Category: General Knowledge

A History of Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation is simply a paradigm shift brought about by innovation that changes the way we look at a certain field or industry. Okay, I may have lost you at thee words paradigm shift but bear with me a little.

Digital marketing is admittedly one of the fields where the term “paradigm shift” is common vocabulary, but that’s not because we are trying to sound smarter than we are. Digital Marketing is a landscape built on and in an everchanging environment of disruptive innovation, where of advancements and innovative ideas change the entire landscape almost overnight.

Let me break this down a little. It is impossible to discuss digital marketing without Facebook coming up in the conversation. A little over 15 years ago this was just a way for nerdy Harvard students to chat, today it is a multi-billion dollar monster of a business that is almost as essential to any marketer as a good website. Facebook has irreversibly changed the way people communicate. Facebook created a platform (for better or worse) where people can share larger and more intimate aspects of their lives. Their experiences, thoughts, ideas, likes and dislikes.

YouTube begun as way for amateur video makers sharing their content with friends, 1 years later, there are over 400hours of videos uploaded to the site every minute. YouTube has become a hub for all video content from DIY tutorials and daily Vlogs (video blogs) to large production movies. YouTube changed the way video content is consumed. Studies show that as of 2017, more hours of YouTube videos exist than all the television broadcasts since the television was invented in the 1920s. YouTube made video publication and distribution available to the public creating a platform for more intimate videos that catered to a wider range of niche markets.

This disruptive nature of the digital marketing industry creates for a tenuous environment where one has to be ready to adapt or fall into obscurity. From 2004 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site, however as Facebook came to the forefront, it steadily declined. As of 2108 (yes it still exists), Myspace is ranked 4,153rd by total web traffic. A far cry from its days at the top.

Sometimes however, adaptation is not enough to keep a company afloat, the relatively young Snapchat (founded in 2006) burst on the scene with a bang reaching peak popularity in 2015/2016 with over 10billion daily views. Snapchat fought tooth and nail against giants Instagram, Facebook and Twitter carving out for itself a respectable market share. In a bid to slow Snapchat’s growth which was largely based on the disappearing videos feature. In 2017, Facebook and Instagram both introduced similar feature greatly stunting Snapchat’s growth. Snapchat remained popular with its core demographic, but this was not the end, in 2018 Snapchat published an ad quiz created by a 3rd party meant to engage users with pop culture references.  One of the questions in the quiz made insensitive reference to a domestic abuse incident between pop culture icons Chris Brown and Rihanna. Outraged by this incident, Rihanna made a statement in which she asked her millions of followers to remove the app. Within 24hrs, the Snap Inc. (Snapchat’s parent company) stock had dropped by 4 % costing the company almost 1 billion dollars.

What does this mean for you as a marketer?

  1. Do your research. Stay ahead of the trend by keeping abreast of what is going on in the industry.
  2. Have a contingency plan. Never put you eggs in one basket. Platforms will come and go and you need to be ready to adapt when one platform fails.
  3. Think outside the box. Yes, I know that’s a very cliché statement, but in an industry that knows no norms, be the innovative change. Be the disruption that changes the world.

Are you ready to be the disruption? What’s next for digital marketing? Is Vero the next big social network? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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The Big Bad SEO Monster

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short) isn’t what the blogosphere would have you believe. It is not some unstoppable big bad monster lurking in the shadows trying to destroy your company and everything you hold dear. At its core, SEO is simply the process of making sure that the people that need to find you can find you. As long as you focus on these two key components of any search, you and your beloved will be just fine (no pitchforks and torches necessary).

The Human Aspect

Each search is done by a person looking to achieve a certain goal. This goal could be to find your business, to find out about the products and services you offer, or even just to get directions to your doorstep. As a brand, your goal is to make sure you are easier to find than your competition while making sure all the information potential clients would require is available to them.

The most important step to doing this is to view your company from the perspective of a customer to figure out what it is your clients look for when they look for you. One you have channelled the inner client within you write down a list of words that people would use to find you (hold on to these). These “keywords” form an essential basis for your website. Sprinkling them in a frequent manner on your website makes sure that when people look for you, they find what they are looking for.

The Cogs in the Machine

Working on SEO without understanding how search engines work is like going monster hunting with a quiver full of arrows and no bow. You may get lucky and prevail in the end but it is ill-advised, so please sit back and allow me to string your bow.

Search engines are software systems that scour the world wide web for information which they display in Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs for short (we digital marketers are obsessed with abbreviations). Basically, search engines find the stuff they think you are looking for. To do so, they crawl through your website and find as much information as they can about it from each page. The search engines scrutinize every aspect of each page from the visible content to the media. Like a mother-in-law, search engines are very judgmental, looking at every tiny aspect of code behind your webpages.

Search engines are however text-based systems making text-based content your best friend in SEO. For these, the best policy is to regularly sparingly add the keywords in the text where they make sense; search engines penalize web pages that just stuff keywords in illogical places especially in page descriptions that are just keywords with no context. When it comes to non-text elements such as images and video content, search engines rely on the descriptions of them in the website code. To optimize non-text content, you should use the relevant keywords to name your files as well as use keywords to describe them in the meta-tag (it’s like a description that only the search engines see).

The monster hunting world of SEO is vast with many tools and methods to achieve your goals. The process is long, arduous and recurring but it is very effective and with the rewards being more than worth it. We hope this at least helped you get to know the monster a little better. Go forth and HAPPY HUNTING.

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The Digital Express

The growth and evolution of technology has been of monumental proportions in the past century. From mechanical typewriters to face detection software that lets you select your favorite Snap Chat filter (‘flower crown’ anyone?), it is undisputable that humankind deserves more than a pat on the back.  The World Wide Web, one of the pinnacles of technological development, revolutionized the digital age and opened doors that vastly transformed our lifestyle from entertainment, education and business.

The growth and evolution of technology has been of monumental proportions in the past century. From mechanical typewriters to face detection software that lets you select your favorite TikTok filter (‘flower crown’ anyone?), it is undisputable that humankind deserves more than a pat on the back. The World Wide Web, one of the pinnacles of technological development, revolutionized the digital age and opened doors that vastly transformed our lifestyle from entertainment, education and business.

Kenya has shown promising prospects of growing internet penetration with a penetration rate of 42% as of January 2022 (Source: https://bit.ly/3sHvM97 ). That’s a pool of over 23.35 million users online! With the advent of faster internet speeds brought on by 5G (Source: https://bit.ly/3G7oMYV ), this number is bound to keep climbing. Any business that’s hungry to acquire more customers will realize that this is a profitable opportunity to pounce on. Digital marketing is the new ‘black’, and if you haven’t wholly embraced it yet, you may need to rethink your firm’s marketing approach.

Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing are just some of the techniques that can increase awareness of a firm’s product offering, enhance consumer interaction and boost a company’s brand visibility. Interactive tweets, informative e-newsletters or crisp pictures accompanying your Instagram captions; are attractive to potential customers and will certainly garner a memorable impression.

The digital marketing cosmos is ever-changing with innovative applications and software updates being released thick and fast, a flexible strategy is necessary to ensure your firm is abreast with the latest online marketing tactics.  The ability to generate accurate results of marketing campaigns and to measure customer engagement are just some of the perks of online marketing. Plus, it’s economical for firms; as digital marketing typically costs less than traditional forms of advertising. It is possible to reach a wider audience and not have to burst your firm’s marketing budget on advertising. That means more dinero at your disposal for sprucing up your office or buying extra workplace supplies (or even just throwing epic office parties).

Don’t get left behind. Disembark from the old-fashioned advertising steam engine and board the shiny speed train of digital marketing.

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