Everyone knows the importance of online marketing especially social media campaigns as a common way for tech companies and startups to convert new customers and increase tractions.

No wonder “growth hackers” and “SEO experts” are getting so much demand by companies nowadays.

If you are a  startup or a technology company selling products or services online, take a look at this short online marketing legal primer so that your online marketing efforts are legally compliant.

Know your business

An easy way to know if you have to pay extra attention to your online marketing efforts is whether you are operating in a regulated industry.

Startups in areas such as fintech, healthtech, foodtech, and e-commerce generally have to comply with additional marketing and advertising restrictions.

These laws are designed and imposed by regulators to protect the general public from any misrepresentation or false advertising and to let the public make an informed decision when they choose to buy a product or service.

So if you are already regulated by a regulator, it will be a good idea to take time to really make sure that you know the dos and don’ts before you start publicising your startup on the internet.

Also Read: What you need to know about digital marketing for the new normal

Have a social media policy and branding guidelines

Every company should have a social media policy and branding guidelines.

A social media policy usually applies to all the directors, employees, and independent contractors that you work with which includes confidentiality provisions.

Branding guidelines set out your official branding collaterals like logo, official font, formatting including the dos and don’ts when your social media team post contents online for online.

This not only helps you to ensure consistency within your team, but also when working with external parties.

This helps set out clear expectations on how a company’s collateral and digital assets can be published and used by third-party online marketing or social media houses or influencers.

Know the personal data protection laws

All companies now need to comply with the personal data protection laws.

Essentially, they are a set of rules that companies need to follow so that the customers’ personal data are used in accordance with what they’ve promised to the customers as set out in the privacy policy or in the personal data protection notice.

Many countries now have their own version of personal data protection laws in place. All Southeast Asian countries with the exceptions of Cambodia and Bangladesh have their own respective personal data laws.

When drafting a privacy policy for your online platform or your mobile app, it will be good to engage a privacy lawyer to understand personal data protection compliance.

You should at least know the differences between a ‘data user’ (ie a company that obtains personal data like full name, date of birth, contact details, and so on) and a ‘data subject’ which is a customer providing the personal data.

Also Read: Surviving COVID-19: How to adapt your digital marketing strategy amidst a global crisis

If you are engaging a company or a customer within the European Union (EU) territory, you may also need to check if you have to comply with The General Data Protection Regulation, a regulation on data protection and privacy with a wide coverage extending to personal data outside the EU continent.

Furthermore, common sense may also help when you want to publish online content on your social media postings. For example, unless there is clear consent by a customer, you should be careful when posting contents that may contain personal information belonging to customers as they may be a breach of personal data protection laws.

Know consumer protection laws if you are selling products online

If you are an e-commerce platform and involved in promoting products or services, take note of the consumer protection laws as well.

For instance, Malaysia has the Consumer Protection Act 1999, which protects consumers against a range of unfair practices and enforces minimum product standards. The scope has been updated to cover e-commerce transactions and additional safeguards to protect consumers from unfair terms.

To cater to the growing e-commerce platforms, online sellers need to put up certain necessary disclosure to ensure consumers can make an informed decision before they buy a product online.

For example, in Malaysia, someone who is selling an online product needs to include:

• name or name of the company or name of the business that operates the online business
• company or business registration number, if applicable
• contact address (email, telephone, and address of the person or company)
• description of the goods or services provided
• the full price of the goods or services. This must include shipping cost, tax, and other costs that the seller intends to charge the buyer.
• payment method
• terms and conditions for the sale
• The estimated time of delivery for goods purchased, which must include estimated time for all shipping options that you have offered, if any.

A company commits an offence if it fails to comply with any of the above disclosure requirements. This also includes if you gave false or misleading information to the public. Take note that the law does not discriminate between a startup or a normal company so the penalty is the same.

Also Read: 7 common legal pitfalls startup founders should avoid

An unhappy consumer can file a claim with the Tribunal for Consumer Complaints. If the claim is successful, the e-commerce company may be liable for a penalty imposed by this tribunal.

Know the local online contents regulations

Depending on where you currently operate your tech company or startup, there may be local online content regulations that you need to follow too.

In Malaysia, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is a statutory body tasked to regulate the information technology and communications industries. To summarise, they regulate online speech, providing that “no content applications service provider, or other person using a content applications service, shall provide content which is indecent, obscene, false, menacing, or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person”.

The  Communications and Multimedia Content Forum of Malaysia formulates and implements the Content Code, which is a voluntary guideline for content providers concerning the handling of content deemed offensive or indecent.

If you already have a social media team in place, everyone should know the Content Code regulations including outsourced digital agency so that they do not violate these online content regulations.

If you outsource your online marketing efforts, formalise the engagement

Every influencer or online marketer that a company wants to engage needs to sign a formal engagement letter in place.

The engagement letter is a formal agreement setting out the expectations between the parties. Things like the scope and the fee can be set out in the document.

As a company, the  engagement letter should have the following commercial terms:

• Clear description of the scope of work including timelines for the deliverables by the social media agency
• Guidelines for acceptable postings and comments
• You agreeing to give access to social media accounts 
• Granting the limited licence by the social media company to use your  logos or brands
• Contingency plan in the event of disaster 
• Obligation to report of any incident 
• Deliver up of account and materials upon termination 
• Indemnity by the social media to you in the event of any negligence or misconduct 

As online marketing gets more sophisticated allowing companies to target customers based on behaviours, activities, demographics, and so many variables, it only makes sense that these online marketing laws exist to promote a level playing field that is fair for all.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: iGlobe Partners

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Before investing in a startup, investors will first conduct a thorough analysis and due diligence on the business. Investors’ approach to this process differs depending on their investment motives.

Financial investors such as angel investors and VCs invest for financial gains whereas strategic investors such as corporations invest for other strategic benefits.

We explore what goes on in an investor’s mind before he or she decides to write the cheque.

While what is discussed here would be more relevant for the financial investor, the strategic investor will have many of these in their evaluation toolkit as well.

The product, the market and the team

With pre-seed to seed stage startups, we assess whether there is validation of the pain point the startup is trying to solve. We look at evidence that the pain point exists and see if the solution is a ‘must-have’ or merely a ‘nice-to-have’. This can be determined from analysing user growth, feedback, customer interviews as well as user engagement levels.

For seed stage to post-seed-stage startups, we focus on whether product–market fit has been achieved, i.e evidence of a market worth serving. Studying the evidence of traction, we analyse whether it is driven by early adopters or a broader market. We would also like to see how high the pain point ranks as a priority among customers in the broader market.

Also Read: gojek names Facebook, PayPal as new investors in latest funding round

By investigating the market the startup is in, we evaluate whether there is an opportunity to build exponential growth in a market that is sizeable and robust. We gauge whether market conditions enable the company to build value much faster than it is incurring the expenditure.

We compare the product against the competition and determine if there are distinguishing factors that matter to the customer. To disrupt a market, the product should be perceived to be multiple times better, cheaper or more efficient than the incumbent solution.

After understanding the market the startup is in, investors would analyse the go-to-market strategy. What we’re looking for is a plan and business model that allows the company to acquire customers cost-effectively. This is influenced by the channels relied on for customer acquisition. We compare the costs of acquiring customers against the future revenue they bring in. This sheds light on how scalable the business is.

In a tech startup, we need to find out how the current software would cope if there is a multifold increase in customer traffic. Is it a question of adding additional equipment with no material changes to the framework or would the software need to be rewritten? This can impact on scalability.

For tech startups, there needs to be a plan and procedure for product management. Markets and customer requirements constantly change thus companies need strong product management to accommodate such changes speedily.

Whether the startup has in-house technical resources rather than outsourced ones will be key to its adaptability and profitability.

Also Read: How e27 Pro helps startups remain in view of APAC key investors

We need to understand the skillset and experience of the founders – their strengths and weaknesses. We find out why this particular founder has chosen this particular business, how committed is the founder and what are the chances of the founder persisting with the business and succeeding (as explained in Angel by Jason Calacanis).

Also, the founding team should ideally be equipped with a combination of selling, technical, and product management skills.

Growth plans and projections

An important part of a startup’s investment case would be its growth plans and projections. This includes the user growth required to achieve its growth targets given the user engagement, customer acquisition and retention. In addition, we also focus on the revenue growth required given factors like customer lifetime value, pricing, product mix, etc.

With projections, investors would study the critical assumptions carefully especially those relating to growth, margins, and capital expenditure. The current financing round needs to help the company hit the benchmarks for the next round of financing.

Next, we evaluate how the growth plans and projections relate to the future valuation of the business. We analyse the basis and value drivers behind the valuation.

Estimating an exit valuation, we assess whether the investment returns make sense given the entry valuation.

Also Read: Qualgro Partners: Southeast Asia is home to the next big B2B tech companies

Further due diligence and deal structure

Due diligence on a startup will not be complete if investors are not mindful of the regulatory environment and its impact on the business. We should see if all relevant approvals and licences have been obtained and the conditions attaching to them.

Also, it is useful to know if regulatory requirements provide any form of barriers to entry against future entrants.

Together with legal advice, we determine if the technology or solution is capable of having intellectual property (IP) protection. This goes towards building a moat against competitors. We should also find out if any aspects of the business are infringing on the IP rights of others.

Additionally, check whether current and past employees have assigned to the company all IP rights for work they have done.

Investors would also analyse the structure of the investment including the financial instrument to be invested in, be it equity, convertible, SAFE note, etc. and its terms. The idea is to have the terms provide downside protection for the investor, good governance as well as an efficient exit for profit realisation.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: iGlobe Partners

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Tuas Capital, The Hive to launch venture builder fund for SEA

Malaysian private investment group Tuas Capital Partners has signed a partnership with US-based venture studio The Hive to form a new fund, called The Hive Southeast Asia.

The venture builder fund will be domiciled in Malaysia and investing in the co-creation space dedicated to provide startup launchpads and utilising The Hive’s venture studio model.

It will be one of the funds under Dana Penjana Nasional, a Fund of Fund to be launched by the Malaysian government. Half of the the capital for the fund will be provided by Dana Penjana Nasional and the other half by private and foreign LPs brought together by The Hive and Tuas.

Dana PENJANA Nasional was formed as part of the Malaysian Short-Term Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana).

This fund will function to mobilise a programme which will match, on a 1-to-1 basis, institutional private capital investments with selected venture capitals and early-stage tech fund managers for various stages of the startup funding lifecycle.

The Hive Southeast Asia is one of the international groups that will be participating in the programme.

Malaysia’s personalised travel app Tourplus ventured into food delivery

Tourplus, a personalised travel app based in Malaysia, has launched GetFoodPlus.com, a delivery service that specialises in frozen foods.

The deliveries will be carried out by tour guides, who were displaced by the COVID-19-induced lockdown and the government’s movements control order.

Currently, GetFoodPlus offers more then 100 frozen food items with Halal certificates.

The services are available in Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley.

Malaysia’s e-commerce enabler Everpeaks targets to raise US$376K via crowdfunding platform pitchIN

Malaysia-based e-commerce solutions provider Everpeaks has announced that it plans to raise further funds, targeting US$376,000 via equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN.

Currently, the campaign is at the pre-live stage on pitchIN.

The firm plans to use the fund to strengthen its operations, especially its marketing effort.

Also Read: ScaleUp Malaysia kickstarts 3-month programme with 20 companies in first cohort

Everpeaks combines e-commerce expertise with a duty-free global distribution hub that integrates to the e-commerce platforms.

According to Digital News Asia, Everpeaks has US$234,000 in funding from an angel investor ahead of the targeted June 15, 2020 date of being live on the pitchIN platform.

Singapore’s NTUC Income launches bite-sized insurance service SNACK

NTUC Income has launched SNACK, an insurance proposition that seeks to revolutionise the way consumers engage with, purchase and obtain insurance protection in Singapore.

Typically, an insured is required to pay insurance premiums at a fixed quantum either monthly or annually, and sometimes over a fixed duration of time, in order to be covered for a specified sum assured.

With SNACK, the insured gradually builds or stacks his insurance coverage by paying micro-premiums at either US$0.30, US$0.50, or US$0.70 and accumulate micro-policies that offer a specified sum assured — based on the insured’s profile — that corresponds with the premiums paid.

The SNACK insured can also decide when and how frequent premiums are paid by linking them to his preferred lifestyle triggers, such as ordering a meal, exercising or simply by taking public transport.

Each micro-policy, which is issued when a micro-premium is paid, covers the SNACK insured for 360 days, which means that the insured stays protected by insurance coverage that has been accumulated over time even when he stops using his lifestyle triggers or if the weekly cap is reached.

Additionally, SNACK offers the customers the flexibility to build insurance coverage at their own pace by setting a weekly cap of up to a maximum of US$50 on payment triggers, if they wish to ease cash flow.

SNACK is also looking to enhance its insurance offerings by offering options that help insureds save and invest for their future.

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It’s been 87 days since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. As the weeks have progressed, it has become abundantly clear that there is no going back to a pre-COVID-19 era.

A new normal has formed and it has shifted the way we interact, work, live, and even consume and buy products. Famous English naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

Adapting has been a key theme at PatSnap since the onset of COVID-19. From shifting to a new WFH model, managing the COVID situation in both our East and West offices, and adjusting to the needs of our customers during this unprecedented time, we’ve moved quickly and adapted expertly.

As a B2B SaaS business, adjusting has also meant rethinking how we sell our products and forge ahead with growing our business.

While the pandemic has been the source of a number of pain points, a silver lining has emerged. COVID-19 has allowed us to make a pivotal shift: go from being a sales-led driven company to a product-led growth company.

Also Read: Singapore’s R&D analytics company PatSnap raises US$38M led by Sequoia, Shunwei

Out with the old, in with the new

The lead up to this shift has been a few months in the making. As a global organisation with operations in Asia, Europe and North America, our exposure to COVID-19 has spanned across three continents for the last seven months.

When the pandemic first broke in China, we began to see immediate effects on our business. I knew that I had to revise our current business strategy and time was not on my side. It was apparent that the buying and working habits of our customers were changing and our current sales methods were not going to suffice.

The APAC leadership team and I made the strategic decision to make all of our products/services free for a limited time to businesses in China, in order to support and minimise the disruption to their IP and R&D initiatives.

While our decision to provide free access was based on our desire to be customer-centric, it unintentionally set us on a path to shift our culture and business to focus on product-led growth.

Product-led growth (PLG) is an end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.

Industry tech leaders such as Zoom, Slack and Dropbox are great examples of businesses that have successfully put this model into practice. Blake Bartlett, from OpenView, wrote an excellent article on product-led growth, here’s a snippet on why he thinks PLG is the future of company growth:

With our outbound sales teams feeling the impact of companies shifting to WFH models, moving to a PLG strategy empowered our sales team to revamp their approach to sales.

Also Read: How a startup founder in China tackled the COVID-19 crisis –and what you can learn from him

Opening the door for innovative sales methods that strongly positioned PatSnap’s products enabled us to generate a pipeline of leads during one of the most turbulent economic times. Our success in China laid the groundwork for us to offer a similar free access campaign in our PatSnap West regions, solidifying our commitment to PLG.

Product-led growth is the future of B2B businesses

During the most recent Microsoft quarterly earning calls, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, mentioned that “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security —we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

This acceleration of digital transformation is happening, and fast. For B2B SaaS businesses, such as PatSnap, it means that we need to even further “digitise” every aspect of how we develop and distribute our products to end-users. We need to evolve ourselves from a traditional sales-led user journey to a product-led user journey.

For the past 14 years, PatSnap has predominantly operated on a sales-led business strategy. Similar to other B2B software companies, our approach required SDRs to contact prospects and introduce PatSnap’s offerings.

If a prospect showed interest, a demo of our product would be booked to illustrate the business case for PatSnap. If the demo was successful, we’d offer a short free trial period with the end goal of signing the prospect up as a customer at the end of that trial.

Don’t get me wrong, this strategy has been successful, it has served as the foundation in which our business has been able to scale and grow. But the reality is, it’s no longer the way forward and it will not be the golden ticket to our continued growth.

Customers are more strongly positioned and educated, which means the new user journey for B2B businesses needs to focus on the PLG user journey: get the user to try the product before you sell them on it.

Also Read: Singapore’s R&D analytics company PatSnap raises US$38M led by Sequoia, Shunwei

Users need to see the value of a product themselves; this is beneficial not only for sales but also for retention. PLG places this notion at the center and enables companies with strong solutions to let the products speak for themselves.

Part of a successful PLG strategy is timing. In the early days of PatSnap, we had a good product but it likely wouldn’t have withstood the rigorous user reviews and criticism of a PLG model.

Today, after years of perfecting innovation intelligence, I am extremely confident in our products and their ability to sell themselves to prospects.

I also believe allowing users to test our products from the start will enable us to be more efficient in increasing product adoption. In turn, an increase in product adoption helps lower customer cost acquisition (CAC) resulting in better retention overall.

How is PatSnap approaching PLG?

PLG strategies are not cookie-cutter. Companies will often pick and choose various elements to suit their customers and end goals. At PatSnap we’ve decided to approach PLG by implementing the following:

Offering all our products for free within a limited time frame

Our free access campaign, which first launched in Asia in February and has now been launched in Europe and North America, was started as a method to support the IP and R&D community and generate leads.

Since launch, our leads have grown 2-3x more than pre-COVID days and we’ve seen consistent traction on weekly sign-ups from prospects and customers to try our products at no costs. The below chart shows PatSnap China’s lead generation growth since launching the free access campaign earlier this year.

Providing users with a sneak peek into the product outputs while generating leads and brand awareness.

Later this month, we will be launching our new lead generation freemium website www.connectedinnovation.io. Inspired by HubSpot’s Website Grader, our website is intended to provide users with information on any company’s innovation profile. Users simply type in a company name, click generate a report and after submitting a few contact details, they will be provided with a one-page report on the company’s innovation strategy for free.

The report is intended to be high-level and provides users with a taste of the outputs that PatSnap can provide. The goal of this site is to provide an additional avenue for lead generation while expanding PatSnap’s brand awareness among a wider audience.

Note: Lead generation freemium models are not the same as a self-serve freemium model like Zoom, where users can try the product out and buy it using a credit card if they like it.

Also Read: 3 much needed mindset shifts to thrive in a post COVID-19 world

Letting users discover the “aha” moments.

Offering free access to a product is only one half of the equation. Ensuring that users can quickly and easily onboard is the other. PatSnap is often praised for having a very simple and user-friendly interface but learning to navigate the product in its entirety isn’t always intuitive for everyone.

We want to make the onboarding experience so easy and so friendly, that customers can navigate through the experience on their own, at their own pace. By incorporating automated and user-friendly sign-ups and onboarding, we can enable users to discover the “aha” moment of PatSnap on their own (ideally within the first 5-10 minutes after login).

This moment is powerful because it often leads to users becoming brand advocates who will willingly refer your product to others because they can easily articulate the value and use case from their own experience.

Just like sales funnel metrics but focused on product

Lastly, just like how Sales and Marketing teams use the sales funnel concept, product teams within PLG environments use growth funnels to track acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue.

This is known as know as the AARRR funnel. We want our product teams to not only understand the product but see how these metrics relate to the product and use them on a more regular basis to enhance the user experience.

Also Read: PatSnap raises US$3.6M funding led by Vertex Venture Holdings

While COVID-19 continues to unfold, I believe that the new digital transformation will be PLG. Relying on outbound sales and inbound marketing may not disappear but we will likely see its effectiveness decline, making way for other opportunities to connect with users and prospects.

I strongly believe that if SaaS organisations want to continue to survive in the post-COVID world, we all have to adapt, and for PatSnap that means leaning more into PLG and showing the strength of our expertise through the power of our products.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: iGlobe Partners

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, or like the e27 Facebook page

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The post From sales-led to product-led: PatSnap founder shares how COVID-19 shifted their growth strategy appeared first on e27.

Last year, Reuters came out with an exclusive report about the Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab’s plan to merge OVO, its e-wallet service with DANA– an Indonesia-focussed e-wallet platform run by a joint venture between Ant Financial and Emtek Group.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the two companies have agreed in principle to merge, as part of its effort to challenge the domination of GoPay, the digital payments service owned by rival gojek, in the Indonesian market.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the two companies have “ironed out” their differences over valuations and structure as they aim to reduce cash burn.

The signing of the deal was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic but the report said it “could happen soon” once details are finalised.

Both companies have declined to comment on the matter.

Also Read: OVO launches crowdfunding campaign for flood victims of Greater Jakarta

Winning Indonesian market

According to a recent report by Rapyd, Indonesian consumers strongly prefer e-wallets to cards and cash with 33.8 per cent choosing one of three e-wallets (OVO, Go-Pay or Dana) as their preferred way to pay.

Among these users, OVO is the number one frequently-used payment method with 69 per cent respondents claiming to have used it in the past month. It is also the country’s most preferred one with 17.8 per cent respondents choosing it.

A merger between OVO dan Dana would result in the creation of an even more powerful player in the market.

In a recent interview with e27, OVO CEO Jason Thompson mentioned “a positive shift towards digital payment adoptions” in the Indonesian market as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Previously, in July 2019, GoPay has announced a partnership with LinkAja, a digital payments service by state-owned mobile operator Telkomsel.

gojek itself has recently named Facebook and PayPal as new investors in their latest funding round. The investment included the possibility of having PayPal integrated into the gojek platform, opening up access to a network of merchants worldwide.

More on this story as it develops.

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