Welcome to Students Incorporated. I'm your host, Mr. Jason. Join me weekly as my team
and I produce content that's informative, positive, fun, and uplifting. This podcast
is created and produced with the help of students from the International Community School of
Bangkok. Hello and welcome back. I'm joined by co-host Mia and Frank again. In today's
episode, we have the privilege of talking with Khun Ai, a local industry leader working
in the social media marketing space. She shares a lot of her insight, best practices, and
advice on how to use social media effectively, especially if you're a business or an organization.
So stick around for both segments. But before we get into our first segment, let's hear
our quote of the day and get some headline news.
Our quote of the day comes from Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. He's quoted
to have said, social media has put the public into PR and the market into marketing. Social
media is just a platform to share photos with your friends. It is the center to express
your ideas everywhere. As your marketing team navigates through the users to give the best
ad, they need to realize who they're best fit for and tailor it to the customer's need.
And that's our quote of the day. Now onto some headline news with Mia.
Thank you for our quote of the day, Frank. Now here's some headline news from around
the world. Our first headline comes from X. X, formerly Twitter, has made it so that non-subscribers
of X's verified plan can be shown on the app feed. Before, only the subscribed or verified
members were able to be displayed. Still, the fact that of the 650 million monthly active
users, only 650,000 verified members will get priority in being shown on the feed. This
shows that the app is still, in fact, pay to win.
Our next headline comes from Meta. Meta has a new editing app in the works. It's reported
to have artificial intelligence to enhance further what the Chinese CapCut can already
do. It's stated that the app was made to replace CapCut in the same manner that Meta
is trying to replace TikTok with its Reels feature. As the app's parent company, ByteDance,
will be banned any day now because of the recently passed bill.
And finally, our last headline comes from Snap Inc. Snap Inc., the owner of Snapchat,
and founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, have pledged $10 million to the independent
recovery initiative, Department of Angels, to support fire-impacted areas in Los Angeles.
The project aims to empower community-led recovery by providing resources and project
management support. And that's our headline news for this episode.
Thank you for the quote and the headline news. We welcome our special guest, Kun Ai, to the
studio today. Mia will get us started.
Welcome to the show, Kun Ai, and thank you for being here on the podcast with us. So
could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?
Okay, certainly. My name is Aiyapat Wan Kawisan. Actually, you can call me Ai. Ai like A-I,
but I'm human. Yeah, I'm currently the CEO of the three companies. The first one is Panet
Digital. It's an official reseller of various platforms such as Line Solutions. And the
second one is Go Online Agency, a full-funded marketing agency specializing in e-commerce
and multi-media production, and also the media optimization and influencer management. And
the last one is Digitory, which focuses on digital marketing training and consulting.
Whoa, okay. Thank you. So along with that, could you share a little bit about your educational
background and what led you to start your own company?
Okay. I graduated from the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, majoring in marketing at
Thammasat University. During my studies, I worked part-time to support myself financially,
as my family was facing financial difficulty at that time. And I also received help from
my relatives as well, which motivated me to learn as best as possible. My goal back then
was very simple. I just want to gain enough knowledge to experience and secure a good
job, to learn from leading companies, and eventually start my own business. But ever
since I was a shy, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Though I wasn't sure what kind
of business I want to run, but that curiosity led me to try different things to explore
my interests. However, one common theme in everything I did was finding ways to generate
income. So I've always enjoyed the process of making money, which might be one of the
key reasons I ended up running my own business.
Definitely. I can relate to being wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was a kid too.
I didn't know what kind of business I wanted to do. It's just like, I want to make money
and run my own business. Definitely. So how did you experience marketing, health, and
how it shaped your entrepreneurial journey?
Okay. Yeah, marketing has played a crucial role in shaping my own entrepreneurial journey
because running a business requires a diverse skill set from operations, marketing, sales,
accounting and human resources as well, all of which vary depending on the type of business,
right? But however, having a strong foundation of marketing gave me a significant advantage
in the early stage.
Since marketing and sales go hand in hand, my background helped me to understand the
customer needs and how to effectively address them. I also developed a strong presentation
and communication skill, which were incredibly valuable when I first started. So in the beginning,
it was just me and I wasn't essentially selling myself as a coach and consultant. Over time,
as client demand grew, they start asking me to execute a strategy rather than providing
the guidance. And at that point, I realized that I couldn't handle everything alone.
So by late 2019, maybe I began forming a team and building a company structure to scale
my operations. So my marketing expertise not only helped me attract clients, but also allow
me to position my business effectively in competitive market.
Yeah, I agree. Because like I think marketing, like it's a very big field and you need so
many qualities in order to execute it all really well. So yeah, it's nice knowing that
like in the early stages, you already had a lot of that like experience and you know,
like inner quality sort of. So that's really good. All right. And what were some of the
biggest challenges that you faced in those early days of building your business and how
did you overcome them?
Yeah, yeah, actually, there's like many challenges like, for example, limited resources, and
also building credibility, managing everything alone, and hiring the right person, right
people. Without a big budget, I start as a consultant to generate revenue before scaling
and gaining client trust was tough since I was no longer back with a company because
I quit from the company to build my own business. Like I don't have like a big agency. So I
focus on delivering results and leverage the referrals from the clients. And yeah, handling
everything myself from marketing, sales, operations, even HR was very overwhelming. Hiring was
especially challenging since I had no HR team at that time, I don't have a budget to hire
the HR. So I should be the one to interview every role in my business. So it's quite hard
because I have to start from writing the job description, find the right job description,
make it more interesting to attract candidates, interview candidates by myself, and even handle
the labor law compliance, which is the very hard, like the hardest thing. And also interviewing
for HR roles to replace me was completely new to me. But over time, I learned and eventually
built a strong team right now. So these challenges taught me a lot, like adaptability, resilience,
and leadership as well. So it's shaping how I run business today.
Definitely like starting from scratch is a hard thing to overcome. But I'm sure that
there was like a lot of like, you know, character development when you were done with it. So
as someone who's working in social media marketing, what are some of the misconceptions
clients have about the industry?
Yeah, one of the biggest misconceptions clients have about social media marketing is that
it's just about posting content. Because many people believe that like simply having an
active person will automatically drive sales. But in reality, this is not. A successful
strategy involves from data driven decision making, audience targeting, and also continuous
optimization. Like you have to improve almost every day, almost every day, every hour. Yeah.
And another common thought is the results happen overnight. While social media can generate
quick engagement, like building a strong brand and converting followers into customer, it
takes time. It always takes time and consistency. And the right mix of contents, advertising,
and community engagement is also important. Clients also tend to assume that the viral
content equals to business success. But while reality alone doesn't guarantee long term
growth, the sale growth, so what matters more is to sustain engagement and strategy that
aligns with the business goal. And lastly, some brands think that they don't need paid
ads. They don't need to pay money. They post content and that's enough. But you know, nowadays
organic reach is declining on most platforms. So a well planned paid strategy is very essential
for scaling and reaching the right audience effectively.
Oh yeah, yeah, I agree. Cause that's a lot of like misconceptions like, oh, like one
night and like you're a billionaire. That's not, that's not. Yeah. So one in a million.
Yeah, it's exactly. It's one in a million. And yeah. All right. Thank you. Now, what
skills or knowledge did you find helpful as an entrepreneur?
Yeah, I found that adaptability, strategic thinking. Yeah. And of course, financially
utilizing were crucial skills because running a business requires wearing multiple hats
as I mentioned before. So I had to quickly learn and apply everything operations, sales,
HR and finance, um, alongside with my expertise in, in, in marketing, but sales and negotiation
skills were especially important in the beginning. Uh, when I had to pitch my service, like close
the deal and build relationships with clients, um, understand customer psychology and marketing
trends also helped me like position my business effectively. But another key area was a team
building. I cannot work alone, right? A team building a leadership. In the early days I
had too high a trend and manage people by myself. But right now I have a manager already.
So they manage their team. But yeah, at that time, like I have to learn many things about
HR, the labor laws, the, like how to build company culture to make it like nowadays that
we are working together right now. And also managing the cash flow, the, the, the budgeting
was also critical as a finance, a financial mismanagement is one of the bigot reason why
like startup fell, right? Yeah. So above all, I think continuous learning and problem solving
have been the most valuable. The business landscape is always changing, right? So staying
agile and open to new knowledge has been essential to growth.
I definitely agree with psychology. I think understanding like the psychology of the mass,
you know, like how like they would buy what they would want would take you a long way.
So looking back, what advice would you give to someone that's starting out in the social
media marketing industry? Okay. If you're just like, uh, starting in social media marketing,
my biggest is why is to focus on the fundamental first and stay adaptable and always be data
driven. Yeah. Because, um, if you master the basic, you like, you learn the consumer psychology,
as you mentioned that the content strategy, that paid advertising and also data analytics,
the social media isn't just about the posting, as I mentioned before, it's about driving
business. Please. So, and you have to also stay updated because the platform and algorithm
change constantly actually change every day. Like sometime you cannot find this bottom.
They change, they like, they move. Right. So we have to stay update and follow the industry
news and expert experience with the new trends and adapt quickly. But yeah, don't forget
about the data driven because the client care about ROI, right? The return on investment.
So you have to learn how to track the performance and the metrics as well. And yeah, the industry
is very competitive, but those who combine creativity and strategy thinking, like the
strategy thinking will always stand out. I'm going to jump in here, but I've got a couple
of questions I'd love to find out too, just by hearing all this information. Uh, the first
one would be kind of on the client side. What are some of the metrics that your clients
really want to see when they start doing the paid part of their strategy? Okay. But actually
it depends on the business though, because in online marketing we can track everything.
Back at a time when we don't have online marketing tools, like we have offline, offline media,
for example, like out of home or TV, you cannot track the eyeballs like a hundred percent
accurately. Right. But right now we can track everything through the platform. Starting
from the upper funnel, for example, you want to target to, um, female who's age between
18 to 30, for example. Yeah. You can track the, how many people see your advertising
as an, uh, reach or impressions. And after that, you can also track that they click on
your advertising or not. And after they click on the advertising, they go to the website.
We also have the analytics to track like the clicks, right? So you, so you will see like
how many people jump into your website and then you can track, like you can also track,
like they look at your product or not. They add to cart or not. They paid or not. So we
can track in every little funnel. Cool. Okay. Yeah. That's one thing I think that people
in marketing, uh, obviously really need to think about. It's not just getting the likes
and the follows, but it's, does it actually move that person into a place where they can
make a purchase or do an engagement with your business? The other question really quick
before we jump into our break here with our PSA is now early on as you're starting the
company, um, obviously a financial part of it is super important, but, um, was there,
was there a place where you saw investors or was this something where you just kind
of just went at it by yourself and pulled money from wherever you could find? Is that
like, is that okay if you share something like that? Yeah, I can, I can share the friendly.
Uh, I start this business. Actually, I register for the business before I quit the company,
like two months or three months before I quit from, from, from the company. I, after I graduate,
I work in digital marketing agency for four years. I plan to stay longer than that because
I want to, I have a goal to learn everything about the businesses, but yeah, opportunity
came. I have to leave, like, like I have to, to, to leave. So I leave the company and I
like look at my bank account to see how many months I can survive if I don't have any income.
And I saw that, okay, I can survive like six months. So I decided to quit from, from the
company to, to run my own business. But at first I run, I run it alone. So the job, like
my, my, my day to day job is to teach people because I have a teaching skill. I mentioned
that I have to like support myself financially. So when I was in university, I work as a part
time tutor, a freelance tutor to teach students. And sometimes I didn't teach only students,
um, some like just, just any worker as well. I teach English, but yeah, I'm not that good
in English though, but I, but I teach English, English like fundamental. Yeah. I think, I
still think I'm not that good. Yeah. But, but anyway, I also like some, somehow I got
a teaching skill. So I start the first, um, first job in my own company as a coach and
consultant in online marketing because I work in digital marketing agency. And I found that,
yeah, I generally love it because I'm graduated from, from marketing, right. And I work in
digital agency. So I, I got the knowledge. Uh, I start this company with zero investment.
The only investment is my time because I know that I can generate money from my time. I
have eight hour a day to work. So I'm even start from like, like 1000 baht per hour,
but now I can make like, yeah, I can share like 20 K baht per hour. Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
And we do have a lot of like students who are interested in the entrepreneurship journey
and sometimes they're not sure or don't have an understanding of some of those small details
because they look at a lot of, Oh, I, if I can be my own boss one day, that's their goal,
but it's that journey up to that point that can be pretty difficult and sometimes, uh,
risky at some point in the financial side of it can be super risky. So thank you for
sharing that by the way. Sure. No problem. All right. That ends our segment one. We're
going to jump into our PSA announcement and then we will continue with Koon I in our second
segment. We'll be right back after this announcement.
At students incorporated, we believe in the power of connection. Just like this episode
sponsor simple coffee. Since 2013, simple coffee has been bringing people together over
a cup of authentic high quality coffee. Whether it's brainstorming ideas, sharing stories
or building relationships, coffee has a way of making those moments even more meaningful.
Simple coffee stays true to its name, keeping coffee simple, authentic and direct. No gimmicks,
no shortcuts, just great coffee that supports real human interaction. Simple coffee is also
committed to direct trade, ensuring that coffee producers get a fair deal while maintaining
the highest quality from farm to cup. Their belief in sustainability and ethical sourcing
means every sip supports a shorter, more transparent supply chain. So next time you need a moment
to connect, grab a cup of simple coffee because great things happen when people come together.
And we are back with our second part. While we still have Koon I in the studio, we have
some more questions for her. Mia will get us started again.
So Koon I, could you share the different businesses that you are a part of right now?
Okay, sure. Right now I'm actively involved in three business as I mentioned before. The
first one is Panit Digital is an official reseller of various digital platforms, including
Line Solutions, like Line official account, to help businesses integrate and optimize
their digital tools easier. The second one is Go Online Agency. This is a full funnel
marketing agency offering services like e-commerce, multimedia production, media buying, optimization
and influencer marketing, like helping brands to scale effectively. And the last one, actually
this is the first one that I work for, is Digitory, a digital marketing training and
consulting firm focusing on equipping business and individuals with the skill and knowledge
to succeed in the digital landscape. So we provide private class for companies and also
online courses for individuals. The reason I run these three businesses is that I start
by selling educational and consulting services through Digitory. As my clients grew and scaled
their business, many found that they couldn't manage everything on their own, just like
me. So that's when they start looking for support, they're looking for an agency to
handle execution. So with Go Online Agency team, I was able to seamlessly continue supporting
them with a full service marketing team. So this ecosystem allows a single client to progress
through multiple services, maximize both their growth and my ability to support them at different
stages. So aside from these businesses, I'm also an influencer who shares content about
Korea as well, from like travel and culture to lifestyle and trends like K-pop, K-beauty,
K-culture. Because it's something I'm truly passionate about, it's a space where I can
connect with people and share my experience in an authentic way.
Definitely. So like, that's like a lot of businesses, like you handle that by yourself,
you wouldn't be able to handle all three businesses, right? Okay. So how do you like tailor your
approach to each client's specific needs? Is that why you have like three businesses
too? Yeah. The first thing I focus on is staying constantly informed about the trends and the
shift in the business world. Because my clients come from incredibly diverse industries, ranging
from FMCG products in the retail stores to luxury items like yachts, like supercar, real
estate, home elevators, and even construction, hospitals, clinic, hotel, schools as well.
So if I were to list them all, it would take a day, right? So because of the diversity,
I need to deeply understand each business before offering recommendations. That means
studying their revenue model, like B2B or B2C, identifying their core customers and
mapping out their customer journey is very important. For example, a B2B construction
firm selling to developers requires a completely different like marketing approach than the
B2C skincare brand or cosmetic that's selling directly to the consumer. So the way their
consumer make decisions, the platforms that they engage with and the messaging, like the
message that resonates them are entirely different. So my job is to ensure that I see the right
marketing tools and strategy that align with the specific business model and the target
audience. By taking this personalized research-driven approach, I can provide a practical and effective
solution that helps my client achieve their goal. Yeah, so it's like very personalized,
right? Yeah, very like tele-made. Oh, okay. Thank you. And you know, like, as you said,
like the business world, like it's changing every day, right? And you were also just talking
about how it's really good to like adapt and to be agile. So what do you think is the biggest
shift or trend happening right now in the digital marketing world? And how should companies
adapt to that? Okay, sure. Right now, one of the biggest shifts in digital marketing
is the, I mentioned it already, the declining in organic reach is becoming more challenging
to get content noticed because there's so much content being produced nowadays, right?
Even me, I can produce like 10 posts a day. So there will be a lot of content on the platform
and the platform are limiting the organic visibility. So trends can emerge and disappear
in the blink of an eye, right? So if you are not staying on top of things, you could easily
miss out on valuable opportunities. So you need to be like stay update. And to adapt,
to adapt, the business need to stay update and constantly find new ways to communicate
with their audience as well. Because sometimes you communicate like in the single message
all the time, the audience will get bored, right? So you need to find like something
else to talk with your customer. So it's required flexibility in responding to changing trends.
And at the same time, it's very important to not overlook the power of paid ads. Relying
solely on the organic reach is no longer enough because the paid ads are essential to reach
the, like the target audience effectively. And to make them work, you need to stay update
on the ad tools as well and the algorithm as well. So to summarize, my advice is to
keep learning and stay updated. Whether it's the new content strategy, the tools, the advertising
platform, the digital landscape is evolve, like evolving constantly and those who adapt
are the one who success.
All right. So with the world adapting and the client's definition of success constantly
changing too, how do you then measure success for your clients?
Yeah, measuring success depends on the client specific business and the objective set at
the beginning. For example, if the goal is to build awareness, we focus on reach and
impression from ads. Like we just want to make sure that people see your advertising.
But if the goal is to drive self, we can track online sales through e-commerce website because
we have the tools to track. So we can track even the return on ad spend or ROS, we call
it low apps. This allows us to quickly determine which apps are driving sales and adjust the
budget accordingly. So for offline sales is a bit tricky. Like we rely on Ligura communication
with the client to get updates from the sale performance. There's no tool to track from
online to offline like a hundred percent accuracy. But ultimately the key is every campaign,
like online campaign is measurable right now and we can track performance to ensure that
we are hitting the right targets.
Yeah. So with that, there's like specific numbers, right? Yeah. So then it's very easy
to like data. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. So I have a two part question next. So
the first one is, is there a particular success story from one of your clients that stands
out to you that you can share?
Yeah, sure. One success story that stand out is with a client in the pent retail industry.
They initially came to us for consulting. They at that time, they had six physical store
locations and were not leveraging the online market. Right. So after working together and
helping them grow, they reached a point where they could no longer manage everything by
their own, right? On their own. So our team stepped into handle their paid ads. Over the
past four years, the business has expanded to 18 store locations already and their sales
have increased by like several hundred percent. Additionally, they launched an online store
for B2C customer and implement the B2B system for contractor and painters to easily like
reorder. And this transformation led us to submit their case to Google Thailand. And
in 2023, we won the best in client success award from Google ads to create a significant
impact on client business. And is a great example of how a strong partnership, not only
client and agency, but we work as a partner and the right digital marketing strategy can
really help our business grow.
Wow. Oh, wow. I think we should hire you for this podcast. That's crazy. So like six stores
to 18 stores, like three times. Yeah, that's crazy. You're good. Oh my god. Yes. Wow.
Amazing. Congrats on the award. And all right. The second part of the question is, is there
a specific social media platform that usually outperforms others? To be honest, no. It depends
on the business and the customer. As I always mentioned that understand customer is very
important because for example, the B2B construction firm, the marketing will not going to work
on TikTok, you know, because the construction, the nature of the customer, they will go to
like, like, for example, you want to build a house, you will not go to TikTok to search
like how can I build a house or like to find a contractor. Right. So you would go to Google,
right. To search, to search for the contractor and to see, to check their credibility as
well. Right. So in this case, Google is the one that outperform. But in another case,
for example, cosmetic, yeah, some might search on Google, but yeah, of course they will,
they will go to YouTube to see the, the, the inference or review or sometime you can see
that on TikTok or Instagram as well. So I cannot say that which one is good or not.
Like which, which one is the best is depends on the industry and it depends on the business.
So that is the reason why I say that it always tailor made like one by one in every plan
that I recommend to the client. All right. Now for our final question. So now what advice
would you give to businesses looking to improve their social media footprint? My advice is
to understand your customers and deliver content that address their pain points, like focusing
on offering value through educational content and work on building a community around your
brand to attract new customer. Don't overlook the paid ads. That is very important, but
you need to choose the right platforms where you can target your customers, like where
the customer are active to make sure that you are spending your advertising budget wisely
and remember that success of your business online depends entirely on your customers.
And yet again, we get some good and practical advice. So thank you again for joining the
show and sharing a lot of your experience and knowledge with us for free, I might add
about social media marketing. And so we hope our audience was able to learn a lot about
this world of social media marketing. As we end this episode, we want to thank again,
KUN AI for joining us. We also want to thank this episode sponsor, Simple Coffee for the
message that great things can happen when people come together, especially when it's
over a great cup of coffee. Okay, stay tuned for our next episode as we discuss the topic
of design thinking as it relates to problem solving, and we'll be utilizing a brainstorming
technique known as worst idea. And as always, this podcast would not be possible without
the hard work and support of our international student production team. All music and sound
effects are courtesy of pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives sharing copyright free
images, videos and music. And we are signing off until next time. We are students incorporated
because your voice matters.