Does Paid Advertising Work In South Africa?
Media Production Home Brand Marketing Marketing Search Engine Optimization Email Marketing Websites Digital Marketing X Can Paid Advertising Scale My Business In South Africa 2023? Does Paid Advertising Work In South Africa? Over the 8 years I’ve provided marketing and advertising services to businesses of different sizes in South Africa, and over this period I’ve recorded many incidents whereby business owners and budget teams come to me with a very discouraged perspective to paid advertising. They practically reach livid stages having invested thousands to hundreds of thousands into paid advertising with minimal ROI. Because of this, they lose trust or confidence in online advertising, which is even more costly. In this article, you will learn what are the things you need to look out for when hiring an advertising agency to manage your paid advertising. A lot of the companies I’ve worked with skipped very important stages of the hiring process before signing advertising deals with agencies, as a result, they lost fortunes to search engines and social media platforms without any sustainable publicity or traceable ROI. Online advertising works, there is no doubt about it! As a business owner you have to fix your mind on this fact, that most of your prospective, I mean over 70% of your new customers are online and they estimate remains constant. No matter how much you sell, you still have a massive chunk of sales that are not yet closed. This is not speculative, it’s actually statistical, in 2022, post the covid pandemic, more than 2 thirds of the world’s population is adapted to processing things online, whether it’s applying for permits, shopping for clothing, or groceries, the internet is the go-to place to get things done in the most convenient manner. So, no matter what the experience you’ve had with advertising agencies, the fact still remains, online advertising is the best option for advertising. So what’s wrong then? Why is it with so much money put to it, I still don’t make any sales? The answer is very simple, and I’ll be very blunt about it, the person/agency you hire to manage your advertising will determine the outcome. If you hire well, you sell well. With the explosion of digital marketing, many people have become freelancers and others have started marketing agencies, even the unskilled and unlearned have the courage to sell marketing and advertising services online. It’s not yet established what the proper way is to find an authentic marketing agency because all this may be fairly new at this stage, so I don’t blame businesses for hiring incorrectly. So, here goes: 1. Contactable References If there is someone who cannot lie to you it’s my previous customers. An unhappy customer will always have very few mutters concerning our services. The confidence of what my previous customer is saying about our services is what you look out for. Also listen for authenticity, in as much as unhappy customer having very little to say, fake reviews are full of it. One of the identifiers for fake or solicited feedback is a lot of good statements. Authentic positive feedback is usually highlights of a main KPI that has made them happy. 2. Request data for previous work. I’ve always believed in providing my prospective with data, but at the same time, I’m very protective of my existing clients. I wouldn’t want to give out my client’s data to a stranger, neither to a competitor who could possibly be phishing for information. So as you request for previous work, understand that an advertising agency can only provide you with pictorial data of the work they’ve done and this is private and confidential information. That being said, its important to know when to ask for the data, you must be happy with all other publicly available verifiers before requesting for sensitive information, because at this stage you are happy with the agency, and you are almost hiring them. This way, the agency is allowed to give you NDAs to sign for the disclosure of this information. 3. Verify certification. This is a very reasonable proof of capability and capacity to deliver results. Someone doing the work in the organization must be trained and certified for the work. With free certifications available on various platforms, it’s a clear sign of lack of enthusiasm and excellence to find an agency with workers that are not certified and trained for the job. So, to know that this agency is passionate about what they are offering there must be eagerness to learn. 4. Request for goal-oriented strategy. This is very important, find out what strategy they are selling you. There is absolutely no ways that I can price a service if I cannot explain what I will be doing and what you should expect out of it. DO NOT GO FOR THE CHEAPEST, go for the most profitable, and how do you know this is profitable? It’s strategy! A marketing agency sells strategy more than anything else, if that is not the case with the agency you are hiring then you in for un-predictable results. How Can We Assist You? Give Us A Call
