Nepalese businesses spend lakhs on traditional marketing but despite the clearly growing power of digital advertising many choose not to adopt a digital strategy.
Are you one of these businesses? If so then you probably want to read the rest of this post.
5.4 million Nepalese are on Facebook.
More than 5.4 million Nepalese are on Facebook (excluding non resident Nepalese) and out of these more than 2.8 million users live in Kathmandu.
Among the Kathmandu users:
- 1.5 million users are 18 to 25 years old.
- 1 million are from 26 to 35 years old.
It was reported in November 2015 that more than 11 million Nepalese have access to Internet with the majority in the capital. The number of Facebook and other social media users can only go up in the near future as prices go down and network coverage increases.
*Source: Facebook
Your customers are spending more time online.
It is still safe to say that the newspaper and radio are still the most commonly consumed media in Nepal (please correct us if we’re wrong) but is your target market reading the paper everyday or spending 3 hours on Facebook?
Digital ad campaigns provide a richer experience.
What can you do with a paper ad besides read it? What can you do with a radio commercial besides listen to it? Now compare that to what you can do with an ad being displayed on your phone or laptop – you can show customers a graphic, display text, make them watch a video, play music, open up a website, and more.
A good digital campaign is built around providing a user with a rich experience that will either guide them to making a purchase or at least create a strong impression that they will not forget.
Customers can give you instant feedback.
Do your customers hate your ad or love it? Just run a Facebook ad and see what people are saying about it, immediately! Better yet, they’re already on a social platform and you can communicate with them directly at the same time.
You can decide exactly who sees your ads.
When you broadcast a radio ad you pick a time according to when you think your target segment will be listening as well as the programs running at the time. Similarly with a paper ad, the best you can do is control what it gets published in and which page. Now you may reach most of your target segment this way, but can you guarantee that only the right people will experience your ad?
With most digital platforms you can select an exact target segment according to location, age, and gender. Some will additionally allow you to differentiate further by economical situations, family size, industry, job title, etc. based on the platform and your needs.
This allows you to create a much better targeted campaign that ensures that only the right people experience it.
You can drill down to the tiniest details.
Let’s talk about your last paper ad – what was your ROI (return on investment) from it? How many people saw it? How many people enquired and out of those how many actually bought something? How do you know if you ad was a success or if it was a failure?
Digital advertising platforms like Facebook allow you to see even the tiniest details about your campaign such as:
- Who saw it?
- What time did they see it?
- How many times did they see it?
- Did they click on it?
- Did they share it?
- How many people had a positive reaction to the ad?
- Which location were they from?
- Did they make a purchase 7 days after seeing the ad?
‘Nuff said.
You can make changes instantly.
So you’ve set up a month long Twitter campaign but 2 weeks in you decide to stop the campaign because you don’t see any sales OR your campaign is doing so well that you can’t handle the volume.
If this was a paper ad you would have no idea on what to do. Luckily this is a Twitter campaign and you can pause it at any time, make changes and either resume it or postpone it.
Speaking of scheduling it is even possible to plan your entire year’s campaign in one day!
Digital advertising platforms also allow you to create new ads instantly just in case you decide that one of your campaigns is not doing well or if you want to change some of the ad copy. With paper and radio ads? You need to spend another large amount creating a new ad.
You can run a Facebook ad for less than $10.
A paper ad will run up to Rs. 60 thousand or more. Can a small business afford to pay that much for a tiny advertisement that they have no idea of knowing will succeed or not? No!
Facebook and other platforms allow you to run smaller budget campaigns which combined with the right targeting will give you better returns.
One limitation here is that you need to have a credit card that will work online (no, not Nepalese ones) but you can always talk to friend or family to help you a bit. Failing that, there are tons of agencies who can do this for you for a fee (hint: us!).
Digital is the future.
10 years from now, we can expect more traditional media to die out as technology becomes more advanced and interwoven into society. McKinsey’s Global Media Report states that digital will account for than 50% of all media by 2019 and that digital advertising will be largest advertising category by 2017 – that’s just in one year!
Just recently Nepal Telecom finished laying down optical fibers from Kathmandu to the Chinese border.
Do we really expect Nepal to stay the same as it now?
So which is better, digital or traditional?
At ACT360 we strongly believe in the power of digital and recommend that any business in Nepal, big or small, start working on digital marketing strategies in order to stay competent.
How to start? Well, while there are many different ways you can go about it, we suggest that your digital marketing strategy first start with your business objective, i.e. what do you want from it?
If this article has you thinking or you feel like it’s time to go digital then maybe we can help. Give us a call on 9801136042 or chat with us on Facebook. We’re always ready to help!