Firstly, to clarify: in this post I’m talking about a broad scope including the BRICSA nations as well as the highly populated nations with exciting fiscal growth such as Mexico, Nigeria, Kenya or Indonesia.

I plan to document my research as I go, but here are some of the tips that have been shared with me by some of my more learned colleagues:

1. Target by motivation, not by area

Targeting motivation is a key staple of digital marketing, and this still counts despite the location you’re looking at. You have a product. You have a target persona. Figure out the motivation why someone would want your offering (what is the question in their minds?) then tailor your messaging accordingly.

2. Start your strategy with entry level phones

A mistake is to overestimate the penetration of smart-phones in emerging markets. Sure, it differs from country to country, but there are no emerging markets with a first world level of penetration of smart phones, yet. Doubtless, this will change over time as smart phones become cheaper, but for now, dumb down your digital marketing efforts to a not-so-smart phone level.

3. Learn local ideosynchrasies

Possibly the most exciting aspect of marketing in emerging economies is that there are amazing gaps to be had that you’d never had thought of without doing the necessary research into localities… Dating sites based on cricket in India. Nollywood movie appreciation groups in Nigeria. There are latent opportunities waiting at every corner.

4. Go for the sweet spot

You may be surprised at the speed at which target personas adopt your message in emerging economies. This is another reason that marketers are so compelled. Keep tinkering ‘til you strike your sweet spot… you’ll be amazed at how quickly your message can spread.

I will update more as we go along. Please feel free to join this discussion – I’m happy to debate these points and get input from you.

seo

Today, search engines work much like a phone book directory used to – just on a much larger scale. How your company’s site is found can be difficult with so many options available. To single out you company’s website from the mass of information on the web, it is vital to make use Search Engine Optimization (or SEO).

People have made a shift towards using the Internet to help them in their daily activities. Search engine optimization helps you to get higher rankings in search engines and so, guide more traffic towards your website. In short it can be said that search engine optimization’s goal is to make a website appear on the first pages, if not the very first page of a search done through the search engine.

The Internet Digest provides us with 3 fundamental stages of optimizing your website. The first stage is to choose the right keywords. The right keywords are those that “clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible”. Secondly, you need to optimize your pages for your selected keywords. On all the pages of your website you need to position your keywords in strategic locations. The last stage is to make sure that you get linked from the best directories and from lots of quality sites with a related topic.

It seems that the last stage really is the most important. For Mike Perk, Co-founder of the energetic web marketing company World Wide Creative, the most important thing is relevant links pointing back to your site. Mike explains linking in Google terms: “Google is looking for the centre of authority on a particular topic or search term. It does this by looking at where all the links point to and seeing who has the most relevant to that topic/search term. That’s the one that goes to the top.” So from my understanding, linking is basically a case of the site with the most links that refer back to them will have the highest ranking.

Gabriel Weinberg runs a search engine called Duck Duck Go. For Gabriel, it is important to have attractive URL’s and page titles but the thing that matters most is external link texts. “Google often repeats that they use more than 200 ranking factors. In my experience, external link texts matter way more than anything else. That is, the actual words in the links back to your sites and pages.”

But now, SEO might already be expanding to other fields and evolving. According to Mike “what has become extremely interesting in the last year and something that will continue to grow, is the type of content Google is indexing and rating highly. Video, images, mapping, etc are finding their way to the top of the search a lot more easily than new text content.” We should pay close attention to this expansion into multimedia fields. It could mean more ways to SEO than simply text-based content and URL’s.

heavy chef

The World Wide Creative studio is buzzing with a trifecta of announcements. The first, and most significant, being the inaugural Heavy Chef “Creating Profitable Websites” Course running from the 12 – 14 August in Cape Town. We are also finalising a Johannesburg Course, which will be announced in an upcoming Heavy Chef newsletter.

(The second and third announcements are the redesigns for the Heavy Chef Project site and the new World Wide Creative site. The live dates have been set for next week and we will be unveiling our new look on BizCommunity.)

The course in particular has already gathered a lot of attention for its focus on practical learning (as apposed to information gathering). Delegates will get their hands dirty, learning first-hand how to create and run a profitable web campaign. The course will cover three aspects of running a campaign:

1. Strategy
2. Development
3. Marketing

Course attendants will be involved in a process of creating a real campaign, with the course instructors made up of professionals currently working in the industry.

There is an early bird discount for the course for delegates booking in the month of July.

Click here to find out more about Heavy Chef’s new digital marketing course.

banner-advertising

[I also wrote about this banner ad on Ideate, so all you dual subscribers, forgive me for the repitition]

barack kicks ass

At World WIde Creative, we’re pretty stoked that Barack Obama won. Partly because he’s of African descent, partly because the guy rocks the house, and partly because he brings a fresh breeze to a world smogged up with serious issues.

We have one more selfish reason for being elated for the win, however. World Wide Creative uses Barack Obama’s internet strategy as a case study in almost all our presentations, so it would have been pretty crappy if the non-internet-savvy old white guy had won!

Anyhow, here we are. President 2.0. A big question now is: Will Obama continue in the vein he’s started? He’s got a legion of followers on Twitter, an avid newsletter database, a record-breaking list of mobile numbers, and an unprecedented number of YouTube videos for a politician.

A promising sign is the new website / blog set up with the auspicious title: Change.gov

…and then there’s this list that’s doing the rounds. ‘50 things you didn’t know about Barack Obama‘, sharing things like his basketball court he’s introducing to the White House, that he’s a Macboy, that he benches 200lbs and he’s a big Fugees and Harry Potter fan.

Oh, and by the way, Barack Obama won a grammy in 2006.

For real.

google chrome

Last week Chris Beech blogged about the Google iPhone. Now there is Google Chrome, the new open source browser from Google. I first heard about it on Twitter on Monday, and shortly after it hit the news, ‘Google Chrome’ became a bigger search term than ‘Hurricane Gustav’ – which, on Monday, was at its destructuve zenith.

Is there any area on the web that Google doesn’t want to own?

If you’re interested, check out the comic book explanation of what Google Chrome is all about, here.

At World Wide Creative, we have Paul, who is a big standards compliancy guy. We’ve already had big discussions over whether we should bother about IE6, now that IE8 is here. With Google Chrome, what new challenges will this bring to Paul’s plate?

It’s already a tough challenge keeping a web presence consistent across browsers, now this…?

heavy chef august

A break in the rainy weather, together with Perdeberg’s wines and beers supplied by Corona, it seems that the stars aligned to create the perfect conditions for a rocking Session with Rob from Quirk presenting an ‘Introduction to eMarketing‘.

Even a bout of dizziness couldn’t keep the good man down as he launched into a furious dissection of the myriad of eMarketing options available to us. Rob had been presented with the nigh impossible task of dissecting a vast topic and squeezing it into 45 mins. After some initial technical difficulties, and a minor delay due to some missing boxes of wine, Rob handled the challenge with aplomb.

The event was capped by Mike Perk and Rob handing out 5 copies of eMarketing to the audience, and then it was on to some heartfelt networking. Chatting to guests, I couldn’t shake off the eerie feeling of not knowing whether I’d met them before. In my mind’s eye, I was trying to imagine each person I was talking to at 20 x 20 pixels.

heavy chef august

Above: World Wide Creative Johannesburg’s Louis van Rensburg admiring a bottle of Perdeberg.

heavy chef august

Above: Jason enjoying the good life… excellent company, free beer.

heavy chef august

Above: 50 riveted people, with feedback ranging from ‘useful stuff’ to ‘bloody brilliant!’

heavy chef august

Above: Louis, with Chris Roper (24.com) and Shane Dryden (Yuppiechef.co.za) in the background

heavy chef august

All in all a great Session. An hour of education, topped off with some constructive socialising. A big thanks, once again, to our sponsors Perdeberg Winery, Corona Beer and 24.com.

Huge thanks also to the tireless efforts of Richard Gregory, right, who is responsible for filming and editing the Heavy Chef videos each month.

Now, we can’t wait for the next Session… watch this space: some great speakers lining up. If you’re interested, drop us a line to get onto the Heavy Chef mailing list

See you all in September!

btw: For those who missed last month’s Session on ‘How to build an e-commerce company‘, check out Richard’s videos here. For those interested in e-commerce in any way, shape or form, would do well to watch and learn from Fiona’s and Andrew’s presentations.

Most people relate web marketing as SEO or PPC, but we believe that the site itself has a huge part to play once traffic has been directed to it. What happens when the visitors gets to the site and is confronted with a host of barriers?

At World Wide Creative, we pride ourselves on the usability of the sites we create, and is something we aim to become the best at the world at. This list is a good start. Check the article out here.

- Fred

Nevertheless, our web marketing exposure in South Africa seems to be steadily growing brighter with our press office on the Biz-com website, so let’s see how it pans out over the next couple of months.

*For our UK and Europe readers, Biz-Community is an African news service for the communication industry. It’s primary tool is a daily newsletter sent to its subscribers.

- Fred

A good article on the basics, check this out: How to optimise your business online.