COMM 215

Digital Media Across Asia

Corporate Digital Research Report

Class Section: G1

Prepared for:
Professor Michael Netzley

Done by:
Alison LIM Chang Yee
Annapurna MUKHERJEE
Esmond KAN Yow Wei
Joy SEE Jia Hui
Kenichi NISHIMURA
LOW Jin-wen
Muhammad LUFTI Bin Abdul Ghani
Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to provide an SME with a data-driven social media strategy that it
can employ to manage its online image and to reach out further to a larger group of consumers.
The company that we have chosen is Skyline Employment Agency – an employment agency for
foreign domestic helpers.

This report would begin with an introduction of the company’s background, its business model
and the current marketing channels the company is using. It would be followed by an analysis of
the online presence of competitors and the channels they use and finally the results of a survey
conducted together with Facebook statistics in Singapore to support our recommendation on the
firm’s social media strategy.

Background Information

Skyline Employment Agency was registered on May 2007. The company is in the foreign
domestic helper (FDW) industry and operates as an agent by helping local households to employ
these FDWs. These FDWs come from various countries such as Indonesia, Philippines and
Myanmar. The company recruits these FDWs from their villages and sends them for the various
forms of trainings and orientation programs before sending them to Singapore eventually. The
company was started by 2 people and currently it has 10 staff members. The company does not
have any online presence and relies on newspaper advertisements as its main platform for
marketing and advertising. The company is also heavily dependent on word of mouth marketing
in order to sustain its business.

Current Firm Strategy

The company’s main strategy is to provide better skilled FDWs at competitive prices. The
company does not compete directly with its competitors via pricing. However it is constantly
doing market research to ensure their prices will give them a competitive advantage in the
industry.

The company also engages in product differentiation in order to establish itself in this industry.
Skyline seeks to differentiate itself from competitors by providing better skilled FDW for
potential employers. To ensure that Skyline’s FDW is up to standard, the company sends their
FDW to various types of courses; allowing them to acquire the skills and knowledge that will
meet the expectations of their employers. These courses are usually more specialized and
through it, the FDW will be able to acquire a unique set of skills that differentiate themselves
from the other FDWs available in the market.

Examples of such courses include dog-grooming courses, pastry-making courses, first-aid

courses etc… The company believes that by providing better skilled FDWs, it will be able to
reap the benefits from word of mouth advertising. Besides, the company also strives to provide
excellent customer service in order to establish a good rapport with its clients.

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Current marketing channels

The company’s main form of advertising and promotion is via word of mouth and through
newspaper advertisements. The company currently does not market its service via the internet.
As mentioned earlier the company believes that word of mouth marketing is sufficient to sustain
its current business. Hence the company seeks to provide all consumers with excellent service
and highly skilled FDWs in order to generate positive word of mouth. Not only is word of mouth
able to assist Skyline in generating buzz for its business, it also enables the company to reduce
the amount of costs incurred from its marketing initiatives.

Client analysis

Most of the company’s clients belong to the middle income families in Singapore. A substantial
amount of its clients are Chinese and Caucasians. These clients are usually between the ages of
29-50 years. Most of these households hire FDWs to care for their elderly or to tend to their
children.

An important thing to note is that about 70% of these clients got to know about the company
through word of mouth advertising. As such this explains the company’s employment of word of
mouth as its main marketing strategy at the moment. There is also a trend in recent years where
Skyline’s clients seem to be younger and a lot more acquainted with the internet. Skyline should
perhaps look to marketing its service through the internet to better reach out to these internet
savvy clients.

Online presence of competitors

At present, Singapore has a relatively high number of lower skilled domestic workers who are
employed as household maids. For this 150,000 maids, there is an unreported/reported 300 to
400 maid agencies in Singapore managing them. On the other hand, there are only 81 agencies
having CASEtrust certification, an accreditation program set up by CASE for the retail and
services industry. The majority of these agencies are SMEs, focusing on a single nationality,
since many set up training agencies in the local country as it is more cost efficient. However
there are sufficient agencies that represent all the stated nationalities above to create competition.
Therefore, they compete on pricing, quality and specialty of training, the size of their maids’
database and good after-sales service.

The three largest maid agencies in Singapore currently are 121 Personnel Services, Nation Maid
and JPB Employment Agency. All three of them have multiple offices in Singapore, spreading
over the heavily residential areas such as Tampines, Toa Payoh and Ang Mo Kio. Also, they
have offices in Far East Plaza or Lucky Plaza in Orchard Road, where most Indonesians and
Philippines congregate on weekends. For their online presence however, these three agencies
have multi faceted websites, compared to most other maid agencies that either have no websites
at all or have dormant ones. Within the top three agency websites, they understand the
importance of customer reviews and success stories of their customers to potential clients. This is

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because for all the aspects of competition, the one thing that success is based upon is the
compatibility of the maids they hire and if these stories are abundant from an agency, then the
agency has sufficient credibility.

Beyond their own websites, many maid agencies have listed their names on a number of
domestic helper online channels such as, Anglo INFO Singapore and Netmaid. Beyond this, the
majority of maid agencies does post up advertisements on local family magazines, newspapers
and also depend on word of mouth from present clients.

From a social networking angle, the top three mediums of such that are being used, albeit
sparsely are; blogs, local online forum pages and Facebook. At time of research, there is a total
of one company, Starshine Maid Agency who has a corporate profile on Facebook. The heaviest
medium used is, blogs where clients, both present and future, post up reviews of their maids or
customer services from particular agencies for the public to view, such as www.singapore-
maid.com. Local forum pages are also used by both clients and agencies where inquiries are
being traded back and forth. For these 2 channels, the traffic from future or current clients is high
but there is a serious lack on online presence of any maid agency that will come forth and
participate in such forums. Lastly, there is also the option of Singaporean expat portals such
www. entersingapore.info where maid agencies post up their ads as well. Despite the increasing
proportion of maid employers being expatriates, there is still a huge space for maid agencies to
enter here as there are very few agencies that have submitted their names into portals catering to
the expat community.

Summary of Survey Findings

To aid us in formulating Skyline Pte Ltd’s social media strategy, we conducted a survey which
had a total of 56 respondents to find out more about what channels would be most effective for a
maid agency in reaching out to its consumers. For the detailed summary of the survey results,
please refer to appendix 1.

The survey results showed that 78.6% of respondents are receptive towards companies utilizing
social media as a platform for reaching out to them. 81.8% of these respondents also believe that
social media tools can help shape a company’s brand identity both online and offline.

The respondents seem to identify more with Facebook and feel that it is the most effective
medium of reaching out to consumers. Facebook also triumphs as the best form of social media
tool in shaping companies’ online image as compared to blogs and twitter.

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 Respondents also feel that the most important features that should be incorporated into social
media that would aid their decision making process would be (in order of importance); broad
network of clients and maids, testimonies by satisfied customers and links to important websites
(such as MOM and CASE) – which targets customers ranging from spectators to critics in the
social technographic ladder. Respondents’ strong preference towards word of mouth in making
consumption decisions further emphasized on the importance of word of mouth in the maid
agencies industry.

At present, survey results have highlighted that consumers rely excessively on word of mouth in
deciding on their choice of maid agency; surpassing the likes of websites. This could perhaps
mean that marketing through the web may not generate as much revenue as the company’s
current marketing strategy. However, it is still important that Skyline keeps up with changes in
society and establish itself via the internet.

Facebook Statistics in Singapore

As a high amount of respondents felt that Facebook was

the most effective means for a maid agency to reach out
to its consumers, we investigated further to find out the
penetration rate of Facebook in Singapore to estimate
the potential exposure of using Facebook.

As of 11 March 2009, statistics from

http://www.checkfacebook.com/ showed that 1,716,320
people in Singapore are using Facebook. Out of the
total amount of audiences, 56.7% of them belong to the
age group that Skyline Pte Ltd serves. From this, we
estimate the maximum exposure that Skyline can
achieve is 973,153 audiences.

Recommendations

As Skyline Pte Ltd is currently not using any form of

social media, we feel that the first channel that the
company should employ would be to start a Facebook
page and perhaps an online blog as well. By using Facebook and through the management of an
online blog, the company would be able to incorporate features that consumers value thereby
encouraging consumers to choose Skyline over its competitors.

The most important difference between these 2 channels versus an online webpage would be that
these 2 channels enable information to be shared by users more easily. There is also an ease in
allowing Skyline to show off its existing network of clients; thereby ensuring credibility and
winning consumers’ trust.

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Targeting the consumers

With a rising number of gen Y consumers starting a family, there is therefore an increase in
demand for domestic helpers. To better cater to the needs and to reach out to this group of
individuals, advertising through Facebook and blogs has since become the most effective ways
of generating Gen Y consumers’ interests. This is because as the more technologically savvy
bunch; Facebook-ing and blogging have evolved to be important aspects of their social lives and
have been observed to have an effect on their consumption habits as well.

The ability to post comments and testimonies on the Facebook page/blog posts, allows Skyline to
be able to continue its business expansion through word of mouth via the internet rather than
through its existing offline channels. This would be particularly attractive to consumers who are
the spectators as well as the critics on the social technographic ladder.

A Facebook page and blog posts also allow Skyline to form more personalized and friendly
relations with consumers thereby ensuring brand loyalty.

Social Media channels are cost effective

These 2 channels would also be cost effective, as there isn’t a need for extra manpower or
advertising costs in order to execute and maintain such a marketing strategy. We believe that
Skyline would be especially receptive towards such a marketing strategy as it is in line with the
firm’s current objective of minimizing costs.

A corporate website may increase the credibility of Skyline’s services, allowing Skyline to
compete directly with the top maid agencies in Singapore. As discussed earlier, these agencies
each possess a corporate website. But we believe that Facebook as well as a blog would be more
effective in getting to Skyline’s targeted group of consumers. Furthermore, due to the company’s
tight marketing budget, a website will perhaps not be feasible.

Promotion efforts to support Social media channels

To make the marketing strategy more successful, we also recommend the usage of online
vouchers that can be printed by consumers. The purpose is to – 1) Increase traffic to the
Facebook page / blog, thereby generating brand awareness 2) To better understand the
demographics of consumers who prefers using these channels for their purchasing decisions.
Not only does this enables Skyline to attract consumers in the short run; the information
collected also serve to allow Skyline to recognize its consumers’ needs and thus formulate a
better positioning strategy of the brand in the future.

Traditional media (newspaper ads) that the company is currently employing should also not be
discontinued as it would serve to draw a different group of consumers; the less internet savvy
bunch.

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Other forms of social media channels such as Forums and Twitter would be less effective in
stimulating Skyline’s business online. For instance, it is particularly difficult to allow consumers
to share their testimonies on Twitter due to the 140 characters limit. Furthermore, currently there
isn’t a forum that caters solely to this line of business. It would therefore be harder for current
consumers of Skyline to congregate together in a forum to share their experiences with Skyline’s
services. Establishing a new forum could be an option though it may take a substantially long
period of time to attract enough members to actively post on the forum. Hence, Facebook and
blog are still Skyline’s best forms of online marketing channels.

Measurement of effectiveness of the social media campaign

With regards to measuring the effectiveness of the suggested social media campaign, Skyline Pte
Ltd could perhaps incorporate a survey with every transaction to be completed by the client. This
aids in understanding how clients found out about Skyline, if they have visited Skyline’s
Facebook page or blog, and more importantly, how and what consumers base their consumption
decisions on. This would also allow Skyline to track the conversion ratio (no. of members in
Facebook Page divided by no. of people who have visited Skyline’s Facebook page) thereby
possibly estimating the potential clients that Skyline could have acquired should there be more
members on its Facebook page

Another way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign is to count the number of people
using the online vouchers suggested in the recommendation. This would be a less accurate way
of measuring ROI than using surveys, but it would be an easier way to measure ROI when
consumers are reluctant to fill up the surveys.

Summary

Getting the right domestic worker is crucial to most consumers as it concerns the well-being of
their family members and many of them actively search for relevant information to help them in
their consumption decisions. The internet is the most popular tool that consumers employ today
to search for information.

Hence if Skyline can redirect its existing satisfied consumers online to share their experiences
with other potential consumers; the company can continue to ride on positive word of mouth to
sustain its business. Social media may not be adopted by most companies in this line of business;
however we believe that if Skyline were to adopt social media channels before most of its
competitors; Skyline would have a first-mover advantage.

As an industry that requires word of mouth to survive, social media channels will provide
Skyline with a more organized and easily managed word of mouth advertising platform.

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Appendix 1

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