The Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region has seen tremendous economic growth in the past decade thanks to consumer modernization and internet penetration. According to ComScore, and as seen in the chart below, APJ accounts for 41% of the total online population – the largest of any region in the world.
Source: ComScore Southeast Asia Digital Future in Focus 2013
With consumers accessing new channels and devices to interact with brands, it is imperative that marketers understand consumer research and buying habits and optimize marketing efforts accordingly.
The pure scale of the APJ online market provides an opportunity for marketers to grow their customer base substantially when targeting via online channels. Two recent Skai clients, AsiaPac and an internet services organization, saw this opportunity and partnered with us to reach the lucrative APJ audience via search and social marketing.
AsiaPac was tasked with helping one of its clients, a leading Japanese fashion online retailer, drive more targeted online engagement and increase overall conversions. In order to reach its online consumer base, the AsiaPac team turned to Skai to help build, manage, and optimize a paid search program.
With the number of unique searchers in each country in the Asia-Pacific region growing by an average of 7% year-over-year from 2012 to 2013, according to ComScore, the agency knew SEM was a reliable, growing channel that could help meet its goals. Skai enabled the team to build a strong, well-performing keyword list, implement bid policies to maximize cost effectiveness, and quickly create custom messaging across multiple channels and devices. By doing so, the online retailers’ sales and revenue increased by 2.5X and new member sign up by 2.4X, while overall costs decreased.
While search was the answer to AsiaPac’s challenges, another Skai client, an internet services organization, sought to drive continued consumer interaction by leveraging Facebook advertising to feature select products for sale/auction on its site.
Research reveals that social captures the largest percentage of consumers’ time online in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, Facebook continues to be the number one social network with 3 of its top 15 markets in the Asia-Pacific region. As you can see below, marketers in the region have noticed this trend and are following suit with social network ad spending in Asia-Pacific being the second highest among all regions — over $8.5 million expected in 2016.
Understanding that Facebook advertising could increase exposure of their products and seeking to achieve its ROI goals on high-converting products, the advertiser turned to Skai.
The team leveraged Skai Social’s ad creation process to quickly set up ads, identify other highly relevant audience segments, measure overall campaign performance, and optimize appropriately. Within 48 hours of launching its campaigns, they saw product sales go up 90X, generating more than 4,000 likes and 600 comments for one particular promoted product on Facebook.
The growth in search and social usage among consumers in the APJ region has stimulated marketer demand across these channels. Skai’s unique search and social solutions have helped advertisers surpass their performance goals and drive increased interest, traffic, and in turn, sales for key products.
To learn more about these and other Skai success stories around the globe, visit Kenshoo.com/Case-Studies and, to explore the opportunities to profit at the intersection of search and social, visit Kenshoo.com/Intersections.
