Marketing in Myanmar, Insights from Online Agency, Happio.

Why Myanmar/Burma?

“The first mover advantage in an emerging market is huge.” Numbers do not lie, Online Agency Myanmar economy has been growing significantly. In the past 5 years from 2014-2018, Myanmar Real GDP has been growing on average of 7.2% per year comparing to 3.4% in Thailand. ADB’s forecast for 2019 shows Myanmar’s GDP can increase 6.6% while Thai’s only will do 3.9%.

Thailand is the second largest exporters to Myanmar following only China.

However, there have been so many fail cases for Thai Online Agency entrepreneurs entering Myanmar market. As of today, there are still many opportunities in Myanmar market. We can learn not to repeat those mistakes and build on our strength to be the market leader in Myanmar market.

The Key Success Factors

There are three main critical factors for successful entry in Myanmar Market 1. Data Driven Decisions, 2. The Right Strategic Partners and 3. Speed & Agility.

1. Data Driven Decisions: Always start with small data, identify what data is critical and cross check your critical data first with partners and people you know. Visiting Myanmar is a must if you are serious in investing and growing your business here. Create a business strategy that allows you to grow your own critical data, and make your data better as time goes by. Do not rely only on your partner’s data because it may be misleading and you will lose bargaining power in the long term. Once that you have high quality of small data you can then create your big data strategy to scale or find hidden opportunities.
2. The Right Strategic Partners: First identify what are your critical business partners, for each type of partners find at least three options. Share your end goal vision and if possible pay each one to do some small work for you first. And judge them by the work result and teamwork. Do not rush to sign big contracts without testing out their work first. Talk to three of their past clients, if all are all happy then you have a good chance that they are good. (This may not always be true, you must consider other aspects as well.)
3. Speed & Agility of Marketing: Start small, learn fast and scale. Be really careful when some ones suggests you to invest big in very early stage. Before investing in mass media and nationwide campaign, why not test small ones first? Trying small marketing campaign can give you many benefits. Firstly, it is faster to try out.  Second, it is more flexible, it means you can learn and adjust to optimise your campaign faster. Third is you will have mindset of learning and collecting high quality data before aiming for big sales and market leader position. The data you collect in the end will help to make your big campaign more effective.

Case studies.

Due to NDA with our clients, we can not disclose our client’s information in public. We need to ask for our client’s approval to share information case by case. However, we can share you our framework and way of working with our clients that can execute the work effectively.

Most marketing agencies will lure you to invest in big marketing campaign to drive brand awareness and sales in short time. That may work if you are familiar with the market but if you are new to the market then it might be a risky move. Most of our successful cases of marketing campaign for new business entering new market is that we execute for our clients come from research, creative and combining online & on ground activities.

This approach consolidates the benefits of the traditional way of marketing (on ground) and online marketing. We start small, learn fast, adapt fast and then scale with Online Agency . This approach gives our clients many benefits below…

1. Clients can reach both online and offline target to gain insights in the early stage.
2. You get high quality data to understand your target customers.
3. You can adjust and optimize your campaign faster.
4. You can scale for bigger campaign more effectively.
5. You can build your own brand, check your brand’s health and create two way communication with your customers.
6. Your strategic partners cannot fool you and you will gain more bargaining power when you have more data.

Our Team Online Agency

Happio team, Enviro and Index Creative Village have more than 10 years of experience in Myanmar market with 3 offices in Myanmar. We have helped more than 10 clients providing service for research, business consult and marketing. We do 3 b2b events and trade shows in Myanmar.

Happio team specializes in online marketing and on ground activation, Enviro specializes in marketing research and Index Creative Village specialize in event marketing and creative marketing.

“You can come visit our office and try out traditional Myanmar tea with us.”

Reference

1. Myanmar’s Top 10 Exports. http://www.worldstopexports.com/myanmars-top-10-exports/https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/mmr/
2. Comparison of growth of economic in Asia https://www.adb.org/countries/thailand/economy
3. Myanmar’s GDP growth forecast  https://www.adb.org/countries/myanmar/economy
4. Thailand’s GDP Growth https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/thailand/real-gdp-growth

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