Jacqui Boyd of Acceleration Media concludes a series of online education columns by telling marketers why now is a good time to climb into online media.
Online advertising has reached an inflection point in South Africa. To put it simply, there is no better time for marketers to take advantage of the many benefits that the online medium has to offer. Those that ignore the opportunity risk being left behind by the rest of the market.
Over the past two years, we've seen exponential growth in the number of unique browsers in South Africa. Research from Nielsen//NetRatings shows that there were 3.9-million active unique browsers in May 2007, up 121% from May 2005 (1.8-million).
During the same time frame, page impressions grew by 129% from 91-million to 207-million. For many middle-class South Africans, the internet is now an integral part of day to day life at home and at work, as a source of information and entertainment, and as a platform for social interaction.
The South African internet population is increasingly diverse, representing a healthy demographic spread. Users of both genders, of all ages, and representing a number of the countries languages are online at home or at work. Thanks to the advent of affordable broadband, these users are spending more time online than ever before.
If South Africa follows the trends evident in the rest of the world, we can expect to see online media continue its rapid rise while other media stagnate or decline in popularity. Increasingly, the web will become one of the best places to find and converse with your customers and prospects.
As this series of columns has shown online media allows you to interact with this audience in ways that are simply not possible in any other medium.
You can enter into a dialogue with a targeted audience rather than massbroadcasting a message in the hopes of reaching someone you want to talk to. You can understand how many people you are reaching with a campaign and who, which means that you can spend your budget where it will work the hardest for you.
You can use the online medium to further a range of business goals, from brand-building to customer conversion and retention, track your success in meeting your objectives using a range of powerful tools and metrics, and then adjust your campaign to make it perform better. The proven flexibility, cost-effectiveness, measurability and reach of online media make it an
essential part of the marketing mix for nearly any organisation.
The single biggest challenge that marketers face in the web environment lies in keeping ahead of a fast-changing market. The dynamics of the web are as fluid as ever, with new concepts like social networking reaching the market and sites falling in and out of popularity at a rapid rate.
There's no better time to start coming to grips with this dynamic environment and the many opportunities it has to offer. Jump in. There's no more time to waste.