3 agencies to trust with your mobile marketing plans in Malaysia

It is increasingly important for marketers to be mobile-first when targeting consumers in this day and age. Mobile ad spend has been predicted to increase this year, growing 24.4% to represent 79% of total digital spend in 2021, a Magna Media brands report revealed earlier this year. This comes as digital ad revenues are predicted to grow by 19.5% this year to hit SG$867 million, forming 39% of the total ad market. 

At the same time, consumers are also expected to spend US$6.78 billion via social apps this year, according to App Annie, rising to US$17.7 billion in annual spend in 2025, a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 29%. Based on this, it is safe to say that mobile will continue to be an important marketing channel for brands moving forward.

To help brands in Malaysia select the best mobile marketing agencies to aid with their plans in 2022, A+M looked to our 2021 Agency of the Year Malaysia results to find out which were among the top. Listed alphabetically, the agencies below won the hearts of our independent panel through their smart and innovative use of mobile marketing. 

1. Entropia

Entropia is a digital transformer that enables businesses to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. With its seamless combination of services, it focuses on holistic growth and future-oriented development. Currently, the agency offers customer experience design, data consulting, digital transformation solutions, and IR 4.0 services. To provide brands with single-window access to a full-stack offering, Entropia's services are built between data, tech and analytics. This enables the agency to be the forerunner in marketing 4.0 ready solutions. 

Amid the economic turmoil, Entropia's digital transformation consulting area saw tremendous demand. Thus, the agency decided to bring two new tools to transform its business. Firstly, would be a touchstone, to benchmark creative ad performance. The other would be Prescient, a predictive marketing tool that marries transactional data with marketing effectiveness.

This new reality has forced businesses to look at how people were experiencing their brands and the fluidity of experiences galvanising the most important customer. In fact, it was essential to incorporate channel optimisation, mobile innovations, marketing model transformation and alignments with products or services. Working with Nippon Paint, the agency helped the company set up its "Nippon Paint e-store", pivoting the brand to be a renovation marketplace. The agency has also worked with Nespresso, helping the company grow its online footprints, strengthening its search visibility, and making them future-ready for voice search. The agency has worked with brands such as BMW, Tenaga Nasional, Nespresso and Telekom Malaysia. 

(Read also: Accenture's first massive SEA acquisition with Entropia: How it transpired)

2. Kingdom Digital Solutions

Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Kingdom Digital is a digital creative agency that has a growing presence in Southeast Asia. According to Kingdom Digital, advertising is all about relationships with clients, consumers and co-workers. In fact, these relationships are built on a single foundation - human connections. As an established digital creative agency, Kingdom Digital has helped brands engage with its target audience to build lasting experiences. 

With the spike of mobile consumption due to the lockdown, smartphones are rising to be the most popular devices for consumers to access the Internet. Aware that consumers' attitudes, behaviours and purchasing habits are shifting, the agency reacted quickly to these changes to help clients navigate amid these uncertain times. The agency's day-to-day work for brands was centred around various mobile-led platforms, from producing creative content for social media, bespoke display banners, and mobile-first custom digital experiences for brands.

Working with KOSE, the agency and the brand came up with the "Less Is More" digital campaign to drum up awareness for its new sustainable skincare range. The agency has also worked with OLDTOWN to come up with the "Kopi Catch Interactive Game". The agency has worked with brands such as Digi, The Singleton, Mead Johnson, Moccona, and Shiseido. 

On the manpower front, the agency has always believed in growing and nurturing its existing employees first. Last year, Kingdom Digital promoted more than 10 of its employees, including account managers, art directors, lead for digital operations, web developers, and senior-level positions across the teams. Besides providing career growths, Kingdom Digital aims to stay on top of the industry demands and evolve the roles accordingly. One example was promoting an existing employee's role from UX/UI developer to creative technologist after the agency realised the rising demands for tech innovations. 

3. TDG TheDGroup 

Formerly known as Click Services, TDG TheDGroup had a vision to introduce omnichannel marketing solutions to help FMCG companies to digitalise their marketing solutions to improve consumer engagement. The agency provides a one-stop below the line marketing for brands to engage with any level of customers. Offering a total marketing solution, the agency offers the branding of a corporate identity, copywriting, developing corporate websites, social media and video production marketing. 

In the same year that Malaysia MITI launched the National Policy in Industry 4.0 with the aim to boost digital transformation, the agency decided to rethink the role of technology within marketing and innovation. With its unified mobile CRM solution, some of its features include progressive web application campaign microsite, performance dashboard, progress notification and automated retargeting. This allows registration from multiple entry points such as online or offline. It is also integrated with web analytic tools to improve the UI/UX and screen time. Designed according to the customer's lifecycle, it supports multiple channels and formats such as SMS, push notifications, pop-ups and EDM. 

The agency has worked with Gillette, Nature's Way, mentos, Giant and Abbott, among others. 

Join our Digital Marketing Asia conference happening from 9 November 2021 - 25 November 2021 to learn about the upcoming trends and technologies in the world of digital. Check out the agenda here.

Photo courtesy: 123RF

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