Prospects of E-marketing for SMEs in Africa
E-marketing has the capability of offering numerous benefits to SMEs in Africa. Using the research conducted by Bostanshirin (2014), the prospects that e-marketing offers to SMEs in Africa include the following:
- The Mutually-Inclusive Benefits of the Different Methods of E-Marketing
The individual prospects of the methods of e-marketing for SMEs in Africa need to be briefly analyzed in order to curb some of the challenges portrayed by the adoption and usage of online marketing by the SME operators. For instance, the major objective of online advertising is to increase sales and build brand awareness for these African SMEs as they are becoming recognized at the global market. Email marketing procures high response rates, and it helps reduce the costs as compared to the traditional way of mailing stakeholders.
With search engine optimizations (SEOs), Parikh and Deshmukh (2013) offer this analysis: “The purpose of SEO strategies is to place a given website among highly-listed entries returned by search engines which in its turn, produces more traffic. Its importance lies in the fact that customers most of the time use engines as a major gate to get around in the internet.” Affiliate marketing referring to the process of gaining a commission by promoting products or services of another company has the potential of making two or more website owners to build relationship to increase mutual financial benefits. Another prospect of affiliate marketing for SMEs in Africa is that it can assist extending sales force at the service of a website.
Social media marketing is greatly rewarding and very promising for SMEs in Africa because it increases their competitive edge. It boosts website traffic, or brand awareness, through the use of social media networking sites. Usually, its programmes revolve around creating a unique content that attracts attention and encourages the viewer to share it with their friends and contacts on social networks. The business message spreads from one user to another and impacts with the user in a stronger way because it appears to originate from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand, business or company itself.
Overlapping remarkably with social media marketing and also spreading through social media is viral marketing. It is basically the virtual version of the word-of-mouth marketing campaign. The files used here are small enough to be passed from peer to peer via email after they have downloaded from multiple distribution websites, encouraging greater user-driven spread. They can be tracked after being downloaded. There is also less risk of user interference with the agent. Files like videos are familiar, and are ad-like or film-like formats to users, with the added advantage of interactivity.
[To be continued…]