Recently, I was asked to share a case study on one Singapore company’s digital marketing efforts. I picked Singapore Airlines (SIA) as it is one of Singapore’s prestigious brands and one of my favorite brands as well. I’ll simply do a quick check on search engine and social media with brief comments.
Search Engine Presence
Usually when I do digital marketing analysis, search engine is the first place to go to. So, I did a brand search on “singapore airlines“, and these are the top two position results:
They are both from Singapore Airlines’ website, which is good. It has sitelinks and additional search box, which could largely increase the click through rate. The sitelinks feature is quite useful guiding visitors to relevant sections of the website.
Having a look at the second result, the description seems telling nothing about the page. Apparently, SIA has not done enough to make the website more search engine friendly.
I didn’t find SIA’s paid search listings by trying brand terms or industry related terms. I see paid search nowadays as a must to companies at least on brand related terms. A simple illustration:
“Powerchess Asia Pte Ltd” is bidding on the term “singapore airlines”; imagine if it were a competitor of SIA with similar service offering, it could “hijack” some potential SIA customers.
Online Trends
As one of the many online trends tools, Google Trends shows the search trends. This amount of search volume as shown in the above graph is convincing enough to show that there are many people who are interested in SIA. Also, take a look at the trends at Facebook with Lexicon, Twitter, and Blog sphere:
SIA Twitter Trends:
Trends in Blog sphere:
The findings are positive. People are talking about SIA in Facebook, in Twitter, and in their blogs. Is SIA doing anything in social media?
Did a quick search in Twitter, didn’t find their presence. I know, many people in Singapore don’t even know about Twitter; but, if you do a search in Twitter, you would definitely find over 2,000 Singapore Twitter users. Not to mention the fact that SIA is an international company who targets worldwide custoemrs. What a miss!
Facebook seems more attractive to SIA as they put up a Facebook page with over 2,000 fans. However, there are only 64 wall posts and 3 discussion topics, which clearly indicates the lack of user engagement.
To become a truly international brand, SIA needs to take digital marketing more seriously, which means more resources, more budget, and more practice.
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Interesting blog entry Rocky !
What kind of user engagement are you expecting on Facebook?
As a comparison though not an excuse, there is no user engagement by any airline on Facebook apart from Southwest Airlines which has a sponsored Group page.
SIA has at least done better than other Fan Pages and Groups by with their videos of new products and also some photos.
Regards,
Ling
A social media like Facebook is NOT just a platform for companies to create a Facebook page and pray miracles to happen and brand image enhancing.
I’m not sure whether there are other airlines who is doing a better work at Facebook as I haven’t checked. But, it doesn’t mean SIA shouldn’t further improve it.
To be an international leading brand in a category, it has to be a thought leader and try to engage users in all possible ways, whether online or offline; whether Facebook or Twitter.
About how to engage users, I would talk about it in more details in a later post (sorry for this incomplete post; I don’t feel it’s very good to be honest. A bit rush). A quick way to check the engagement: the no. of wall posts and discussion topics. These are the REAL interactions with the users and loyal customers.
Example: Victoria’s Secret, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Victorias-Secret-PINK/26972120470?ref=s.
188 fan photos, 1270 discussion topics, 10739 wall posts.
Subscribe to the RSS or via email to get informed about new posts if interested.
Cheers,
Rocky
This is indeed a very interesting post.
Perhaps the company has not really set any direction online yet as it cruises and is doing very well on its current branding efforts from the past.
But as an internet marketer/blogger, i am deeply interested in my home country’s flag carrier and its efforts to fly higher.
Perhaps it is time for the company to take some notice online too.
What I can tell you is that Singapore Airlines cares passionately and monitors closely blogs. I made a positive comment after a flight and got a response in less than 24 hours.
To see the blog and the response, just follow the website link.