aCommerce, Omise, Eatigo, Flow Account, and Finnomena have all become incredibly popular in Thailand. But how did these digital products from various industries succeed at Thai user acquisition?
This article explores the trends you need to know to effectively target Thai people and how to turn your traditional business strategy into a product growth hacker.
Search engines continue their reign
As kings of brand discovery in Thailand, search engines and therefore SEO cannot be overlooked. Rank higher than your competitors by producing local content that resonates with Thai audiences and accounts for cultural nuances. This doesn’t just include publishing Thai content but also includes meta titles, descriptions, and keywords related to local interests.
Get social proof with review stars
From experience, adding a review star on Google’s Result Page can increase a website’s CTR drastically, since it adds an element of social proof. Most users are more likely to believe in a product if someone else has found value in it. Here is a tool you can use to generate your own JSON file and get started.
Also Read: Challenges and opportunities for startups expanding to Thailand
Find out what Thai users are asking
Other easy ways to discover commonly asked questions, public sentiment, and what Thai people are discussing online include:
Pantip.com
Pantip is basically Reddit for Thais. Members of this Thai web forum engage in debates, seek advice, and share experiences. Over the years, Pantip has evolved to include reviews, articles, and even a marketplace, further broadening its appeal and utility.
Knowing the topics people are searching for is like a magic mirror that allows marketers, SEO experts, and content creators to see their audience’s interests. Tools like AlsoAsked pull frequently asked questions from Google’s “People also ask” feature.
In the example above, apart from asking about the price of solar panel installations, people also ask about licenses, selling power back to the grid, calculating kilowatts, and more.
Football, lottery, boxing and horoscopes power the Thai acquisition funnel
For Thais, our favourite pastimes (football, gambling, Muay Thai, and superstition, in no particular order) inform our decisions as consumers and users. With the help of Google Trends, we can prove in real-time that Thai people love looking up our national lottery. And, user-driven content from every popular Thai platform usually includes some form of horoscope-related advice – including e-commerce giant Lazada.
To achieve product growth in the Thai market, businesses can expect unusual tactics if they want to win over Thai consumers.
Here are some examples:
Bargain hunting overpowers brand loyalty
Out of the total 18.7 million wage-earning Thai workers, the average person only receives about 20,000 Baht per month. Naturally, this makes Thai consumers particularly price-sensitive. Thai customers tend to show little brand loyalty when a cheaper, comparable option is available. This underscores the importance of competitive pricing and the strategic use of discounts and loyalty programs.
Here’s how you can leverage that into greater user acquisition:
- Add a starting price to your tagline: Search engine results pages (SERPs) with cost or price range in the title or descriptions tend to perform better than those without any indication of costs.
- Advertise discounts and special coupons: The average Thai user is willing to stop ordering and stop before payment if they think there are coupons and discounts available. Thai consumers end up spending more time researching and forgetting about unfinished orders. Meanwhile, adding a few coupons at the very start of your user flow can drive instant purchases.
- Target more Android users: Android smartphones in Thailand are available for as little as US$100 – only a fifth of the average Thai salary – which explains why Android OS held an impressive 75 per cent market share in 2023. Businesses aiming to optimise their conversion funnel for Thai audiences should consider strategies that focus on Android users, which dominate their target market.
More mobile-friendly designs and load speeds
Beautiful desktop designs are great, but as of 2023, only 38 per cent of the Thai population used their desktop. However, 100 per cent of people living in Thailand own a smartphone. Greater audience reach and effective product growth rely on a user-friendly mobile app.
Another factor which is often overlooked by both designers and developers is the load time on a 3G connection. Unfortunately, 2.5 seconds is all it takes for an app or website to be removed from Google’s good user experience Core Web Vitals.
Finnomena, a fintech startup offering investment advice and solutions, finds its success through a mobile-first approach. This caters to the Thai population’s predominant use of smartphones for internet access. Their platform is optimised for mobile devices, ensuring quick load times and an intuitive user interface. This means easier access to investment resources and tools and allows for success beyond acquisition.
Cashless QR payment is king, not credit
The Bank of Thailand reports that only 28 per cent of the 93 million active card-based payment methods represent active credit cards. This figure pales in comparison to the 67 million users registered with QR PromptPay, Thailand’s innovative cashless, QR-powered payment system. If your digital product does not clearly offer QR payments, user drop-off rates will likely increase.
On the other hand, if your app or e-commerce platform accepts QR payments, you can make a significant impact on your conversion funnel by advertising it clearly. Thai users love convenience, and will gravitate towards a product or service they can pay for, hassle-free.
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