There were several similar articles by our editorial team interviewing many persons in various segments of online business, this time we are very pleased to interview the businessman who has been involving in the online marketing circle for more than 2 decades, Mr. Wolfgang Jaegel, the founder and CEO of Syndacast Company. We are extremely excited to learn about what is the Online Agency who is focusing on Performance-based, together with vision on the growing direction of digital business in this region of Southeast Asia as well.
thumbsup: Please briefly describe about Syndacast?
Wolfgang: Syndacast is one of the fastest growing performance-driven digital marketing and concept development firm in Asia, specializing in cultivating innovative ideas from inspiration to marketplace.
We are innovators in performance marketing, revenue generation, customer engagement and experience design and offer a broad range of solutions that help clients to consolidate, integrate and quantify online initiatives and solutions to generate ROI quickly and efficiently.
Headquartered in Bangkok, we also operate offices on Singapore, Jakarta and Manila with a total headcount of close to 50 interactive experts.
In 2012 our interactive, performance driven marketing programs generated close to USD 65 Million in sales and revenues for our clients.
thumbsup:?By the time when competition among Online Agencies becomes keener, what is the main difference of your online agency company prominently from the others?
Wolfgang: The Syndacast Client Services team was established around 4 core values:
Our team is made up of a mix of locals, expats and people who have lived, studied or worked abroad. With experience on both client-side and agency-side, our team has the flexibility to grasp how enterprise-level clients function, and how to successfully bring large-scale projects to completion.
We believe in the power of integrated marketing, and therefore our team has a breadth of experience across both online and offline channels. All our team members have a passion for digital marketing, and for constantly staying ahead of the technology curve.
This combined with our highly experienced operations and campaign team, ensures that client campaigns are focused on actual deliverables such as cash ROI, quality leads and other tangible results.
thumbsup:?What are the service ranges being offered by Syndacast?
Wolfgang: Syndacast services comprise Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising, Mobile Advertising, Social Media Marketing and Content Strategy. We are a Google Certified agency, and have access to Real-Time Bidding platforms allowing us to directly serve display advertising to over 30 million websites worldwide.
Our specialist services are those geared towards achieving an ROI on travel industry products such as hotels, airlines, car rental agencies and any other travel product that can be purchased online. Our team relies on almost USD 280,000,000 accumulated sales data analytics throughout the full travel purchase cycle to provide strategic insights and optimization.
In addition we provide Strategic Consulting, Media Planning, Creative and a full range of website, mobile and application development services to our clients. We also often operate in partnership with a variety of ?full-service? advertising agencies to strengthen their digital offerings to their clients.
thumbsup: Your key accounts are in which sector that you are providing services and in which countries?
Wolfgang: We are specialized and highly trained in the travel industry. The client portfolio contains some of the biggest names in the hospitality industry, as well as airlines, tourism authorities and various other travel related industries.
Our clients are usually located in the countries where we have offices, such as Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, but our client list extends far beyond that, servicing companies as far as India or Japan, as well as a handful of fully global groups.
We have run media campaigns for inbound and outbound travel in every continent and are able to service any client in any country.
thumbsup:?Kindly raise an interesting successful case study in online marketing that your client has been provided.
Wolfgang: Our most remarkable campaign was the opening of Ibis Hotel Singapore Bencoolen (an Accor hotel). We wanted to create a buzz around the opening of the hotel using PR Syndication, Blog Marketing, Social Media Seeding and we implemented a ?pay-what-you-want? online campaign. This process was created by allowing consumers to bid for rooms at the price they wanted.
The campaign was picked up by 14,000 sites, 800 blogs and was tweeted about 2,300 times. The story was documented by Reuters, dozens of travel sites, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Wall Street Journal and Yahoo!. The site received 10,300 registrations in just 2 weeks and we delivered a 100% occupancy for the hotel opening. In addition we delivered 10,000 new registered loyalty members from over 100 countries, with 80,000 email addresses collected
It was the most successful hotel opening for Accor in Asia Pacific, ever. The hotel won a PATA Gold award as well as a WIT Innovation award as a result of the campaign, praised as being a ?novel idea, having a clear message, demonstrated consistent use of regional social media and delivered measurable results.? ? Web in Travel.
thumbsup:?In your opinion, do you think how essential the Traditional Media still penetrate?? Does it need to be a digital aspect of every traditional campaign?
Wolfgang: Consumers will not usually see and ad and run directly to the store to buy the product. They are most likely sitting at home having dinner while watching TV, or reading through a morning paper on their way to work when they are exposed to ?Traditional Media?. It therefore is important to capture these consumers through more than one media or they may forget the brand or advertising message, or both. Top of mind awareness is no longer enough to drive sales, as share of voice on Traditional Media becomes increasingly competitive.
There is no extra cost in adding ?www.xxx.com? to any traditional media ad, or driving traffic to a Facebook page so you can nurture a healthy number of fans through community management. Every Traditional Media campaign should have an online landing page where consumer data can be captured, not just for market analysis purposes, but for real sales lead qualification and driving immediate results.
thumbsup: From your long experience involving in online marketing, what do you see the growth tendency of this business in the region of Southeast Asia?? What are the challenges and essential factors of online marketing in this region, since mostly are still developing countries, not so advanced as USA, Europe and Japan.
Wolfgang: It is true that online marketing has not yet reached the level that it has attained in the US, Europe and Japan, however marketers in this region are quickly building knowledge and confidence in the benefits that digital marketing can bring to their business.
There are very strong opportunities for growth in online marketing however, especially in e-commerce, online lead generation and content marketing to build engagement.
Southeast Asia is catching up and does have faster growth than the established regions now, and the population is open to new technologies. The challenges lie especially in infrastructure development of mobile internet operators, which is hindering the development and adoption of location-based services, mobile commerce, and streaming mobile digital TV.
Also credit card penetration can be an issue for developing countries, as low penetration rules out the possibility of online marketing for niche products with low volumes. However there are ways around it, such as payment at convenience stores or SMS payment, but these again usually require significant volume commitments.
thumbsup: Any technology, tools and trend do you think the marketers should pay special attention for this year, and why?
Wolfgang: As organic search rankings become increasingly harder to achieve, and display advertising becomes increasingly complex and fragmented, Syndacast is turning towards?CRO??? Conversion Rate Optimization, which encompasses all aspects of digital marketing, from assessing a website?s complexity, to delivering optimized SEM and SEO, real-time Display Advertising and effective Social Media and Content ? all as part of one integrated strategy.
The availability of Real-Time Bidding technologies across all media allows us more flexibility and control of the campaigns in order to not just to increase the conversion rate; we aim to grow our client businesses and help them achieve their goals in terms of revenue, profit, or market share. That?s why all our projects are delivered on real business metrics, and not on abstract terms like click-throughs and bounce rate.
We focus on conversion rate optimization because, from our experience, it?s the quickest and most reliable way to grow a business.
thumbsup:?What would you like to kindly convey to those who are interested to work in the field of Online Agency?
Wolfgang: If you are interested in working for an Online Agency, you most likely are already familiar with publications such as thumbsup, Mashable, iMediaconnection. Online marketing is not a field that can be taught in school or that will have any degrees awarded for it, so read up online and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to new technologies and new media. It is much more important to be informed and understand the latest online marketing trends than it is to have a degree in Marketing.
Because online marketing is measured and tracked in every possible way, there is always a mountain of data that is collected during every campaign. Syndacast usually requires a strong understanding of mathematics or statistics to be able to sift through this, combined with a good understanding of corporate business metrics and KPI?s.
Finally, as the world become continuously more global, and the Internet is probably the most global of those industries, English proficiency will be required with knowledge of at least one other regional language.
If you meet the above criteria, there are always a variety of opportunities open with Syndacast across our offices in South East Asia.
Find out more information how Syndacast can guide your business to higher ROI : please visit?www.syndacast.com
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