Online marketing is the way to go for Ugandan businesses

The Internet has radically transformed how we build and promote businesses. With this trend, entrepreneurs have access to far more resources and far more potential than ever before. However, so many of them end up neglecting these fruitful opportunities by foregoing marketing or delaying it as an unnecessary expenditure. With online marketing, entrepreneurs can use a wide range of methodologies to promote their business activities (products and services).

Unlike the traditional marketing strategies, online marketing avails entrepreneurs with a couple of marketing essentials because of the extra channels and marketing mechanisms available online. These include banner ads, pop-ups, search advertising, emails/newsletters and heard-behaviours.

However, majority of customers seem not to be taken up by the online marketing strategies widely adopted by various entrepreneurs and businesses, this is likely to be attributed to the ineffective approaches.
This discussion explores and addresses the silent strategies businesses and entrepreneurs need to embrace for an attractive online marketing effort.

These range from effective personal branding, content designs and marketing, conversion optimisation among others. By developing proper personal branding under this strategy, Ugandan entrepreneurs need to use the best brand of their businesses since this will provide opportunities for influencing a more trustworthy and personal image that later boosts the business brand.
Secondly, business operators in Uganda need to adopt a modest content marketing system a key in attracting customers’ attentions concerning a particular product posted instantly. This strategy involves various forms that are dependent on the nature of business. Ugandan business operators, therefore, need to embrace content marketing because it allows online customers to buy products of their real choice willingly and convincingly, thus paving away in issues related with refunds.
For effective online marketing, enterprises should use an optimized search engine. Accessing Uganda’s businesses, company’s portals should be provided and visible in the search engines. This will subsequently increase online customer traffic since the ability of a customers to perform online transactions is based on how reliable and stronger the portal it could be.

Significantly, email marketing is an outstanding potential strategy that Ugandan business operators need to employ to plough more returns on investment because it is affordable and reliable, which makes it easy for online customers to get right information concerning online products/services. Instantly, the business operator needs to start collecting Data from the existing online customer bases or cites, like social media platforms and other new existing online business opportunities. From there, even a simple content newsletter would still encourage repeated purchases on the business sites, increasing online customer engagement with the brands thus keeping the brand onto the client’s mind.

Designing a well-organised Web page, which is up to date, entrepreneurs in Uganda need to use websites easy to read, up-to-date, directive, attention-grabbing, interesting and most of all, user-friendly. No matter how much a business operator invests in designing a web site, losing customers will be continuous if the business website is complex and complicated to online customers.
Lastly, businesses in Uganda need to start offering contests and giveaways to customers to effect on line business. This is simply because many customers love contests and giveaways. Anytime a businesses can encourage marketing through exchanging of free products or services with customers (incentives). Undoubtedly, Ugandan entrepreneurs will realise an upsurge in online purchases, orders and connections.

Conclusively, through proper personal branding, modest content marketing, optimised search engine, availability of portals, email marketing, use of web pages, which are up to date and well design, offering contests and giveaways, there is one other key advantage these strategies offer since they all work together.
If Ugandan business operators and entrepreneurs complement the above efforts across their businesses, then higher potential returns will be realised and recorded.

Mr Ssenkasi is a student of marketing at
Makerere University Business School (Mubs).