As one of the premier digital marketing companies in Sri Lanka we were interested when we came across this article on the DailyFT on ‘Digital marketing: Understanding the business realities in Sri Lanka’. by Dr. Nalin Abeysekara. Dr. Abeysekara is a Senior Lecturer at the Open University Sri Lanka and a Chartered Marketer.
We had a few disagreements and this is our analysis of Dr. Abeysekara’s article.
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After giving a general idea on advertising, the author moves on to the subject of digital marketing, through which he means websites, social media, Facebook and Google ads. He states that though companies should embrace digital marketing they also should not dismiss traditional marketing methods. He implies that a company will not find marketing success without embracing both the digital and traditional.
However, this is questionable. Many companies have found marketing success through digital means alone. In Sri Lanka some industries such as liquor and gambling cannot resort to traditional marketing. Furthermore popular companies such as Lokujobs.lk gained mainstream popularity without resorting to traditional marketing. Yamu.lk, Ikman.lk and other web based Sri Lankan companies also launched into the public arena through digital means. The author should have presented a more balanced view on the subject.
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The author then speaks on how a business should have a proper marketing strategy in relation to Facebook. He mentions about understanding the demographics of the audience, budget allocation and so on.
However, he fails to mention that a company should assign a dedicated team to implement digital marketing or about how they could outsource their digital needs to specialized companies who will work to trumpet their brand to the masses. Companies can use Facebook for product announcements, to answer customer queries, as a discussion forum, to conduct competitions, share newsworthy posts and so on. When writing about FB the article should have mentioned these as well.
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The biggest failure in this article is that it fails to speak about the other social media avenues: Twitter, Linkedin, Blogging, YouTube, Foursquare, Pinterest and so on. Many Sri Lankan companies are already using these sites. Companies that are only using Facebook to publicise their products are missing out. The article should have mentioned these avenues as well.
To conclude, we can say that this article could have been better researched and more detailed; or the author could have stuck to a specific sub-topic of digital marketing and elaborated on it rather than trying to cover everything. In his defence, Dr. Abeysekara seems to be from a traditional non-digital background and seems to have only recently ventured into the digital marketing arena.