The digital marketplace

Ladan Khalifa, 32, is an entrepreneur dealing in manufacturing and retail of leather products. His sells and advertises his items on Instagram where he has a following of about 20,000. He does not have a walk-in shop as he feels trading online is more efficient. His is not a unique case. More and more small business owners today prefer to trade online.

According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), the average adult spends about four hours on their smartphone each day, and one in five smartphone users spends four hours and 30 minutes on average on their phones every day. About 55 per cent of this time is spent browsing the internet.

In Kenya, this figure is slightly higher, at three hours and 51 minutes. According to a report by Communications Authority released in 2021, at least half of the Kenyan population owns a smartphone. These statistics indicate that the modern consumer has evolved significantly.

Now, many businesses, not just SMEs, are using digital marketing strategies to reach potential clients. Use of the internet to market products and services is not only easy but also cost efficient, therefore making it suitable even for businesses that might not have enough resources to invest in traditional forms of marketing.

This concept of digital marketing can however seem a little hard for someone who does not have much knowledge on digital marketing tools, for instance on social media. Anyone can create a social media page and post their products, but because of insufficient knowledge, their posts may fail to reach the majority of potential customers.

Carlistars Khisa, Lead Digital Marketer at Nevin Digital Marketing Agency, unpacks the key concepts about digital marketing. He notes that digital marketing can be categorised into four: Search engine optimisation, social media marketing, pay per click advertising and email marketing. The nature of business and the long and short term goals should determine which category to adopt. He however adds that businesses that combine at least two methods usually get way much better results online.

Start by creating social media accounts for your business
Why social media accounts first? Because they are free and should therefore be the starting point of any business. Different social media accounts work differently, so you are bound to have varying levels of success with different accounts.

For example, Facebook and Instagram can give you clients but Twitter is great for branding. Other social media accounts you can consider include LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok.

Tip: Always keep your accounts active. You don’t always have to post a new item which you are selling, but provide important information regularly about your products or services, and present yourself as an expert or authority in your field. These efforts eventually convert to inquiries in the long run. Social media accounts also play a role in your search engine optimisation efforts. Most search engines use them as indicators of how authentic your business is.

Create a website
Just having a website does not mean you are into digital marketing. It is just a step in the right direction. Websites help to establish trust. If a client finds you on social media, they may need more information about your business so that they can request your help in acquiring a service or supply of products.

The ‘about’ sections of social media are always limited. With your own website, you can explain deeper ‘who you are’ as a business. You can also clearly outline your products and services, and even provide information on why would-be clients should choose you over your competitors.

Search engine marketing
After the first two steps, the next one is to determine which form of digital marketing best suits your goal. At this point, you may consult with an online marketing agency to help you decide which one to start with. The most important thing for a business at this point is to set clear goals.

The main forms of search engine marketing are search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click advertising (PPC). SEO ensures that products or services listed on your business website are easily found on search engines. For example, if you are a cleaning company, SEO will ensure that when someone searches for “cleaning services”, your website appears among the top results.

SEO has two main parts: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. On-page SEO involves keyword research, content creation, specifying target keywords, titles and meta-description on website pages, internal and external linking, page speed optimisation and sitemaps. Off-page SEO will involve mainly link building, directory listing, social networking, social bookmarking, influencer outreach, and forum engagements.

Pay per click on the other hand is a form of advertising where you only pay when your ad is clicked. PPC can be categorised mainly into paid search marketing, display advertising and social media advertising.

PPC works well when you need to get instant results but may be expensive in the long run. SEO works well in the long run but takes time to pay off. A business can combine both. As you work on SEO which will take an average of four to six months (depending on competition) to start working, you can run ads to keep your business going, and stop once SEO has stabilised.

Besides social media apps, what other digital marketing tools are available?

Apart from social media apps, another option is to create a website and get it optimised for SEO as discussed above. Note that a website without SEO is not a marketing tool, as no one will be able to see it online except yourself. Other tools include:

Google business profile
This will work well especially for a business that sells goods and services in a specific geographical location. Google Business Profile, previously called Google My Business, allows the owner to display name, address, phone, services, website, offers and business reviews. It appears just above search engine results pages.

For example, if you search “cleaning services” on Google, the map section that appears represents business profile accounts of different businesses. Google will check the location of the person searching and provide business nearest to the search in the map section. Creating a Google business profile is free, and it can give a business quality leads based on their location.

Email marketing
As a business, you can go online and gather email addresses of potential clients and send them well-crafted and short emails about your products or offers. You can also use emails of previous clients or email subscribers from your website. Learn and understand customer behavior and send the emails at the right time to get maximum results.

How do you measure performance to determine if your strategies are working?

There are several tools to help in measuring the performance of digital marketing campaigns, with both free and premium options available. Each social media account also has reporting tools that will provide performance statistics. Here are the free and most commonly used tools to measure performance:

Google search console
This tool provides data mainly on website performance – number of website visits (clicks), number of people who saw the website but didn’t click (impressions), Click through rate (CTR), website average position on search engines, queries or search terms used to find your website, traffic by country, pages and devices (desktop, tablet or mobile).

This one provides customisable reports to track and visualise data such as the number of users, bounce rates, average session durations, sessions by channel, page views and goal completion. It also provides information on source of traffic: How many people came to the website through organic search, social media, PPC, other website referrals and direct traffic.

Some commonly used premium tools include Hubspot, Ahrefs, All in One SEO, Proof, Survey Anyplace, Yoast, Slack, Trello, Canva Business, Google Adwords, Moosend, MailChimp, Asana, BuzzSumo, Scribe, MeetEdgar, Buffer, Hootsuite and Rankmath.
When do you need to consult an expert for professional assistance, and are consultation costs feasible for the typical Kenyan SME so as to qualify this as a sound investment? 

It is more effective to seek expert advice at the beginning or before launching a digital marketing campaign. With a simple competition analysis, they can tell which form of marketing best suits your business and budget. Also, if you have invested in digital marketing and it is not working as expected, then it is time to engage a professional. During the meeting, be very clear on what you seek to achieve so that they can offer the best advice.

Consultation services in this field are not expensive in Kenya, and most digital marketing and SEO agencies offer free consultation, especially on phone and online. Most agencies charge consultancy fees if it is a continuous consultancy role, with rates starting from as low as Sh5,000.

Tip: Certain aspects of digital marketing, such as SEO, can sound technical, but with ample time and interest, anyone can learn about them and eliminate the need to incur consultancy costs. There are a lot of free resources online one can utilise.    BY DAILY NATION