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Ready to tap Internet's potential
ONE of South Africa's modern success stories is the marketing of M-Web. From a zero base just over a year ago, the company is now one of the top brands in the Internet market. But Gary Bonney, the company's marketing director, says M-Web has only attracted a tiny portion of the people who are going to connect to the Internet. "There is a huge potential market of Internet subscribers and those are the people we aim to connect with," he says. Marketing is the third-biggest cost in the M-Web organisation after the technological backbone and staff. "People actually overestimate our marketing budget," says Bonney. "Over Christmas, we didn't advertise for over a month. That said, we do have a high profile in the minds of consumers. "We have positioned our Black Box as an off-the-shelf purchase. Instead of deliberating, consumers see the Black Box as just another commodity and it becomes almost an impulse buy. That's something we've seen, too, with our link to Mr Delivery outlets - people can order an Internet connection along with their dinner," he says. "That's the consumer market, but the corporate market is similar, oddly enough. With leased lines, the plumbing is fairly simple - what we bring to our customers is a business understanding of the Net and what they can get out of it." Bonney says the Internet is big business and a huge marketing opportunity for businesses. He says Net advertising is squaring up to more traditional media as a serious contender. "As a marketer, if you place an ad in a magazine, you have little understanding of what works and what doesn't. Fifty percent does, the other half doesn't - you have no way of knowing which is successful. "On the Internet, however, you have mechanisms to check - you can measure what works and then analyse why it's successful. The Internet is a huge opportunity for companies to get their marketing message across and to gather intelligence from it - it's real one-to-one marketing," he says. "With the Net it's possible to see how long people spend reading your advertisement. If they spend just two seconds there, you know something is wrong. It's simple enough to re-design, but only if you know that something is wrong. In other media, a problem could take weeks or months to detect." Bonney says the Internet is now mainstream and businesses should capitalise on that. "An Internet connection is now fundamental to doing business. In most companies an E-mail address is as common as a fax number. "In managing supply chains to gauging customer feedback, an Internet connection will be paramount," he says. Bonney says there are hundreds of thousands of PCs in South Africa but that only a fraction of them have an Internet link. "Research shows that Internet awareness is high in South African and we believe it's a dam wall that's ready to burst."
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