Web Site Personas

Have you considered who exactly visits your site? Each person that visits your site have a particular need. It could be a need for more information on a subject matter or a need to find a solution to a problem.

You should not be serving "eba" to someone who wants to eat "fufu". In the same vain, we should not serve "eba" and "fufu" from the same bowl. That will confuse the visitor who might ignore your content. Based on the needs of every user, your content must be tailored to serve each user accordingly. I believe you are asking yourself - How do i serve each individual user that visits my site?

To answer the above question, you need to link that question to the overall objective of your organization or project and your online marketing strategy. Your site visitors must be broken down into distinct groups by cataloging everything you know about each group including their needs.

Let's use the banking industry as an example to explain this subject. The overall objective of this industry is to

1. Attract new customers and
2. Retain existing customers

By cataloging based on our objective, we have two(2) distinct groups and the information needs by these groups will vary. The first distinct catalog (new customers) will be looking out for your value proposition from your website and the second distinct catalog (existing customers) will be seeking for information that will let them stay glue to you.

By truly understanding the needs and mindset of your personas, you will be able to create appropriate content.

NOTE: You only have about 1 to 5 seconds to impress your visitor with your content.

Read More

Web Advertising Return On Investment (ROI)

Relying exclusively on expensive advertising and the media to deliver organization's message is long gone. It is worth noting that the mainstream media is still important, however, innovative marketers create compelling information/content/story and use the web to tell that story.

The Web allows organizations irrespective of the size to reach both buyers and sellers directly without the hassle involved in the mainstream form of advertising. Web advertising investment provides the most significant form of return on investment (ROI) for organizations.

I keep on wondering why African businesses are not actively involved in moving their advertising investment to the Web. Is it that they are afraid to make a move and prefer to stay in their comfort zones or what? It is important for marketers to know that potential clients are searching online for answers that only their products/services/information/contents can provide.

The Web has liberated businesses including businesses emanating from Africa from relying on exclusively on buying access through advertising or convincing mainstream media to talk about their organization. Since potential clients are eager to consume your organization's content, now is the time to publish your content on the Web.

Read More

Online marketing flavors

Online marketing comes in several flavors. It is however important to note that it takes considerable amount of time and effort. Applying the right flavor at the right time is very crucial to your business success.

This is simply because applying the right flavor at the wrong time will be a wasted effort in terms of time and money.

Take a detailed look at this wiki to wet your appetite on the available flavors of online marketing.

Read More

Online marketing - The African Perspective

Online marketing is an innovative strategy adopted by organizations to either brand themselves or drive sales leads.

Online marketing can take several forms namely; display advertising, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), email marketing, referral marketing, affiliate marketing, inbound marketing, video marketing, etc. The internet has grown to be an obvious tool for brilliant marketers since that enables them to really measure their marketing spending.


But let me hesitate to ask this question -  Is Africa ready for an online marketing experience? You can answer this question for yourself. But what i know is that Africa is a developing continent and no doubt one of the fastest growing continent in terms of internet usage. Figures about internet usage on the African continent will keep increasing for a long time to come.

However, business on the African continent are yet to come to terms with the anormous benefits derived from the internet. Business in Africa are cool with their traditional forms advertisement and do not want to change. The innovative once are somehow doing well to embrase this new wave of advertising while the majority are just literally standing watching.

Businesses that are not embrassing this new form of marketing are really doing a great disservice to their businesses in terms of branding.

Read More