marketing

I used ManyChat for some of our clients which is very useful for F&B business. I strongly recommend signing up a free account to collect from contact from FB messenger.

Find out more at https://manychat.com/

Video Marketing

Video is another popular medium to deliver your message, especially for the younger generation where they prefer to consume message in video format rather than text format. YouTube and TikTok are popular platforms in Malaysia.

Video marketing

Video production usually requires higher investment and a longer time to prepare compared to text content. It is not easy to manage by your own and often require help from a digital marketing agency (Malaysia).

Influencer Marketing

For F&B or e-commerce businesses, you can leverage influencer to help you market your products or services. Most influencers have massive followers which can quickly increase your branding and bring in sales at the same time.

However, the price will not be low depends on the size of the followers of the influencer in Malaysia.

Influencer marketing

How to choose the right digital marketing strategy?

Now, you may confuse with so many types of digital marketing strategies in Malaysia.

Which one should you start and focus right now?

question mark on people face

For most local businesses in Malaysia, Google or Facebook social media marketing is the way to go.

Let’s recap again.

Google marketing mainly to fulfil the demand from the consumer.

Google search engine marketing will be effective if there is a large audience searching for your products or services. This indicates there is a high demand from the consumer.

Most of the local business provide essential services, or products will be a good fit. E.g. plumbing, locksmith, dentist, lawyer, e-commerce that is selling popular products.

Facebook marketing mainly to create demand from the consumer.

Your consumer may not be aware of the products/services or need it urgently. For example, F&B businesses, e-commerce, education and most businesses that don’t have urgency will be a good fit.

Facebook social media site will be a good platform to trigger their buying emotion.

If you are locksmith or plumber and would like to place your ads on Facebook, it will not works. Google marketing will be a better option.

Think about it and focus on one type of marketing channel. Once you have success, then only explore other strategies.

What is the role of digital marketing agency (Malaysia)?

If you are having difficulties in deciding the best strategies, that’s where a digital marketing agency (Malaysia) comes in to help you.

team member in a digital marketing agency

A good digital marketing agency (Malaysia) will able to:

  1. Understand your business and focus on products & services that bring most of the revenue.
  2. Analyze your competitor to understand what’s working well to ensure you don’t miss out the opportunity.
  3. Discuss and prepare a detail marketing plan suitable for your business.
  4. Execute the necessary marketing task including creative sales copy and images according to the plan
  5. Provide monthly reporting to show the progress and results of the marketing plan.
  6. Monitoring and fine-tune the strategies to ensure you get the best return of investment.

Should you appoint a digital marketing company in Malaysia?

If you are not sure which is the best digital marketing strategy to get started, it is always good to get a leading digital marketing agency (Malaysia company). Just prepare for the extra budget as there will be an additional cost to help you analyze your business.

appoint digital marketing company

However, if you are clear on the type of digital marketing channel you wish to focus, you can directly find the right digital marketing specialist.

For example, if you believe Facebook marketing is the right strategy to get started, you can reach out to the marketing agency who only focus on Facebook digital marketing.

Or if you think search engine optimization (SEO) is better for you, you can find the SEO agency who specialize in its field. We are one of the SEO Malaysia company that focuses on SEO services since 2011.

Just think about general doctor vs specialist doctor? Who will do a better job?

Key takeaways

Now, you have a better understanding of the type of popular digital marketing strategies in Malaysia.

Are you going for Facebook? Or Google marketing?

Leave your comment below if you have any doubt. I am happy to help.

FAQs

What is the popular type of digital marketing strategies in Malaysia?

Google and Facebook marketing are 2 popular strategies. Find out other 6 types of strategy in this guide.

Is digital marketing easy in Malaysia?

Not really. The effective strategy often requires proper planning and implementation to archive the design results.

What is the role of digital marketing agency?

An experienced consultant in a digital marketing agency (KL) will analyse your business and recommend the best digital strategies.

Should I appoint a digital marketing agency or directly select a specialist?

It depends on the type of business. If you have the budget, you can always appoint an agency to get further advice. But if you already know the type of strategies you wish to focus, you can directly go to the right specialist.

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About the Author Adam

Adam is the founder of Adam SEO. He started his SEO journey in 2005 and officially ventured into offering an SEO consultancy service in 2011. He helped numerous companies in Malaysia and Singapore to get targeted traffic and increase their website visibility through SEO marketing.

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