what exactly is engagement marketing?

We believe that top marketers need to return to the roots of marketing.

With every year that goes by, the marketing technology (MarTech) Landscape only seems to increase in complexity. We only have to see this Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2017) to understand why. Have marketers lost their way in this sea of marketing SaaS?

We believe that top marketers need to return to the roots of marketing – to understand and serve consumers well enough that the product or service sells itself, as mentioned by Peter Drucker, the grandfather of modern marketing.

In today’s context, this would be engagement marketing.

What is engagement marketing?

“Engagement Marketing is the use of strategic, resourceful content to engage people, and create meaningful interactions over time.” – Marketo, 2017

Engagement marketing is all about building stronger relationships with consumers at various touchpoints of their buyer journey, delivering satisfaction at each moment, and thus turning those relationships into new opportunities for business growth.

Top marketers should understand that regardless of the sophistication of tools used, the primary goal remains the same: To engage consumers effectively.

Start by changing your understanding of your consumers.

With the explosion of multiple channels and choices in the marketplace, there has been a dramatic increase in touchpoints that influence consumers’ decisions.

These touchpoints are highly accessible to consumers today, and they bounce unpredictably back and forth through different touchpoints (ZMOT Handbook, Google).

According to a Google study with Shopper Sciences, looking at the purchase journey of 3000 user sessions, they found over 3000 completely different paths towards purchase.

The challenge is to be ready to meet consumers in their way at their preferred time (ZMOT Handbook, Google).

While consumers go through different journeys and paths, we can identify the common moments and hubs that they will go through, known as Moments Of Truth.

Consistent engagement with consumers at these Moments Of Truth will be crucial to the success of a business.

As put aptly by John Batistich, ex-CMO of Westfield, “The future marketer is someone who gets Context, Conversations and Content.” (Simon Kemp, SocialMediaToday)

Let’s tie this to the APAC context.

Here’s how engagement marketing can help you succeed in APAC.

The APAC market is characterized as an entire spectrum of consumers with modest disposable incomes, unique preferences, and minimal brand loyalties.

We believe that by using the 5 Principles of Engagement Marketing, we can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that addresses many key issues and taps on numerous opportunities that the APAC market could present in the years to come.

Here are our 3 insights on how engagement marketing can help top marketers succeed in the APAC context:

1. Listen
Despite a diverse background of subcultures in various countries in APAC, people with limited resources all operate the same way: They invest in brands that they trust. Being value-conscious is a defining trait, and many consumers in APAC only purchase products or services from people who understand their needs well.

Marketers could use engagement marketing to listen and serve the diverse needs of various income or urban divisions in APAC.

2. Personalisation and localization
A fragmented APAC market indicates a need for personalisation, because each consumer is unique on their own. For instance, hyperlocal language optimisation can be used to craft and select specific phrases for specific areas of a country.

Marketers can use engagement marketing to carry out precision targeting and segmentation to profile distinct consumer groups, which enables hyper-localised content and language contextualisation. This would help focus marketing efforts on specific urban clusters, instead of targeting the entire country as one market.

3. Build a strong online presence
APAC consumers look for reviews and peer recognition before they buy anything. In fact, consumers in this region are the most active group of consumers online, spending an average of 80 hours on the Internet every month. In addition, APAC also has one of the world’s highest mobile penetration rates.

Marketers could use engagement marketing to track a consumer’s journey through various touchpoints, and position their online presence well to serve them at every moment of interaction, as well as build a strong mobile positioning.

how can you scale this?

This is where the engagement hub comes in. With engagement marketing platforms such as Marketo, marketers will be able to listen to their consumers across channels and orchestrate an end-to-end personalised engagement strategy, bringing personalisation to scale.

There is no definite way to implement your engagement marketing plan. The key is what your consumers need, how they would like to be engaged and which channels they want to be engaged in.

what’s next for your marketing strategy?

Developing a comprehensive marketing strategy for a highly-fragmented APAC market today is no easy feat.

Marketers of the future need to move away from the traditional marketing funnel and static strategies. Instead, they should move towards engagement marketing and orchestrate a dynamic strategy to succeed in APAC and its diverse demographic background and subcultures.

Engaging APAC consumers effectively in their way, and in their preferred time to suit their needs, is how top marketers can sustain great results in various APAC growth economies such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand etc – and could be the key to unlocking the rest of the APAC region.