As a Sri Lankan, I have spent more time on TV and radio during the civil war. If there is a program on a TV  for 30 minutes, 10-15 minutes would be allocated for advertisements, in other words, promoting brands and products. Sometimes, they used to attract me quite well, but then such ads interrupt my favorite TV or radio shows.  It was after the civil war I got introduced to the internet and social media. My gradual attraction to the internet made me realize that the brands I have seen on TV are more often seen over there too.  I couldn’t understand why I see this. And I wanted to know why, which made me read about it further. I learned that it is the new trend called Digital Marketing. Wait! If Digital Marketing in Sri Lanka is new, then what was the old pattern? I wanted to know it. What I found out as a result of my curiosity is presented below. 

Marketers in Sri Lanka quite well understand how much their internet marketing techniques are dragging the users towards the brand. But the freshers don’t. Marketing and the Internet have got along more often these days than they have been in the earlier stages of digital marketing in Sri Lanka. The record of InternetLiveStats shows that the “internet penetration” rate was 8.8% in 2009 (the year the civil war ended). But, the stats drove up after 2010,  and the recent report announces that the penetration rate has reached 29.3%. This improvement puts Sri Lanka in 57th place among the 201 countries in 2015, according to the InternetLiveStats. Sri Lanka is still a developing in the field of e-commerce. But with the surge of internet penetration, the digital marketing ecosystem is growing too.

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What was marketing like during the Civil War?

Due to civil war, (before 2009) the internet access was pretty down. The locals used traditional marketing methods like printing and broadcasting about products and brands as their marketing strategies. Although it was costly(when compared to the cost of digital marketing now), they had to make use of it, while the world was developing in digital marketing.

Printed media was one of the primary source used for marketing and advertising. The marketers focused on commercializing their products and brands through newspaper advertising, magazines, and leaflets given randomly or during events like an exhibition. Also, to attract the travelers, marketing through huge banners on empty lands was another trend of the time in Marketing.

The next traditional method of marketing was broadcasting or telecasting the promotions. Here more frequently marketers used the celebrities, like cricket players and local cinema stars, to promote their new products or brand. The number of TV watchers and radio listeners were high at that time, at least to get know the conflict updates, which also helped the marketers in promotions to advertise their products.  

Remember when you had to fill up a coupon when you did quite a  big shopping at a shopping mall or supermarket? Mobile number and address are the details you had to fill in such coupon. Ever got promotion notifications from them later? Well, the shopping centers and supermarkets were handling it as another technique to send promotions to its customers. Marketers also dealt with cold calling to convince customers about the products.

Final method was that some companies employed sale representatives. While cold calling was an another way to promote beyond boundaries, sales rep of areas had to take samples of the brands to doorsteps of everyone in the particular range. And, these were all used as marketing methods before  Digital Marketing started to penetrate into Sri Lanka.

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What influence does digital marketing have in Sri Lanka?

The end of Civil War made several opportunities open to the marketers. As the statics above has shown about the internet penetration in Sri Lanka, marketers have started to take advantage of it. Online advertising started parallel to the advertising and marketing through the simplex mode. Some websites started rising, and marketers began to realize the worth of online marketing. Still, only a very few people engaged in that new pattern, maybe because it was the beginning of the era of digital marketing.

For the start, the companies have only been looking to posting ad banners on the websites. For them, it was like posting an advertisement on newspaper. But the actual substance started to click as they began to get to know more about it. Then the companies began to move on to other marketing platforms available on the internet. Also, this new marketing world provided new entrepreneurs an idea. Bang! It gave a few individuals an idea on starting a digital marketing agency.

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Why should the Marketers focus on it?

Firstly, the Sri Lankan marketers would fall for its uniqueness: duplex. Digital Marketing helps the marketers analyze the effect their skills have on customers. This uniqueness helps them adapt according to the user experience. It also helps them to get real-time reviews from the product users, like Cinnamon Air for example, which would attract other customers towards their product.

[blockquote photo=”” author=”” ] Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.- D.M. Scott, author New Rules of Marketing and PR [/blockquote]

Digital marketing is wide open; this is another possibility. How open is it? Digital marketing is wide open around the world. With the e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay, imagine how one would be able to know about them, without marketing it online? Like you wouldn’t bother about getting to know it if such sites have been advertised or sold on the traditional method of marketing: through printed media or TV and radio. One-click check-ins have made it very easier and simple. This feature of digital marketing is quite supportive to the enterprises that are focusing on global market, attracting international customers.

Digital Marketing is quite cost effective. When compared to the cost of traditional marketing methods, online marketing is pretty cheap. This online marketing would more likely replace some of the traditional methods like cold calling, advertising on television and radio. Although there is still some attention to the simplex mode of marketing, the number has reduced when compared to the ‘during the war’ stats.

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What type of Digital Marketing trends do the local companies handle?

Although there are several methods like the website, social media marketing, PPC, video marketing, email marketing, remarketing, the local marketers only managed to catch up with a few. Mainly, the website, social media marketing, PPC, and SMS marketing.

There are around 20 digital marketing companies in Sri Lanka which delivers Search, Social, Local and complete e-Commerce strategies to the global brands through an online platform, which includes Prime One Global LLC, Loops Solutions, Orix marketing and others. And according to Mike Berry has foreseen in 2012, the marketing trends in the year 2016 in the digital commercialization of Sri Lanka has grown.

The objective of the content and PPC marketing is to rank the company’s site on the top, or near the top lists while been searched. Since the company’s site would be quite new, or haven’t been in the required state for the search engine to display it while being searched, the digital marketing companies would polish it up for it to be ranked. According to the ranks, the company’s brand and the product get promoted. Also, PPC is another method where the companies ‘buy visits’ through the advertisements on search engines and on other sites.

While these two techniques are on the top in digital marketing environment of Sri Lanka, there is another big world for marketers waiting — the world quite big and equal to the Internet — social media. With the landing of smartphones, Sri Lankans spend more time on the social media (and the internet). Readme and Loop Solution conducted a survey in 2013, in which 58% of respondents access Facebook and Twitter through mobile. Almost 71% of the local respondents answered that the marketing done through social media has been quite effective than the traditional media marketing. Also, 49% of the respondents said that they watch TV less than one hour daily, while only 28% of them read the newspaper daily.

 

The survey on Social Media Marketing conducted by Readme and Loops solutions. Source: Readme.lk”

 

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 Also, according to the survey 85% of them answered that they have been following local brands. Also, marketing through Facebook has influenced 79% of the users to purchase the products. This force has made marketers focus more on social media marketing than on the other methods available.

The latest trend the marketers are focusing on is SMS Marketing. Since the number of mobile phones users is quite high, rather than cold calling, dropping a text about their product or brand is getting trendy these days. And, most of the companies focus on making much out of this growing style of marketing in Sri Lanka.

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How has social media marketing influenced the users of Sri Lanka on the local brand?

 

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What should the Marketers focus on for the future?

There are many other digital marketing activities which our marketers need to focus. Digital Marketing trends like Remarketing, Google Tag Manager, email marketing and so on are not very actively used among the local marketers. Since the industry is still developing one, we could expect the marketers to get into this trend in future.  Within the short period, Sri Lanka has got adapted to the digital marketing world. There is a long way to go because this digital world is changing day by day. If focused on the newly turning up digital marketing environment as well, the prospect of the domestic market to be a part of the global market would be rising. If the marketers are already focusing on the global market, it is advisable to concentrate on the broad range of social media. Social media doesn’t stop with Facebook and Twitter but extends to Snapchat, Instagram and so on. So focus on the rest of the available global platforms that would attract the global users. 

There would be constant updates about the growth of Sri Lanka’s digital marketing, so don’t forget to keep an eye on our blog. Also, feel free to catch us in a comment about the digital marketing in Sri Lanka.