Co-Author, Ms Phoeun Sreynoch
In today’s digital era, consumers have a completely different journey of buying decision than before. Due to the limitation of time as well as the development of modern technology, customers in Cambodia prefer to review products or services they wish to buy on either the internet or social networking platforms.
Then based on hundreds of customer reviews available or check out a few bloggers sharing their thoughts on YouTube after testing the product on YouTube, then they will make a consideration to purchase. You will find that there’s no difference whatsoever if you compare the buying behaviour of the Cambodians with the rest of the world, all in the name of cost savings (and time too).
In this age of information, Cambodia has seen a shift away from traditional forms of marketing and advertising. In 2016 Internet or I would rather say Facebook, became the most important channel where the Cambodians are accessing information from (30%), surpassing television (29%) and radio (15%). This interesting trend is expected to continue gaining the market share annually.
Based on my personal experience, there are four digital marketing tools which are extremely popular in Cambodia. Chronologically, they are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google and SMS/Email Marketing.
- Facebook: This platform ranks top in the Cambodians’ heart which is used by 6.8 million users in 2018 alone according to the Geeks In Cambodia. We can see that it’s a very powerful marketing platform in the country due to the fact that the marketers can view almost perfectly curated analytics from it for decision making.
- Instagram: This is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook. The concept is similar to Facebook, the only difference is that it is much more for the visual community. Most marketers use Instagram and Facebook at the same time, in the pursuit to take advantage of communities from both sides.
- LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a platform which is built for business-to-business or B2B marketer. People mostly used this platform for professional advantages such as promoting their business interests, network or to market their personal brands. There aren’t many professionals using this platform yet if we were to compare it with Facebook but it is an emerging platform here.
- Email/SMS Marketing: This is a direct marketing tool to keep the potential customers up to date in term of any announcement of new products, services and selected promotions. We are seeing that this method is one of the effective marketing tools in Cambodia as most Cambodian people at reading their emails from mobile devices.
Cambodia’s internet scene may look quiet from the outside, but in reality, it is the opposite.
