Singapore based Benjamin Lee is a sought-after Digital Marketer whose work ethic and knowledge has led him to work on some of the world largest consumer-led brand campaigns. Over his career, Benjamin has lived and worked within the United States and Singapore which has given him the broad spectrum needed to handle international brand and clients.
About Insider had the chance to chat with Benjamin Lee to talk MediaPlus Digital and his work on the intricate campaigns for CapitaLand Investment and Caritas.
THANK YOU, BENJAMIN CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO OUR READERS WHAT YOU DO?
Hello, yes so, a digital marketer like me, coming from the agency side, works with multiple clients at one go. For any given client, I am tasked to see the digital marketing strategy and execution from end to end. For any given project, it always starts with the given goal. This can be brand awareness or lead acquisition. All in all, it is about growing the client’s business through customer acquisition through digital channels. My experience lies largely in search and social ads, ranging from Google Ads, Meta Ads, Tik Tok Ads, Amazon Ads, and the list goes on. Any digital campaign starts with the brief and from there, I work on building the customer persona, identifying the right digital channels, and recommend the appropriate budget to achieve the client’s goal. This can be identifying the type of keywords to use for search ads or building psychographic factors for Meta Ads. Once the strategy has been approved, I deploy the campaigns on the respective channels. Deploying a campaign entail designing the graphic, writing the ad copy, scheduling the ad flight, and setting up the right conversion actions through platforms such as Google Tag Manager. The exciting part comes during the campaign. I get to watch human behavior flow in as data points, validating if my initial strategy and assumption about the consumer demographic is true. Often, it is true to about eighty percent. This is when finessing the campaign, or in our world, optimizing a campaign. We watch a varied about of data points such as click-through rate, impressions, drop-off rate, etc. It is important to distill the noise from the myriad amount of data coming in and make the right changes to the campaign to achieve the client’s goal. This is where digital marketing and traditional marketing differ. The datapoint comes in immediately and as a digital marketer, we can make changes to the campaign on the fly.
HOW WOULD DESCRIBE THE PROJECTS YOU TYPICALLY PREFER?
I prefer projects that encompass a 360 digital marketing strategy. Though my expertise lies within paid media, there are other facets of digital marketing that excite me. For example, in my current company, I have worked on search-engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. This is a unique approach to digital marketing because it exploits the fact that most users would first use Google to find products or information. SEO exploits the algorithm built by Google to bring our clients’ websites to the first page where 90% of the users are found. Such projects are rarely done individually but as a team that I manage from writers to graphic designers. The bigger the campaign with multiple skillsets required leadership plays into digital marketing to ensure all gears spin in harmony.
TELL US ABOUT THE PHENOMENAL WORK WITH CAPITALAND INVESTMENT.
For CapitaLand Investment, they were going through a rebranding and the client was working on a smaller budget than they were used to. Typically, this would be a traditional marketing campaign with out-of-home (OOH) ads on bus stops, billboards, and the like. Still, they wanted a wide reach for a duration of 8 weeks. They also wanted to be shown in reputable publications like The Straits Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. Knowing that a direct buy would be costly, I deployed programmatic ads for the client. Typically, a direct buy will allow a client to be featured in such a publication for a fixed duration at all hours. For programmatic ad buy, it allowed me to optimize my campaign to only show the ads at certain hours and only to certain users. For example, an American reader on WSJ will not see the ad but a Singaporean read would, even though both are on Wall Street Journal simultaneously. This method allowed the client to be cost efficient while reaching their target consumer at the right time and at the right place.
YOU ALSO WORKED ON THE CARITAS CAMPAIGN! HOW WAS THAT?
For Caritas, the goal was to drive donations during an 8-week period with a few caveats. For one, they wanted to highlight underserved communities that typically do not get significant donation to their plight. For example, HIV patients and migrant workers typically do not drive high donations. Nonetheless, even though there was a donation goal, it was crucial that as Catholic non-profit that all in need are served equally. This influenced our creative strategy. For programmatic ads, we decided to focus on these specific need groups even though, from a digital marketing speak, were not “click worthy”. This was one of those moments where we had to go against what the datapoints tell us. Our target audience responded well to causes such as elderly care, but if the goal was solely to drive donations, many other groups in need would find themselves in a viscous cycle of being underserved. We went against what the data spoke and focused on featuring these underserved need groups in our ads. In the time, together with other digital efforts, we were able to achieve the client’s donation goal.
2024 IS JUST ARO0UND THE CORNER. HAVE YOU SET YOURSELF ANY GOALS?
Yes! I would love to work on more global projects and non-profits. Before Caritas, I did not have had a chance to work with one. From that experience, I appreciate the work that volunteers do. Knowing that the media budget I used during the campaign came solely from donations, I learn to appreciate every dollar and cent that goes into digital marketing.
HOW CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU?
I am online, but the best way is via my website: www.benziggylee.com
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