Grab Philippines hosted a masterclass that teaches business owners how to enhance their digital marketing proficiency and generate more inquiries for their businesses.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, there are more than 1 million business enterprises in the country and about 99.58% of them are micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This just goes to show how competitive the playing field is for both business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. After all, to win over their desired audience, they need to stand out from everyone else.

One of the common approaches business owners use nowadays for their business includes social media. By leveraging the digital platform, business owners can boost the presence of their respective brands and attract more customers. And with merchants—especially in the food and beverage industry—learning how to put their businesses online, many platforms and apps have been stepping up to teach them what modern business approaches work. 

In fact, just recently, Grab Philippines hosted a merchant masterclass where business owners were able to learn from each other, as well as from some experts that Grab invited. Here’s what went down. 

About the Masterclass Event 

The Grab Merchant Masterclass is a flagship initiative for merchant partners under the GrabAsenso Program. This event has had four face-to-face sessions across the country, where it has welcomed more than 250 merchant-partners. Moreover, the company has also launched online episodes on its social media channels, as well as its own app—exclusively for its merchant-partners.

“The resilience and vitality of our economy are deeply rooted in the MSME sector, which not only sustains the livelihoods of thousands of Filipinos but also invigorates commercial activity within their local communities and neighborhoods,” shares CJ Lacsican, the Head of Operations of Grab Philippines.

“Grab’s architecture has been purposefully crafted to uplift these essential contributors—enhancing their productivity and amplifying their prospects for success. Beyond nurturing a robust marketplace, our commitment extends to ensuring MSMEs have access to cutting-edge technology and the critical knowledge for them to thrive amid the increasingly digital business environment,” he adds. 

Key Takeaways from an Ads Strategist 

Among the speakers in the recent Grab Merchant Masterclass was Frances Cruz, an accredited trainer and mentor for digital marketing for Meta. She also runs her own social media ads course program, while doubling as a strategist for her aesthetic and skincare clinics.

During the event, she shared five tips that will help business owners create an effective strategy plan that will generate more inquiries and foot traffic to their stores.

1. Leverage Existing Sales Processes

This includes keeping an eye out for your local business performance and assessing whether your strategies are continuously giving you more customers. How? By working on the sales process, defining conversion and success metrics, as well as setting key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

Success metrics will of course depend on what industry the business is in or what type of setup (online or physical store) it has. Some indicators include the number of inquiries, store visits, online or physical purchases, and even customer reviews.

2. Create Your Funnel Map

After knowing what works best for the business, business owners need to make sure to map out their next strategy. How? By creating concrete steps that will help improve the brand’s sales performance. This includes sales processes like landing pages, traffic sources, and customer touchpoints.

Through this diagram, business owners can discover how to upsell their already existing products and services. And when it works effectively, they can then find ways to ensure that the new approach will be able to retain customers and have them coming back for a repeat purchase.

3. Provide Amazing Offers

Business owners must always make sure that their customers feel like they’re getting the best deals from the brand. How? By providing them with offers that may be hard to resist, such as discounts, gifts-with-purchase (or freebies), and bundles. These exclusive deals can even be obtained under specific conditions like reaching a minimum spend or buying a certain item. 

When posting special deals and discounts, business owners need to make sure to include a catchy hook so their customers will be interested to learn more about it. But also remember to use this strategy wisely—frequent discounts and price markdowns may mistakenly lower the value of your product or cause customers to buy from you only when there’s a sale.

4. Determine Your Specific Target Market

Regardless of how business owners may think that their products or services offered can cater to all, ultimately, they must choose a specific target market. This includes narrowing down the audience based on criteria like generation, age, social class, gender, demographic, and the like.

By doing so, business owners can create awareness within the local community through specialized campaigns and likewise develop products specifically catered to that niche. Determining a specific target market also makes it easier to customize the brand’s approach to the ads the brand puts out.

5. Invest in Creatives

Given the importance of having a social media presence for any business, business owners need to have people in charge of their social media pages or websites. With the convenience and accessibility that technology provides, even small business owners can use their smartphones to take pictures of their products and post it online.

In fact, business owners can also involve their customers by asking them to take pictures of what they bought and sharing them or even tagging the social media handles of the brand.

These are just some of the strategies that business owners can use to make the most out of their digital marketing approaches. Overall, it is also important to learn how to adapt to technology, since it has now become an asset for businesses to step up their business efforts.