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Attention: Business builders & marketers
Why do digital marketing campaigns fail?
Digital marketing in Singapore and around the world has undergone huge changes lately.
From iOS14 privacy update, increasing competition to changes in A. I algorithm in Facebook ads and the rise of Tiktok; it has been a wild ride.
Amidst the sea of changes, one thing remains—one that few people understand, even today.
This is why the National Advertisers Association estimated that 75% of digital media investment, or $20bil is squandered.
Few people truly understand that the other side of a digital campaign is people. We are marketing to real people, not Google, not Facebook or Instagram.
While trying to game the algorithm or apply the latest SEO hack, marketers miss out on one crucial thing.
Their ads make people feel ignorant.
First, the tone of their ad makes people feel ignorant.
A lot of digital marketers are taught to use pain or problem to get people to sign up. It’s true that people respond better to negative emotions because humans are loss averse (Daniel Kahneman, 1979). There’s nothing wrong with using pain or problem.
However, the issue is when you do a pain-based ad, the tone is condescending. Let me give you an example- Tuition industry.
Most of the time, the painpoint for tuition business is “poor results in school” and marketers will mostly try to leverage this angle to promote their tuition service.
Shown below is a typical Facebook ad speaking to parents. It may get lots of traffic and clicks but has no leads. Why?
Without knowing, the advertiser is insinuating that firstly, 1)The child is not smart enough to figure it out on his own. Secondly, 2)The parent is also not smart because she has wasted thousands of dollars as well her kid’s time with no results.
When your ad implies that the child is stupid and needs tuition, you will not generate any leads because no one thinks their child is stupid.
Sure, you try to dig into the pain and use negative emotions to trigger the need for tuition but the ad will not convert, even if parents feel the pain.
The reason as you might have guessed, is that the ad breaks rapport.
Would you buy from someone who implies that you are stupid?
No, you must know, like and trust a business in order to buy from them.
This is the rule of conversion optimization and marketing.
It may be true that your target audience has spent a lot of budget and have not gotten results but you don’t want to condemn people for this.
This is what you should do instead- tell them it is not their fault.
“It is not your fault that your experience has not managed to produce results so far. Every center claims that they have the best tuition. Your child has potential but it is not being unleashed because tuition centers have the one-size-fits-all approach.”
Something to that effect.
This is what politicians do, isn’t it? They say that it is not your fault that you cannot get a job; it is not your fault that you have to send out so many resumes with no replies. It is the education system’s fault.
Do you see what the politicians are doing? When you tell people its not their fault, it shows empathy and creates the likeability. As marketers, we also have to know what kind of underlying message we convey when we say something.
2nd way they make people feel ignorant is they use fluff
A lot of marketers use fluff in their marketing. They put in big words to sound impressive but there is no basis.
If you use strong words such as “revolutionary product”, you need to be able to back it up. If you keep making empty claims, you lose trust. Your target audience tends to filter whatever you say.
| Negative examples | Positive examples |
|---|---|
|
We have a groundbreaking, revolutionary, cutting-edge product. |
Jump Fit Boots’ patented spring system (IPS) softens each step
you take by up to 80%. |
|
We are the best digital marketing agency in Singapore & JB |
We are a Meta partner, Google partner agency and a PSG pre-approved vendor for digital marketing solutions by IMDA |
|
Property market is hot now |
The private residential property index shot up 3.9% to 144.1,
from 138.7 in Q4 2017. |
|
We have high integrity |
Our nett prices are listed here for your perusal. No hidden charges and surprises along the way. |
Consumers are very well-educated these days. They can see through poor arguments and fluff and gimmicks.
Marketers need to up their game and be well researched. There must be stats and studies to back up the claims.
On top of that, your explanation has to be logical, else people can see through the gap and call BS on your business.
You don’t want to think of people as stupid. You want to be factual but at the same time impactful in doing copywriting.
Third way people feel ignorant is when they are talked down to
For example. Did you know that the bank savings account provides a very low interest rate of 0.X percent? You probably know that. Did you know that most Singaporeans already use social media and mobile devices? You probably also know all that as well.
A lot of ads tell people things that they already know and assume people are stupid. You have to communicate with your audience at the right level.
In any given market, you have your audiences at different awareness levels. The different awareness levels include: Unaware, Problem-aware, Solution-aware and Product-aware.
For example, in the digital marketing industry in Singapore; if our target audience is unaware, we need to do a lot of education, such as telling them about the difference between search engine marketing and social media marketing. etc.
If our market is very aware, our conversation will revolve around technical terms like pixels, retargeting, and split-testing. You need to identify the awareness level so you can speak at the right level.
Most marketers are talking down on their audience, like they are talking to children.
Today’s consumers may even know as much as the vendors because they do a lot of research. Information is available everywhere. They can research your price, your competitors, your market.
So you need to speak at their level.
Introducing our method:
how we solve the problem
Research and deep-dive
Many digital marketers like to jump right into setting up the campaign. This is why they craft ads that look and sounds fluffy.
Abraham Lincoln said, “If I have 8 hours to cut down a tree, I will spend 6 hours sharpening the axe.” Research is the equivalent of sharpening the axe in digital marketing!
Without research, you may be climbing up the wrong tree. You don’t want to realize it only when you are at the top of the tree.
This is more common than one would think because marketers tend to bring their biases and assumptions into an ad campaign.
In the case of digital marketing, not doing research can be costly. It means spending 5 or 6 figures in ad budget on Google & Facebook only to realize that the message doesn’t resonate with the target audience.
We are one of the few agencies that actually sit down with you for an intense 2hours onboarding meeting to develop an intricate understanding of your business and target audience. We then fit the insights into our framework to develop customized ads for your business.
Our Unique Framework: 7x formula
You already know that speaking to your audience at the wrong awareness level is one of the reasons why campaigns fail. We have all seen ads on Facebook that make us cringe, bore us to tears and make us download ad blockers.
None of this would have happened if we strategically created ads that speak to our audiences at their level.
With that in mind, we have designed a framework known as the 7x formula embodying three success principles.
Precision
We know for a fact that the bulk of Facebook audiences is problem-aware, whereas people searching on Google are solution-aware. Furthermore, in any given market, about 60% of the audiences are problem-aware(Chet Holmes, 2008); hence the principle of precision is that we create 2 problem-aware ads and 1 solution-aware ad at the start of the campaign. Of course, it may differ based on the insights on awareness level we have gathered in the research stage.
Diversity
Instead of just changing headlines or ad images like most marketers do, we vary our ads’ awareness level and appeal from the outset. A diverse set of ads allow us to gather important data about the target audiences while generating conversions. Once we know which type of ad works best in the market, we focus your budget on the area with the best results and scale the campaign. Instead of making assumptions, we let data tell us the answer.
Continuity
Gone are the days whereby you manually carry out all the optimizations by toggling ads at various timings everyday. Based on Facebook & Google’s best practice, each adset should consist of 3-5 ads. This is most ideal for the platforms’ A.I machine learning. Reason being that you need to provide the machine with enough variables to fiddle with so it can show different ads to a different audience within your targeting settings.
Our brand experience
PROVEN TO WORK IN ALMOST
EVERY INDUSTRY IN SINGAPORE!
Anyone can give you promises
We give you proof
Who Are We
Integrated marketing agency
Interested in running Youtube ads? Instagram ads? Our team works with all major advertising platforms and ensures that your audiences see a coherent message across channels. We even set up retargeting to ‘follow’ the same user everywhere while keeping advertising costs low through fluid budget allocation to maximize overall ROI!
Performance marketing agency
Forget about SEO, blog posting or other random online marketing services that do not work. As an agency with arguably the strongest performance track records in Singapore, we know what it takes to get leads and customers. Don’t take our word for it! Check out our myriads of testimonials and case studies and see the sales results for yourself.
PSG pre-approved vendor
We have been made PSG pre-approved vendor for digital marketing solutions by the government, which came after many rounds of evaluation & screening. This is a testament to the rigor of our digital marketing process. As a result, our clients receive up to 70% subsidies for using our solutions. We also make it a point to achieve 3-5x ROI for them so they essentially enjoy the best of both worlds! You can learn more by visiting our PSG grants eligibility page or simply fill in the enquiry form below to learn more.
What we do
Lead Generation
If you are a Service-Based business with a strong sales team eager for a stream of qualified leads, We think we’d be a perfect fit for you.
Search Engine Marketing
SEM is more than just media buying. We are one of the few agencies that help with conversion rate optimization to boost your ROI.
Social Media Marketing
From precise targeting to machine learning, we help you harness the full potential of Facebook advertising to bring sales results.
WHY ICE CUBE MARKETING?
Local team that your business loves
You get to meet the digital marketing specialist & consultant handling your account who will be your point of contact throughout. You will not be left wondering if your work is outsourced to someone overseas who doesn’t understand your local business & audience at all. From video to design to copywriting, we do it all inhouse. Our efficiency allows us to provide very affordable solutions for SMEs! Imagine having a team brainstorm a whole suite of unique, proven, intriguing and attention-grabbing ad angles for your business.
Google and Facebook partner
While most other marketers/agencies either focus only on campaign optimization or content creation, the key to a successful campaign lies in combining the science & art of marketing.
Science: As a Google & Facebook ads partner agency, we work with a partner manager to implement all the optimization best practices while making sure your ads are approved and running
Art: We are good in ads copywriting. To uphold our standards, we administer a copywriting test for all job candidates with a pass rate of 26%.
We walk the talk
Can you trust someone who doesn’t know how to do their own marketing? 70% of our clients know us through our digital presence. From content generation to lead generation, we walk the talk. Check out the webinar that we ran with Facebook detailing the latest digital marketing strategies for SMEs. Don’t stop there. We give away tons of other tips at our blog and Youtube Channel. Whether or not we are a good fit, we hope to add value to you in your digital marketing journey. We share our secret recipes in our videos for free every week. Don’t forget to subscribe!
what our clients have to say
IceCube team is driven by performance. They took time to analyse our previous campaign and to understand our business and requirements as the first step of engagement. They were confident in achieving our targets and have delivered a 35% lower cost per lead and helped us in recruiting more targeted potential franchisees. It was a collaborative and productive experience with IceCube and we are happy to recommend their service to any business who is interested in generating results
立奇成功的提升了我们网页参访人流量和逗留率，並且让我们排在数个搜索关键字的前端
Through optimization, Ice Cube Marketing successfully increased our webpages’ traffic and viewing duration, as well as helped us get found on Google Search engine results page for numerous crucial keywords, thereby contributing to an increase in our sales.
Ricky and Troy have been very responsive and helpful. They clearly have a good grasp and understanding of the digital marketing would I would recommend them for anyone that needs a leg up in this area.
5 STEPS TO FINALLY INCREASE SALES BY 20% WITH DIGITAL MARKETING
Remote Selling is the new Digital Marketing. Covid-19 has accelerated change in consumer behaviour. Learn more about ensuing opportunities to increase sales and overtake existing market leaders by switching up your approach.
FAQ
There is no minimum spend required by Facebook & Google. We recommend a certain amount of budget that would allow us to achieve a good ROI, depending on your industry. For example, B2B business would have a higher cost per lead than mass-market businesses. Our solution is made affordable for SMEs and comes with a trial to minimize risk.
The proof is in the pudding. You will have to look at the track record of the firm you are considering. Granted, marketers may exaggerate their past results or show only favourable data, making it hard for you to discern the best digital marketing agency. While you cannot speak to each of their clients to verify results, the next best thing you can do is check out video testimonials like the ones you see at the top of this page.
Instead of hastily engaging a digital marketing agency, you might want to take a step back. If you are just getting started, we suggest that you check out our Youtube channel. There are tons of free educational videos up there. They come in bite sizes of 5 to 10mins each, so you are sure to get lots of insights from them without having to spend too much time. If you would like to get specific advice for your business, feel free to fill in the form below to request a free consultation.
There is no best channel. The best approach would be to mix and match based on data. It is further explained in this video which explains the concept of channel fluidity.
CLAIM YOUR NO-OBLIGATION FREE DIGITAL STRATEGY CONSULTATION
In the free consultation, find out the following for your business:
- Which channel is best for you: Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Google etc?
- How best to allocate your budget across different channels
- Is digital paid acquisition suitable for your business
- How to maximize the online sales potential with a landing page
