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Nearly all businesses (98%) agree that a well-defined digital marketing plan can significantly impact your bottom line. However, in Singapore, 1 in 5 companies do not have a digital marketing strategy, a contrast to other Asian markets surveyed, where more than 96% of businesses have a strategy in place.
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How can brands measure the impact of their marketing efforts?
Across the region, a majority of brands are tracking some metrics when it comes to understanding how their digital marketing investment is performing. When it comes to tracking impact on sales and revenue, and on the opposite end of the scale, impact on brand awareness, India and the Philippines lead the way, with more than 70% of companies tracking these top and bottom funnel metrics. 6% of companies in Singapore report that they are not tracking any metrics to assess the impact of their digital marketing activity, this being double the regional average of 3%.
In Asia, measuring ROI is still a challenge. "Any marcom specialist will know that demonstrating results that go towards the sales pipeline has never been more important – and more demanded – by key stakeholders," said Louise Veitch, head of Southeast Asia, Aspectus.
If you want to bridge the gap between execution and results, analysing the customer journey and identifying gaps is an important first step.
The marketing team for the Centre for Professional and Continuing Education at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, one of the world’s top universities, (PaCE@NTU) were searching for a CRM solution to refine their lead nurturing processes and optimise how they were measuring marketing’s impact. 
Associate Provost and Chief Executive at PaCE@NTU, Prof. Tjin Swee Chuan, shares that “effective data driven marketing is essential for achieving growth and success in the competitive higher education landscape.” The team leveraged the LinkedAds and HubSpot integration, which helped them to target audiences more effectively on LinkedIn. Prof. Tjin adds that "the integration allowed us to better track the end-to-end customer journey and clearly measure the impact and ROI of our marketing investments. Now we can create programme-segmented HubSpot leads that are fed back to LinkedIn Ads through the platform integration to look for similar audiences. With the integration, we have been able to achieve a 10x increase year-on-year in leads, and track these results much more efficiently."
“Businesses in Asia are navigating a new reality where keeping pace with technological disruption and innovation is critical to business success. They need to enable marketers to effectively target and reach the customers and prospects through their preferred channels in today’s digital-first economy,” highlights Kat Warboys, Senior Marketing Director, APAC, at HubSpot.
SMBs understand the importance of tools, adoption one area to watch for
The MarTech landscape has evolved drastically with more than 10,000 marketing-specific tools available. As a marketer, it can feel challenging to navigate the options.
While 86% of businesses in Asia are confident in leveraging marketing technology tools, the majority seem to leverage 1-2 tools at most, despite having anywhere between one to twenty software tools in their arsenal.
“In Asia, one reason that we see lower adoption rates of martech tools is where leaders may not be aware of how & what the tools can help them to improve their goals: be it to improve efficiency, increase ROI, aligning their sales and marketing teams better, or even to create more personalised customer experiences.” Carol Fong, Asia Sales Director of HubSpot, observes.
“Marketing leaders, and leaders across go-to-market teams, also need to think through the ease of usage and adoption, for their organisation and team. They can have the best tech stack, but if no one uses it, that’s as good as having no tech stack,” adds Carol.
Singapore stakeholders harder to convince
While recognising the value of digital marketing tools, some Singaporean SMBs face challenges in implementing them within their workforce.
“Like many other businesses, convincing long-time employees who may be resistant to change around the necessity for digitalisation has been an issue. To ensure that our team members come on this journey, we were clear in our vision of the future, and shared with them that they were a part of our future,” Ivan Cai, CEO of Chuan Kok, offers.
In Singapore, businesses approach marketing budgets with a strategic mindset, seeking efficient and impactful interventions at scale. Pooja K Dhanothia, Director, Head of Asia - Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn, highlights that "this strategic outlook is born from operating in a fiercely competitive market, where the emphasis lies on maximising ROI and showcasing tangible value to stakeholders. Given the context of high operational costs, Singaporean companies prioritise investments in technology and analytics to fine-tune their marketing strategies instead of substantially expanding budgets."
"Moreover, the demand for clear, data-driven justifications for marketing spend further reinforces this prudent approach. By leveraging technology and analytics, businesses in Singapore can demonstrate the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, driving confidence and fostering innovation in the pursuit of sustainable growth," adds Pooja.
Implementation and effective onboarding key to adoption
Philippine customer, Yondu, implemented HubSpot almost immediately, with weekly onboarding sessions that empowered end users to become self-sufficient. “Beyond just teaching us the different functionalities on the platform, our onboarding specialist took the time to understand what we wanted to achieve as well as our existing processes, and customised the onboarding experience accordingly,” shares Ray Robin Fortuno, Corporate Strategy and Innovations Manager.
The path beyond paid ads: what other channels have SMBs overlooked?
The data speaks for itself - social media marketing is king across Asia. 72% of businesses considering social media to be important in a digital marketing strategy, and a further 39% considering it to be the most important channel.
While there is a clear focus on social media as the dominant channel across the region, there is also an opportunity to unlock value from other organic channels.
Channels presenting an opportunity for greater testing and utilisation in the region include email and influencer marketing - less than half of businesses in Asia see these channels as important.
Is email still a valuable channel?
Less than 40% of Asian businesses identify email an important digital channel and, when used correctly, email remains a powerful channel to:
- Build relationships and deepen trust through right time, authentic and personalised (and not just 'Hi [first name] outreach.
- Boost awareness by keeping your company and your services top-of-mind for the moment when your prospects are ready to engage.
- Educate customers by sharing relevant, and valuable content or assets with prospects.
- Nurture and delight your customers with content that can help them succeed in their goals.
With the rise of AI, marketers can leverage the efficiencies AI brings to A/B testing in a meaningful, and scalable way. Lucy Alexander, Senior Manager, Rep-Led Demand Email Team at HubSpot, shares that her team "is seeing promising early results from testing deeper personalisation using AI to nurture leads. Some of our early tests show 2-3x increase in conversion rates. Using AI, we are able to understand a lead's industry, job role, potential challenges, and goals and craft highly personalised messages and offer recommendations that speak directly to this person's needs. Best of all, we are able to do this at scale."
Email, done right, empowers brands to cultivate a highly engaged and warm database, building trust and connection so they are top of mind when their audience are ready to take the conversation to the next stage.
Owned social media is huge in Asia, but what about creators?
Another channel that brands may not be leveraging to its full potential (yet) is influencer marketing or creators. Although social media tools are being used widely, most of companies are using social platforms to track engagement with their own brands, for organic content, or to run social ads.
In Asia, influencers and creators are huge. The value of the influencer marketing industry shot up from $638 million in 2019 to around $13.8 billion between 2019 and 2021. And it’s predicted to grow four times larger to $2.59 billion by next year.
Consumers view influencers as more trustworthy and relatable than other kinds of endorsements - and today's buyer looks to individuals they feel they know and trust to influence what they spend money on. When partnered with creators in the right way, brands can leverage this powerful channel to achieve a more credible and trusted opinion. 
While there may be a lack of mega and macro educational creators in the B2B space, there is still value in tapping on micro-influencers. Brandon Huang, Principal Marketing Manager and YouTube Creator Program Lead at HubSpot, shares, “Oftentimes, the best creators I’ve worked with are the ones that I found early before they gained popularity. You develop a great relationship with them because you believed in them early on and if you offer a positive working experience, they’ll be loyal to you and give you their best work and effort. They know that your success is their success. This also means providing fair compensation and even tapping them into additional opportunities if they arise.”
Additionally, solutions like LinkedIn's Thought Leadership Ads allow for brands to leverage happy customers and advocates to build equity. In the B2B space, B2B influencers deliver more significant impact when compared to traditional brand-only marketing approaches, with a huge opportunity for brands to improve lead generation metrics and realise more after-sales value.