Click on that dusty Excel file from 2011 (with your marketing budget in it). Open it and have a look around at what you used to spend your marketing budget on. How much did you spend on digital marketing in 2011? What percentage of your marketing budget was spent on digital in 2011? Were you an early adopter of AdWords?
Three things stand out for me regarding 2011:
- It was the year of the Arab Spring
- Google launched Engage in South Africa – AdWords for agencies now called Google Partners
- Wild Pursuit was born
While the magnitude and importance of these events differs vastly and they are all unrelated to each other they had an impact on digital marketing in South Africa in some way.
DOWNLOAD OUR FREE MARKETING BUDGET REVIEW TOOL HERE
The Arab Spring
In 2011 everyone knew that Facebook was massive. We all used it and business’ lamented the way that employees “played and messed around” on Facebook. Looking back, I would argue that it was the Arab Spring that helped place Social Media on the mapas something more than just a place teenagers went to play. Could business owners still just brush it off as frivolous, if Facebook had the power to help citizens remove the rulers of four countries?
Google Engage launched in South Africa
Prior to 2011 Google AdWords was a niche, below the radar, advertising medium. Only a few cunning marketers like us were building their own campaigns and reaping the results of Google paid Search Ads before Google Engage launched to teach agencies how to run AdWords campaigns.
Birth of our online advertisement company
It was also in 2011 that Wild Pursuit was born. Since then the digital marketing landscape has changed massively. [We have evolved beyond AdWords and are certified Inbound Marketers using HubSpot software to generate sales leads for industrial B2B companies in SA].
But to continue the AdWords discussion…
The other day I was building an AdWords campaign for a new client in the industry where I cut my AdWords teeth per 2011. Google autosuggests keyword groups and as I was scrolling through all the generic groupings I bumped into a keyword group based on the company name.
What sprung to mind was that I may have influenced AdWords enough for the company name to have its own keyword group. It was searched enough to be considered generic… had I forever changed Google AdWords… just a little bit? The pump industry is now very awake with AdWords, they started copying us within the first six months of us using AdWords.
And the dusty old Marketing Budget of 2011
AdWords was a major evolution in digital marketing and saw spend in digital marketing become a regular item on the marketing budget in 2011. Since then things have changed massively. Facebook is now a legitimate place for companies to advertise, LinkedIn is crushing it and Inbound is smashing all the paid channels. Has your marketing budget been updated or is it still old and dusty but with a different year on the cover? Do you only spend a fraction of your budget on digital?
We specialise in the digital marketing companies in South Africa. They have their own set of problems and we have spent time in these companies as workers and service providers acquiring much knowledge.
We have put this knowledge of what people spend on all aspects of their marketing budget into a handy Excel tool. You can download it here and compare your current or dusty old 2011 budget with a shiny new budget that takes into consideration the way the world has changed since 2011. Have you evolved?
