Malaysia is known as one of the countries that contain numerous number of online business or more known as E-commerce that own by the citizen of Malaysia.

#1. So What is E-commerce?

We only know the basic knowledge of e-commerce which is it is an online business managed by a person or a small group of people. While e-commerce or electronic commerce actually means the act of buy and sells of products or services.

The process occurs are divided into four reasons or ways it’s either known as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-consumer, and consumer-to-business.

E-commerce is also known as E-business and E-tail. E-tail comes from the terms called transactional processes that are used mainly for online shopping.

Have you ever wonder where does the idea of creating online business or e-commerce come about, who started this trend and which e-commerce brand is the first brand that tends to make it as a successful business and becomes legit in the business industry?

The History of E-commerce

This is where you can get all the answers to all of your wonders.

The first e-commerce was traced back then during the 1960s, people who have to deal with businesses they used to use Electronic Data Exchange or more known as EDI.

EDI worked as a platform to transfer document or data from one system to the other. Nineteen years later which is during the year of 1979 there’s this one institute called American National Standards institute produced another platform which is the improvise version if EDI called ASC X12 and acted as the universal standard for business to transfer documents verbally or using electronic networks.

It was a brilliant product created by the institute and being used for about a year after quite some time, where people were using the ASC X12 to exchange data and electronic document.

Right, a year after ASC X12 was launched they improvised e-commerce to be better than it was and multifunctional.

SAN JOSE, CA – JANUARY 22: A sign is posted in front of the eBay headquarters on January 22, 2014 in San Jose, California. eBay Inc. will report fourth quarter earnings today after the closing bell. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The earliest company that use e-commerce as a platform for their business are eBay and Amazon. These two companies provide services for users or consumers to buy things online even all the small things that you can get from the family store you can get in the eBay and Amazon or the other name is an online business. It has been used until today by all around the world.

The e-commerce has been accepted by all countries, even in Malaysia we have several numbers of e-commerce that is already established, for example, is Zalora. my, Lazada.my, and Shopee.my.

There is a long list of e-commerce business in Malaysia. E-commerce in Malaysia has widened its range to another level where even normal people can use this platform to create their own small business for their own company. They also don’t need to use a lot of costs to start the business.

But the problem and issue that they will face will always be like, everyone can open their own business but can they maintain it?

That’s the problem here.

Group of cartoon business people holding gears

Let’s go through this problem where everyone can start their own business but how to maintain one and make it into a successful one. At the very beginning, before you start dealing with e-commerce make sure you make a deep research on the things that you wanted to do.

Here’s more explanation on what e-commerce contain and what are the methods that you have to choose for your online business and how to maintain one business by using these methods.

There are two types of methods that are well known by all the successful entrepreneurs around the world including Malaysia, both of these methods come under digital marketing.

Digital marketing is a very wide word that will need a lot of explanation and elaboration. There are about 10 methods under digital marketing but this article has chosen two of the most popular and high recommended method for the e-commerce business out there who is planning on opening their own business but don’t know how to promote it.

The first one is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing method, this method is first used and recognized by a guy named John Audette in the year of 1997. The second one is the one that most of the big and small business been using which is social media marketing.

There’s no wrong in choosing any one of these methods, both give a good impact on your money and one of it may need to use a big cost, to begin with.

Continue reading to know more about e-commerce and the method that gives a good and successful tactic to your online business.

#2. What is Digital Marketing?

Before we talk deeper about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing, let’s go through one by one about digital marketing.

Once you understand generally about digital marketing it will be easier for you to understand the terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media marketing.

History of Digital Marketing

Basically, during the 1960s there is no technology and people cannot contact or connect with each other, even the business at that time they only have shops or any pop-up store.

They stand with the only word of mouth but after a while, in 1971 there’s this one guy named Guglielmo Marconi decided to create a radio.

As we all know you can advertise your product through radio all you need is a product and money to pay the radio station.

But that’s not the only history of it, there is another story about a guy who is the first human used to send email to himself because no one at that time uses email to connect with each other.

But we don’t really have the accurate reference about both of them yet but we have the almost perfect answer for when did the first digital marketing started to know by people and used by the whole world until today.

This has started when they created a search engine called Archie and it was an index page for FTP sites. Archie was the first search engine that been used by everyone who lives around the era of the 70s but it is not as good as Google since it was the first FTP sites that were created that time.

After 20 years, Yahoo has become the next search engine and well known by everyone who lived above the 90s it also works way better than Archie.

Around the same year, there is another search engine company brought up their name. At the same time, the words search engine optimization were produced. And this is where the cookie was used to “remember” users last search on the internet so that it will be easier for the search engine to guess what the user trying to think.

In the year 2000, most of the start-ups’ search engine were crashed and that stops some of the company. But it didn’t stop there, it comes back with better use of the internet, where this is the real start of digital marketing. It has become the platform of people making money.

Something called “Googleads” was released in the year of 2000. This gave a very big impact to business savvy, Googleads gives a lot of benefit to them where it turned out to be a platform the start where people with a business spend their money on the internet to make their venture becomes successful. Continue reading this article to get more knowledge about what’s in digital marketing and what are the ten methods in it?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the method of ways, tactics and techniques that are used to increase traffic on your website. Traffic here means the number of visitors in your website, from there you can see either your website are interesting or not to the society or your target audience that makes them keeps on coming to your sites.

The most visited website will be at the top on the first page of Google search, Bing, Yahoo and many more this is where SEO will help you in getting at the top.

Below are the examples of ways to “rank” your website:

On-page SEO – Concentrate on all of the content that provided “on the page” when scrolling the website. Make a research on the keyword that usually searched by the user, you can easily help the user to use your website because the keywords that they used or search for matches with your content and topics.

The more search leads to your website will make your websites turn out to be at the top of rank at the top on search engine results pages (SERPs) those questions produce.

Off-page SEO – This is another type of SEO where it focuses more on the activity that happens in the “off the page” when looking to optimize your website. You might be wondering, what is the activity that is not on your website that can affect your ranking?

The answers to all your wonders are in inbound links or more known as backlinks. This is where the numbers of publishers or writers and the relative authority of them that link to you plays an important role. This is one of the ways for you to get to the top.

Where the publishers that linked to you because of the same topic or related keywords that you have. By linking to each other in the form of writing guest posts, exchanging links and generating external attention, with that you can help your websites to be at the top of the ranking page or SERPs.

Technical SEO – Lastly this is the SEO that plays a part on the backend of your website and how it is being coded. Without technical SEO the pages will runs slowly.

Things that Technical SEO does is image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization. This is the reason why your website can runs smoothly without having to wait for it to buffer to come out with the content of the sites. This is important for ranking factor in the concern of search engines like Yahoo and Google.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is used to gain traffic, brand awareness and this term signify the creation and advancement of substantial resources to produce brand mindfulness, traffic development, lead age, and clients. The channels that can have an influence in your substance showcasing technique include blog posts, e-books and whitepapers, and infographics.

More explanation of blog posts, e-books or online books and whitepapers, and infographics:

Blog posts

Writing and publishing content helps you in providing content for your clients’ sites. With this, you can explain more about the industry that you are involved in. readers can understand more about what is the thing that you try to sell.

They can get a clearer image and information on the things that they want to buy.

It’s true that they might already make a research on what to buy but with blog posts, they can easily understand the products and can get it from the backlinks that inserted in the post.

E-books and whitepapers

E-books and whitepapers are equivalent to a long text of content taken from the writers or publishers of books and they are one of the ways to attract the readers to buy the book. E-books usually don’t post the whole story from the book, near the climax readers will not have the access to the e-book anymore instead they have to buy the book from the publisher or writer.

Infographics

Infographic is one of the ways for the brand to give information to their readers that prefer to understand things by looking at a picture than to read lengthy paragraphs. Infographics provide readers image or mind map for the readers to make them understand better even if they still didn’t understand the article.

Lately, this method is being used by the established and start-ups entrepreneurs to increase the traffic, generates an audience and create brand awareness through social media.

This is one of the easiest ways to reach out to your product’s user or buyers. We all know that almost most of the people in the world manage to have their own social media account.

From this, all the entrepreneurs make full use of it to reach their user easily in case if there’s a problem with the product or direct buying instead of going to the website of the brand or through any other platforms.

Example of social media account that provides the services for the entrepreneurs are as stated below:

Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
Snapchat
Pinterest

It is easier to manage if you have the apps that can help in managing or scheduling the post.

It is the apps that can be used to manage your account by posting certain post to various social media platform at the same time. The apps also provide scheduling time for the user to post their content on the specific date, day and month that they already set from the apps.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click usually used, to get to the top of the rank but it used a lot of money somehow not all the clicks are worth it.

Pay Per CIick works in a way of putting money to the account and each clicks from the user will deduct your money but bear in mind that once you are running out of money your account won’t be at the top anymore.

The pros of pay per click, the “ad” sign makes the website looks legit and always at the top of the rank as long as the account still contains money.

The cons are not all the clicks are valuable some of it might be a mistake from the user. It can also work in social media.

Below is the example of social media that provide the pay per click service:

Paid ads on Facebook

For Facebook it works a bit different compared to other social media platform. Facebook charge in the form of people who watched the video or click it. Every click will deduct the amount of money provided in the account.

Twitter ads Campaign

Twitter ads campaign works by clients can pay to put a progression of presents or profile identifications on the news sources of a particular crowd, all committed to achieving a particular objective for your business. This objective can be site traffic, more Twitter adherents, tweet commitment, or even application downloads.

Sponsored Messages by LinkedIn

LinkedIn makes the sponsored messages linked straight to the LinkedIn account based on their industry and background account so that the user can reach straight to the account that comes out as sponsored messages on the LinkedIn.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based type of marketing.

You get the profit or so-called commission for promoting other people products or their services. Example of affiliate marketing is as stated:

Post affiliate links from the social media account
Make video ads through Youtube Partners Program

Native Marketing

Local promoting is the utilization of paid advertisements that match the look, feel and capacity of the media group in which they show up.

Local promotions are regularly found in web-based social networking sustains, or as suggested content on a site page. Not at all like presentation promotions or pennant advertisements, local advertisements do not generally look like advertisements.

They look like a piece of the publication stream of the page. The way to local publicizing is that it is non-problematic, it opens the reader to promoting content without standing out in contrast to everything else.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is one of the marketing methods that use technology to proceed with promoting the product.

Benefits that brand owner can get from using this method is, it can help in managing the marketing process and gives multifunctional campaigns, a variety type of channels and the best part is it works automatically.

Brands that used this method usually in need of it because it can target customers by sending messages through email, website, social media and text messages, everything works automatically based on workflows or instructions.

Workflows are sets by templates and custom create which is you create it from the scratch or re-edit from the past campaign so that they can get better results.

Email Marketing

The basic explanation of email marketing is a brand promoting their products or services that they provided through email. But through email, a brand creates chemistry with their customers or target audience.

Imagine getting a text from your mutual that is how email marketing works they are trying to make their customer feels like they have ties with the brand.

This is because all of the buyers are human too, they love the feel of connected and this is what those brands out there are trying to do. Keep updating them about the new products in-store, the upcoming sales and many more.

This method somehow makes the customer feels like their existence is being appreciated. But this method is being questioned about its benefits and pros when actually it gives a lot of benefits too.

The benefits that you will get is it is the right communication channel for businesses, drive revenue and ROI, cost less than the traditional method, build customer relationships and increases brand awareness.

There are a lot of big brands that have been used this method for quite sometimes, below are the shortlist of the brand that uses this method:

Marriot
Uber
Apollo Education Group

Online PR

Online PR plays a role in the part of making your business existence looks legit and increase your online business presence.

This is where you can see that Online PR mostly have a lot of connection with people that always write news and long stories such as journalists, bloggers and social media influencers and certain people that choose to submit online their press releases to get high-quality backlinks and tags in social media.

Inbound Marketing

This is one of the methods in business that was created for the sake of attracting customers with good content and good experiences created specifically fits their shoes.

Its strategy are including a numerous number of platforms and different types of content to get the customer’s attention to click or go to your websites.

But inbound marketing is too weak to stand alone because, in other words, inbound marketing is a place where people create and give the idea to attract customer.

To continue until it works, inbound marketing needs to keep on give support and positive vibes until they become your customer. It is a tiring but working process because it is a slowly but surely method.

#3. The best and working methods for e-commerce?

I have chosen two out of ten methods that are the method that has been used by a lot of successful entrepreneurs out there. The first one is search engine optimization or more known as SEO.

The other is social media marketing. Above have already explained what does both of them contained.

But here I’m going to explain the first part, which is “why you should choose search engine optimization?” and the second part is “why social media marketing?”

#4. Background of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization was first used on 1990, it was first identified as just one of the school project and it is just text-based where it was called “archived” and also shared File Transfer Protocol or known as FTP.

Because of the length parameter, the name has changed to “Archie”. As time passed by search engine optimization has developed day by day and become one of the most important things that most of the business depend on it to make their business are known just by using the website.

Even in the current year which is 2019 people are competing with each other while discovering the new methods the search engine optimization.

New method here means, on every year or months there will always be a new method discovered by these people who like to make a research on new ways in doing search engine optimization.

#5. Why Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the process that you used to make your website become legit and eligible in Google.

SEO also helps you in making your website as a search-friendly where in other words it is easily found in the Google search ranking or it will at the top of the page and at the earliest page.

Being at the top of the page actually make the user more confident use your website as their reference because they always have the thought of the first one is the legit one.

GoogleAds can do the same but it uses a whole lot of money where you will experience losing money drastically. It is not that loses money but you invest a lot to the non-organic user where not all of the click is actually from your buyer or reader some of them are just passing by.

#6. Benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) gives a lot of benefits to the people that been using it since before it has established, the list of benefits that it gives to the business owner out there are way too many to be listed but below are some of the benefits that people who were wondering about what are the pros that they will get by using search engine optimization as their the method of marketing their brand and also create brand awareness to the user of their product or services.

If you are looking for SEO company to help your business you can go to Sterrific Agency to enjoy all the benefits of SEO. The benefits are as below:

1. SEO helps you in making your business website visible in the Search Engines

Having a website does not mean you have a successful business or your website is well-known by all the technologies used. Some people might feel like once you have a website means you already fulfil your customer need.

There is a truth in that statement.

By having a website, you are actually fulfilling the need of your customer by providing them with some information about what are you going to offer them, explanation about your product and help them in the process of buying and choosing your products easily.

If you are still wondering on how can search engine optimization helps you in making your business established, well-know and becomes the customers’ number one favourite website.

Search engine optimization helps the business that comes with the website by making sure when their potential customer is looking for specific things that they want, they only have to insert the right keywords in the search engine.

This is why using and making a research on keywords is the most important thing in the goals of making your website become user-friendly where when the user is looking for the products, your website will come at the top on the first page

2. Heavy Traffic for Your Website

Having a heavy traffic website is one of the happiest thing or news for the brand owner or company. When you tend to come out to be at the top of Google’s first page your website is literally going to be the most visited website for the first keyword that the customers look for through the Google’s Search engine.

To be in that position without using, spend or invest a lot of money you have to use this SEO method. It also gives you what you wanted and you will easily get to know as an established company.

3. Trust and Credibility

Being at the top gives you a big credibility. This is the reason why, as a normal artificial intelligence user you usually google almost of the stuff that makes you wonder or stays in your mind for quite some times and you couldn’t come out with an answer.

Let’s move forward, when you start to Google the keywords, you will always have this thing in yourself that you trust the first page that comes out to the first page.

This is how SEO helps your business in gaining and buying trust from the customers to buy your product or to use the services that you provide for them.

4. SEO is Budget Friendly

Opening a new business will somehow use a huge amount of money.

Having a business is one thing and having a website is another thing where you have to pay for the domain and features (if you are using the paid one) this will incur a lot of money in the business which leads to you have a small amount left for the marketing.

This is SEO will help you but if you have a big budget and a lot amount of money you can get to the top just by using GoogleAds and it will stay there as long as you still have money in the account and after you run out of it, it will be gone and cannot be seen at the top anymore but with SEO you can use that money to be at the top and it will stay there for a while without your money being deducted.

5. Create Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is a step to which the objective market perceives a brand. This alludes to how comfortable your clients are with your item or administration.

Search Engine Optimization guarantees that your item is effectively found via web index locales through standard and natural inquiry. When you stay at the top of the rank, Internet clients will have the option to see you more.

This prompts a higher inclination for your URL to be clicked, which leads the clients to your site. One of the advantages of SEO for your business is building up your image’s mindfulness considerably further.

This is why when you open up a business make sure you are aware of this Brand Awareness title.

We have to admit that before having a website usually most of the brands use social media for their marketing or creates branding to attract or buy their target audience’s attention.

After having a business with a website using SEO in marketing can help you in gaining followers to your social media account too.

The way SEO help is when your website is at the top, with that you already creates your branding, teenagers will definitely go to social media on what you are sharing there because the website is not a daily updated platform but social media is.

In the unconscious site where when you are focusing on the marketing of your product, you’re actually helping the marketing of your other platform too such as Instagram, Facebook and twitter.

7. Improve the speed of your website

The speed of your web loading plays an important role in your digital marketing. There’s this fact that with the slow speed you actually lose 4.3% customer on every 2 seconds.

The time the customer spends on waiting for your website to load actually makes them tired of waiting and go to another website without even looking at your website. That is a big loss to your company.

8. Gives a healthy competition

Registering yourself to be in this industry, you actually already knew that you are going to have a competition with other entrepreneurs out there.

Just by having a website at the top of the rank makes you a little different from other competitor and more known by the same target audience that you share with your competitor.

With the help of Search Engine Optimization of getting you to the top, you are aware that you are winning the competition compare to the other brand that uses the traditional marketing method.

Continue this article with the other digital marketing method that is known by the name of social media marketing.

So, what is social media marketing?

Follow this article to know which one is the right method that you can use for your digital marketing. At the end of this article, you will be provided with a clearer vision of the difference between Search Engine Optimization with Social Media marketing. You can make the decision at the end of this article.

Social media marketing is one of the well-known digital marketing that is used by most of the entrepreneurs around the world, including Malaysia.

Social media marketing in Malaysia gives a different impact to the business. For the start-ups, they are highly recommended to use this method to bring their business in the digital market industry.

Once upon a time, social media was not counted as one of the digital marketing platforms and it is because people back then thought that social media is just a trend that will die soon and gives zero benefits to the user.

But too bad they put the wrong assumptions to social media and one of the social media which is Facebook the opportunist begin with attracting the attention of the audience.

Social media that provide and give a business platform to the start-ups are as for example is Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. These Social Media provide a special segment for the business to promote their products or services by paying the advertisements segment and to do that you have to change your account to a business account.

Keep your eyes on this article to know about how can social media in Malaysia become one of digital marketing platform out of 10?

In the early 70s and 80s social media was being used only for the sake of lovers to contact each other. They spend most of their time on sites that provide dating sites and online forums where they can talk to each other about the interest that they are sharing also some of them found the love of their life in there. The examples of the sites are Six Degrees, LiveJournal, and Friendster.

After some time the world was told about “dot-com” which it was something new at that time that people can make full use of the internet because it allowed the internet to become one of the viable marketing tools.

It started with the use of search marketing to prompting brands creates websites to making a website known online or the existence of websites become clear.

We all know that there are thousands of websites in the search engines. This is why making the existence of the website become known is a thing to everyone until today.

The example of a search engine that exists that time was Google, Yahoo and MSN. One of them developed to be a Search Engine Company that is MSN. The companies are becoming a Search Engine Optimization strategies to stay first on the first page.

As time passes by, there’s another term was created and it is called web 2.0, it is called web 2.0 is because of it’s just a renew name that is used to describe the next generation of the World Wide Web.

Web 1.0 only used the static page of the website. But web 2.0 improved it to a more interactive website where with HTML are now working with more javascript and more plugins that make it runs smoother and become easy to use and understand.

Web 2.0 has helped a lot of people out there just by improving the uses of the internet. Where now it is easier to contact or dealing with the manager of the website. Now we can even have a chat with the shops asking about their products or services and any other questions.

Between 2003 to 2004, here comes the start of social media. The arrival was shocking almost the whole world where the first group to arrive was Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

These social media provide a series of online games and they are varieties of it. Almost all generation is playing the games including the parents, grandmother and grandfather or whoever that registered their own account. Because of the heavy traffic on social media, they realized that they can make a profit out of it.

All of the first batches of social media turns out to be a platform for people looking for a job and they also provide job for the non-working woman, people who want to start a business, and people who need a side job due to the economy in Malaysia.

Almost 99% of Malaysian have their own smartphone that is used mainly for their Social Media account. Each and every one of them has their very own Instagram, Twitter, and the lists go on.

This is also one of the reasons why the business industry is mixed up with the social media which some people are calling it as their personal or private life and somehow it feels weird how can it work.

It is also because they want to reach out straight to their customer or more known as the target audience. Every method of digital marketing has its own special way and steps to help you to reach your goals or target which is to make your business become successful and well-known by your target audience.

Below are the steps that you have to focus on in taking this route so that your target and goals are easier to reach.

Read each one of it very precisely.

Strategy

This might sound easy but it is the core part where you have to be rational in whatever you are doing and the decision that you are going to make. Keep in your mind to always be rational!

And create a strategy before start doing it. Sounds unrelatable but it is relatable, keep reading to understand better.

Before having the vision of a successful business think about how are you going to fill up your social media? What content are you going to share with your audience? Who are you going to pay to promote your products? Who you should reach out to, to contact the social media influencers?

This is what we call as social media strategy and you need it to make it to your goals.

Next is set your goals!

Think about which social media can fulfil your need and what is your main goals. For example, certain people just want to make it as a platform to create brand awareness, increase the traffic of the crowd, and increase sales.

It depends on what you are aiming for.

When you know what you want, it will be easier and faster you will get it because social media also can help you in generate engagement with your customer.

We all know that there are a lot of social media around us that can be used as a business marketing platform.

In this industry, you cannot deal with the try and error method because it will lead you to time wasted and it will be the reason you become late to achieve your goals.

Here are the examples of the social media that you can use to make it as your business marketing platform, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, and Snapchat. If you are looking for a messenger type of platform it will be Whatsapp, Messenger, WeChat and Telegram.

Before choosing a platform do not gamble! Make some research about your target audience, which social media the most of your customers’ are using.

Before posting any content, make sure you have planned it months before you are posting it. This will help you in saving some times because in the future time you will have to think about other things and the future content.

If you are the type of last-minute kind of person you have to change your attitude and make some sacrifice by removing all of the bad habits so that you won’t regret all the hard work and time you spend on the business got wasted or failed because of one of your bad habits.

If you don’t know the right way to create a strategy you can hire a professional in this field so that you will understand what you are doing with your business.

Plan and Publish!

Planning and publishing are the same thing that you have been doing to your life. You planned your day a few days earlier so that you don’t have to rush anything on the day of the important events.

These are the twins that you have to do that also counted under the strategy. Why? Because you have a lot of things to be plan out before you launched it.

Publishing any posts is easy. Just like you post your daily “story post” on Instagram. But for a good post it will take a lot of time on per post. Especially in business. You will have to think about the content, either it is a plagiate content if it is one of the plagiate content then you have to think of something new and fresh from your own idea so that in a long time you don’t have to remove your post.

The other thing that falls under the plan and publishes is make research on posting time. The society has this one synchronize habit that they look on their social media are at the same time.

This is why you have to know about “that” time that your target audience spend their time on social media so that you won’t make any mistake based on the timing issue and wondering about why there’s no one reacting to your post and why your sales are not increasing.

Answer to all of these questions is only the perfect timing.

Listen and create Engagement

Listen and create engagement here means you need to know about your customer’s feedback on your products or service, they usually call it a review. How most of them monitoring their customers?

They usually create “#” for them so that once when their customers are using it they can feature it in their account so that they also can get free marketing.

There are some people likes to share about their haul of shopping from your shop on their personal social media and some don’t. For the people who love to share it with others actually they also like to tag the shop.

This is because some of them are hoping that the shop could give them something in return. As a shop owner, you have to pay attention to this little stuff. As for example put an allocation for this type of people where they should be receiving gifts as an appreciation.

I believe that there are thousands of people like this for a good idea and benefits of both sides you can make a contest at the same time you can create engagement with your customers.

Analytics

Analytics are important in business where you can see your audience performance whether you have targeted the right audience or not and you can remove the wrong audience from seeing your post, this can save some of your times.

In business, each click or per head that viewing your post usually will be charged in your advertisements. This is why you have to make specific research on who you wanted to allow to view the posts because if not you are wasting your money to the wrong targeted audience.

Advertising

Most people know that Social Media usually only functioning and sales increasing because of followers.

That statement is true but have you ever heard of advertisement in social media on a targeted audience?

It works the same way as the advertisement that you see on television in your house. Things that makes it a little different is that those advertisements in the television have to pay for a big amount of money, in other words it is very pricey to come out with one 3 seconds advertisement on the television sometimes one advertisement can reach thousand and some might reached million that is how expensive one advertisement is in the television at your house.

Some of the social media provide this service for all the entrepreneurs out there with cheaper price that they can afford.

For examples social media that give this privilege to the entrepreneurs is Youtube, they provide the advertisement segment on the start of the video and in the middle.

Same goes to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Social Media marketing gives a lot of good impact on your e-commerce business too. In fact, all of the digital marketing has a lot of positive impact on all of the business that related and is using the services of digital marketing.

This is the list of the speciality and reasons why you should choose Social Media marketing method and apply it to your e-commerce business.

Probably the best explanation behind your e-commerce business to advertise through online networking is that your clients are investing energy in these channels.

This is the bandwagon of Millenials nowadays or to be exact not just millennials it included their parents or maybe their whole family too. Malaysia population of people using social media are near 78% and the balance of 32% are people that don’t use a smartphone or not having any social media account and some of them are babies, kids that are underage and elderly.

That is how easy to look for your target audience in social media because all of them are using it. Customers been utilizing web-based social networking each day, this exhibits an extraordinary open door for e-commerce business who need to contact their online group of spectators.

Interfacing with your targeted audience can be simple in the event that you are dynamic on the channels that they utilize regularly.

At the end of the day, don’t make your group of spectators come to you, go to your crowd! In the event that you aren’t as of now via web-based networking media, you could be passing up a significant opportunity to interface with your clients and connect new leads.

2. Purchasers will be increasingly open to your messages when promoting through web-based life.

Social media helps the buyer to reach the shop easier compare to have to go to the website. They just have to slide into the personal message section of the shop to ask about the product or you can just click the link that they provide because the link given is meant for the customer to directly contact the shop for any enquiries.

Social media marketing has saved a lot of their customers’ time by providing this section for the user to connect with each other.

Also, It’s not a different thing to you to discover clients and provider talking about an issue about their brand on Twitter. Or on the other hand possibly you have unearthed a few brands’ Q and As session on Instagram Stories.

Most advertisers see these online networking channels as an approach to become more acquainted with their crowd better in an increasingly close to the personal way. So you ought to as well.

This is one of the benefits that you will get through social media marketing which is your brand will be at the mouth of your customer. Customers have this attitude where they like to share good things with their follower too.

With this, your brand will easily be recognized by the whole social media society. The news or your brand will spread widely faster than you actually can expect it to be.

If you are a new brand you will experience the freedom of posting where all of your followers are waiting for your brand to come up with new products or services.

Even the old brand that has already be in this industry for some time can learn something new from your brand. This is because whenever there is a new brand in the social media society they will give new look, content and fresh ideas on how they are doing their marketing.

Usually, the way they are posting content is the way they are planning their strategy. That is the tips that you can get from observing the other account. You as the newcomer obviously you want to be as successful as those brand that has already established way earlier than you because most of them already buy the customer’s trust in their brand.

Based on your product or services, which social media that you are going to choose as a platform for your e-commerce business are important for your goals too. This is because different social media gives different benefits to you.

Each and every social media gives a lot of benefits, also different social media provide different target audience.

Below are the examples of social media and its function:

Pinterest

It is a social site and focusing more on discovery.
Gives largest opportunities in daily life routine.
Most of the user is from the female.
Have 70 million active users.

Twitter

Microblogging social site where only provide 140 characters of words per post
Largest penetration to teenager, the post will reach to every user but it spread slowly and steadily.
With big number of user, there are 5700 tweets per seconds.
Have 560 million active users.

Facebook

A Social sharing site that has 1 billion users from the whole world.
Largest opportunities because they provide the service of communicating with consumers in a non-obstructive way.
Users share 2.5 billion press of content each day.
Have a billion of active users.

Instagram

More on posting pictures and short video content.
Brands make collaboration using the ‘#’.
Have 150 million active users.

LinkedIn

A business-oriented social networking platform.
Most of the company are using this platform to make a connection with the other big company or brands.
79% of users are above 35 years old.
Have 240 million active users.

This is one of the advantages of using social media marketing for your strategy. With only a small amount of money, you can bring a good impact to the brand. If you post your content during the right timing you will reach your goals in a blink of an eye.

As for example, the Instagram advertisement doesn’t need a lot of money to proceed it. You just need to find the right time to post it. the advertisement will pass by the user’s account at the right time no matter in their story or in their timeline.

More information on the rate of the price that you have to spend for direct mail, television broadcast, magazine, newspaper, radio, billboards and social media. You can detect the differences that they provide and you will thank me later.

Type of advertising	The charges per screen time
Direct Mail	RM 238.52
Broadcast TV	RM 117.17
Magazine	RM 66.95
Newspaper	RM 66.95
Billboard	RM 41.84
Social Media	RM 10.46

The price keeps changing but you can see the gap range of price and social media logically gives way bigger benefits to you because you only have to spend a small amount of money yet it can reach to your specifically targeted audience.

From the statement about Search Engine Optimization, it will help your search engine to be at the top of the rank of the first page, somehow by using the social media marketing method it can help to push your rank to the top and increase sales in the social media also.

How can it be?

User will look for your brand in the search engine. The search engine has become customers first choice place to look for things that they want or look for.

With this, it will help the brand to go to the top which means social media marketing works both ways in making the brand to the top in search engine and at the same create its own brand awareness.

Spending time in creating content for your social media account is fun but will it still be fun after you add some of the tense inside it where you have to think for the content, design, plagiarism and posting time for your business social media account.

But all of the hard work and time you spend on every works will be paid off when you see your business are making a lot of sales and get a busy traffic going through your social media and looking at every bar in the analytics went straight up, give the meaning of many people interested in your products.

In every hard work, there will be a lot of benefits for it. Below are the benefits that you will get if you use the social media marketing method in promoting your business.

8. Improve your Brand Awareness

Brand awareness means how many people know and recognized the existence of your brand. The function of brand awareness is not to only make the customer recognized your brand but to make them join in together in whatever you are doing.

Brand awareness helps in making your brand known not only on social media, but it also can make your brand known by the whole of Malaysia.

Social media marketing can help you in creating brand awareness of your product and services that make your brand known by the user and used by them. This is why brand awareness plays an important role in placing your e-commerce business in the market.

Using social media is the right choice in improving your brand awareness because most of the society in this world or more specific Malaysian, they use social media and it is a part of them already.

9. Gain Marketplace

Having the marketplace is one of the important things that all of the business should have. All of the young entrepreneurs who lack knowledge and interest in reading would pay or they called it as an investment thousand of ringgit of their money to the people who read and make a research about it. Which actually been told in almost all of the digital marketing sites.

People are making money with this little knowledge and some even call themselves as a master when the truth is they just spend their time in reading all of the digital marketing books.

Marketplace insight is actually a specific graph based on your audience activity, how much have you spend for your advertisement and how many people have clicked your social media account.

If you have this it is easier for you to monitor your business, even if the night market seller uses this method too, they can improve their income and sells because you know about things that you should not do in marketing your products.

This is how great marketplace insight is.

10. Leadership

Posting meaningful and elegant composed content on your internet based life is an incredible method to turn into expertise and pioneer in your field. There is nobody approach to turn into an idea chief – it requires work that can be bolstered by internet systems administration instruments.

To set up yourself as a specialist, make certain to use web-based life stages and fabricate your essence. Be open, interface with your group of spectators, share content, and advance your position.

At the point when your online networking effort is lined up with other promoting endeavours, your aptitudes will be featured and supporters will admire you.

Having the option to legitimately interface with your clients makes a relationship that they will appreciate, enabling you to turn into a striking influencer in your field.

11. Increase in Brand Authority

By making your customer satisfied with your product is one thing, the other thing is to create brand loyalty. The combination of both can increase brand authority. Having the brand authority is actually buying the trust of your customer and build a special community and ties for the regular customer.

This is what certain established company are doing.

Because they know by appreciating their customers they can get the brand authority because the customers are supporting the brand on every new product launching.

Here comes to the point that you have been waiting since the first time you reached here which the summarization on the difference between Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing in Malaysia.

Every comparison comes with the good and bad part of them. In this section, you can see the clearer vision of the differences.

The differences are divided into 8 sections which are topics, formats, targeting the audience, the limit, speed, effort and duration, measuring, and reliance.

All of them are the things that going to help you in choosing which method you should use in your e-commerce business and if you are thinking of starting a business, this might help you in preventing from taking wrong steps or making wrong decisions.

Below is a part of it:

Topics

Why topics play an important role in writing content for Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing? Here is the reason why:

Search Engine Optimization	Social Media Marketing
Need a lot of brainstorm. The detailed of every keywords used plays an important role. Most of the post are in the form of articles. Always post the useful content to prevent from outdated news.	People on social media likes to play with emotion. Every content in social media is a mixed up with feelings type of content. People express their feelings in the social media. Social media always use the trending topics to prevent user got bored.

People on social media always choose to play with their feelings this is because people are playing with their phone when they have free time or got nothing to be done.

While it’s different in search engine optimization, people on the website because they want to read something that can give them input and something that need to use their brain instead of their feelings.

Plus people on the website usually in the day time. Day time most of the people are busy at work while for teens they are busy at school or attending class and making research for their case study assignments.

Which none of that need the use of social media. Social media are being used only at certain times. This is why choosing the right topic is important, you need to think of who’s going to read it or open it.

Formats

Formats here means the type or the look of the content that you are going to post for your e-commerce business.

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing, both use the different format for its posts. Because both also have different target audience.

So, which format will fulfil the need of the target audience?

Search Engine Optimization	Social Media Marketing
The content usually post in a long-form text. The normal page that got high ranks in Google contain of 1500 and above words. The longer the better. Google loves the lengthy websites.	Use the visual form of posts. Visual easy to catch attention and works better with user eyes. People likes to see images and video that makes them stay. Emotional headline gives a good feedback. Images makes the viewer easy to understand the message.

Social media marketing is meant for leisure time and makes the customer easy attracted to the products that they see. Especially the one that portrays the good quality and photogenic picture.

While for Search Engine Optimization, you don’t have to have a very good photo because in this case, photos are not convincing enough to attract the readers.

People who like to read they don’t really care about the visual and some might don’t even realized other content other than the writing.

Audience Targeting

Targeting audience applies to all of the digital marketing methods including the traditional method.

Be rational! any kind of business need audiences or to be precise a business won’t even be successful without the presence of their audience. But each and every method are meant for the different target audience and different tactics on how to attract their targeted audience.

How to know that you already have the right target audience. Before even looking for one check this out!

Search Engine Optimization	Social Media Marketing
Based on what their audience thinking. Need to make a research on what do their target audience might use.	Focus on what’s trending. What they are interest of, if they like aesthetic stuff the content for them should be only aesthetic and poetry stuff.

The way you write your content is the way how you are going to attract your target audience.

For Search Engine Optimization, content writer should use the correct keywords to match what the clients might search for so that it will be easier for them to reach your website.

While for the social media marketing all you have to focus on is what kind of audience you want, what type of content they look for in social media and your content are written for people with what age either school kids, teenager or oldies.

What is the thing that should be on your list?

Speed

In opening a business, people will always want something fast. In an example, they just start the business yesterday but they already think about the profit that they will be getting for the next day.

Do not put high hopes on something that happens late, you can dream of it but you have to wait for it. Always remember that good thing takes time.

This is the speed of Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing:

Search Engine Optimization	Social Media Marketing
Slow and uncertain. Some relevant pages take days to get indexed and ranked. Usually takes years to grow the credibility to compete for the right phrases. Makes your website on top so that easy for your target audience to see.	Growing slowly. Post according to the peak hours. Will come out on your audience social media at the right time. Get fast feedbacks.

Both of the methods have their own speciality and their speed doesn’t mean it won’t be successful marketing for you.

If you could wait then search engine optimization is your thing!

Efforts and Duration

Every hard work, and efforts that you spill on your e-commerce business you must have to think of it many times about if this business becomes successful how long will it be in this industry.

If you are the type of giving up easily better don’t dream of having any business because anything because things that affect you will affect the business too.

Think twice before you do anything.

Search Engine Optimization	Social Media Marketing
Once already at the top it will stays there. Always be the reliable website. With good phrases it will be at the top for a while.	Appears everytime you post. Takes a few minutes only. Need a lot of effort in posting the post. Ongoing work.

Both methods need a longer time to see the success but once you reach your goals then it is time to slow down.

But for social media marketing in Malaysia, you need to work hard even after you succeed because it requires content posting daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.

It’s time to start your own business now!

E-commerce business is not an easy job but it will take you to a fun journey where you can see yourself struggling for your life. If you are the type of person who likes to have adventurous working life then this industry welcomes you in no matter what position you are in because you might have passion for this.

But if you are the type scared to take any risk, this industry is not for you but no harm in trying. You can follow some of the tips given so that you can prevent yourself from doing any mistakes.

SEO Marketing or Social Media Marketing: Methods for E-commerce in Malaysia