Digital Marketing in Uganda

The dot com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s was a wake-up call in a shift of doing business. Around this time is also where advertising for businesses took a fundamental change with the birth of Google AdWords or Google Ads as it is today, the year was 2000. 

This doesn't mean that the first ever online ad was seen in the year 2000, that first happened with a tech company known at the time as HotWired.

In Uganda and most of Africa online advertising using platforms such as Google Ads, Yahoo Ads, Facebook and Twitter ads among others is mostly a new phenomenon and yet to be embraced by the businesses that actually need it. Most of the terms associated with digital marketing such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), Return On Investments (ROI) etc are terms that are yet finding their ways into boardrooms and strategic level management.

Traditional or offline marketing has been and will continue to be with us for the unforeseeable future, and this is what executives in the various companies are hinging on for the success of the business in far as growing sales and market share are concerned. This does not take away the fact that other methods of marketing/advertising do exist in the value chain of reaching potential customers. In fact, not knowing about something doesn't stop it from existing. The digital space in marketing is so valuable if used well to the extent that some businesses around the world solely depend on the existence of the platforms that make it possible to reach out to the people that matter to their businesses.

As much as many companies and businesses in Uganda have harnessed the power and value of digital marketing to either boost sales, market share or brand name, there are still a bunch of companies that require this virtual space but knowingly or unknowing refuse to put it to use. Some of the businesses that actually need this space and aren't using it from my research include banks, insurance companies, hotels, tour and travel companies, retail shops, property businesses and so many more. Most either don't clearly understand the digital space or are afraid to commit resources towards using the space. From my experience it is a very low-risk channel in as far as marketing and advertising are concerned, this is because you don't have to commit large sums of money to an online marketing campaign before you know that it is either giving you a positive or negative return on investment.

To have a successful online or digital marketing campaign for your business all you need is setting of goals and objectives, acquire the necessary resources for the marketing campaign, execution of the campaign in line with goals and objectives, and finally generating campaign reports and optimization of the campaigns based on the reports gathered from the different advertising dashboards. Once you do these in a calculated manner you are more likely to have your marketing resources put to good use and reap from your marketing strategies, hence a flourishing business.

Gerald Munduga - Digital Marketing Consultant
Yila Media
bladueet@gmail.com
+256712333988