I had gone to visit my old comrade at his office when he called on me to help on how to go about digital marketing.
But when I arrived at his office, he had not yet stepped in. He promised to be in shortly, the men in blue offered me a warm seat at the entrance.
Though I had a personal debate in my head for about five minutes, my memory was torn down by one of the surprising discussion they were having.
The two Maasai watchmen were discussing on how they could sell a portion of their animals, how they were going to sell them is what stopped the discussion I was having in my head.
‘Because we are very far from our home, let us take their photos and put them on OLX,’ one of the suggested using broken Swahili.
There was an objection, ‘ Lemayan, hatuna hii simu ina piga picha,’ translated to English, meaning that Lemayan we do not have a smartphone to take pictures.
Well, I was distracted from their conversation when the chap arrived, I left them pondering on how they were going to borrow a smartphone and literally go live on digital marketing before their boss could do so with his smartphone, tablet, laptop and a desktop computer!
On a large scale, what the two Maasai gentlemen were discussing has greatly been felt over the past 10 or so years when it comes to digital marketing.
Most Kenyan business entities and institutions have embraced digital marketing and communication through various forms such as social media, mobile apps, and websites among others.
If these two downgraded Maasai men who have never sat behind a chalked board can manage to put up an advert on OLX, it means that almost everyone in Kenya who is educated has gone digital.
Which brings me to the begging question, will digital marketing dwarf traditional marketing?
Magna Global, a worldwide marketing consulting firm predicted through their research done in 2016 that Traditional Media such as TVs, Radios and Dailies will begin to lose advertising revenues as a result of the first growing digital advertising in 2017.
The line between their prediction and the reality is very fuzzy today.
ZenithOptimedia reported that in 2017, digital marketing rose by a staggering 17.2% as their counterpart such as dailies and magazines deepened in by 8% and 10.1% respectively. Kenya was not an exception!
The traditional media thus cried foul of the quick rise of social media and more friendly applications that are proving effective even while offline.
Digital marketing started to gain track in Kenya when we entered the new millennium, today a research done by Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), said during their quarterly report that 40 million Kenyans owned 37.8 million mobile phones.
The growth was noted at another alarming mark of above 97%. The CA’s report alluded the growth to Kenyans who wanted to satisfy the urge of logging into digital media.
With these previous statistics, digital media is only doing a favor by giving more time to analogue businesses to adjust quickly and join the digital marketing band wagon.
If they wait for time to answer the beckoning question, their business could fold files and close in the near future.
It is high time you joined the digital marketing today!
