Challenges of E-marketing for SMEs in Africa
Despite the above-mentioned prospects that e-marketing offers for SMEs in Africa, its challenges cannot be overlooked. They need to be stated so that they can be addressed appropriately so they can procure maximum benefits for these SMEs.
Bostanshirin gives the following points as some challenges that e-marketing for SMEs in Africa can pose:
- Problem of Integrity:
On the other hand, one of major problems with marketing campaigns is that they employ several offline and online promotions channels such as press, brochure, catalogue, TV, cell phone, e-mail, internet, social media among other things, while they lack a comprehensive, harmonizing marketing framework. Each item is used in isolation and accomplished as a different task not as a component of an integrated campaign aimed at realization of specified and particular objectives. This deficiency can be compensated for by taking a holistic approach which synchronizes different traditional and internet age modes of marketing communication as moments of an integrated structure. With respect to virtual, online component of an integrated marketing what is “also worth noting is that like offline marketing, all aspects of online marketing are inextricably linked, and in many cases, interdependent.
Therefore none of the elements of marketing should stand in isolation. The website will never be visited if there are no links to it, viral marketing requires email or social media websites to communicate the message and search engines are useless without websites to link to it. So is it that in any internet marketing strategy, all components must dovetail together (Charlesworth, 2009).