Indonesian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are taking advantage of the unique methods of engagement that online services offer them and potential customers.
The owner of Jakarta-based desserts maker PUYO Desserts, Adrian Agus, owes much of his brand’s success to intensive online campaigns through various social media and messaging apps.
By connecting directly with his customers through these platforms, Adrian has been able to find a quick way for his colorful home-made puddings to capture the public eye.
Shortly after he started the business in 2013, Adrian found that social media greatly helped his marketing operations at little cost. In the beginning, PUYO’s marketing campaigns mostly centered on Instagram where it slowly gained traction and attracted loyal followers.
“Social media campaigns have been very effective for the business. Right now, we’re holding a lot of competitions on Instagram,” he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, elaborating on the creative engagement that Instagram offers between customer and vendor.
Gradually, PUYO has branched out to Twitter and LINE to help sell its products, with the use of these services’ operational tools such as LINE’s LINE@ service, which enables the user to send mass messages to all customers that follow its LINE account.
Japanese-based LINE Corporation itself describes the Line@ feature in its messaging app as “the same as broadcast messaging”. The company, however, says that the idea is more specifically aimed at nurturing businesses.
Currently, PUYO has over 59,600 followers on its Instagram account and has evolved from being a home-based business in 2013 to having 22 outlets across Greater Jakarta.
Meanwhile, the social apps behind these successes are increasingly aware of their role in the small business sector.
Apps such as LINE, KakaoTalk, WeChat or WhatsApp have had their purposes extended beyond the simple text message, with some apps gradually rolling out new features that help small businesses thrive or become more efficient.
LINE Indonesia’s head of marketing Galuh Chandrakirana explained that the rollouts of the company’s newer features such as Line for PC, Line Group Call and Line Today would help small businesses in making their operations more mobile, as mobility is becoming more emphasized in today’s business world, with SMEs able to benefit from these services through trimming their costs.
“Features such as Line for PC, which can be opened from desktops, are not geared necessarily for SMEs but it serves to help them cut communications costs. However, we do plan to roll out a feature which is specifically designed to help that sector in the next month or two,” she elaborated.
Currently, LINE has recorded over 1 million downloads in Indonesia comprising small businesses including online shops, offline retailers, specific communities and bloggers. Up to 40 percent of that figure is active businesses who utilize LINE in their practices.
Indonesia has the highest number of SMEs in Southeast Asia, with over 50 million operating nationwide, however, only 1 percent of these are officially “connected” online.
Last month, the government announced its cooperation with online SME promotion service Nurbaya Initiatives to explore new ways of encouraging SMEs to tap into the digital era’s potential.
Collaborating with state-owned postal company PT Pos Indonesia, Nurbaya is targeting to bring 2 million SMEs online within the next two years. The company will assign a facilitator to provide each participating SME with advice on online promotion, including the setting up of online stores and payment platforms.
Nurbaya will also assign a relationship manager to every online shop, allowing clients to focus on production. “By our collaboration with the postal service, SMEs will have help in terms of logistics and quality control,” Nurbaya’s CEO Andy Sjarif said.
