Affiliate Marketing: Why You Should Be Using It

by Wendy Tayler on January 16, 2012

As affiliate marketing becomes an increasingly prevalent method in South Africa and other emerging markets, it is essential to understand this type of relationship and how it may benefit you. Heavy Chef chats to Deborah Whitlock of World Wide Creative, to get to grips with affiliate marketing and the possible challenges that come with it.

DEBORAHCan you explain to us what affiliate marketing is?

Affiliate marketing is a working relationship whereby a merchant, either an online shop or advertiser, has consumers driven to it by adverts on an affiliate website. If a consumer visiting the affiliate’s site, clicks on an advertisement and goes on to perform a predetermined action on the advertiser’s site , which is usually a purchase; then the affiliate receives a payment.

Is there scope for this in emerging markets?

For affiliate marketing to work well in a given market, there are a few things that need to exist.

Well known brands in the market need to be doing successful Ecommerce, and need to deliver a satisfying ecommerce experience. There also needs to be a culture of online shopping. There needs to be sufficient online audience for affiliates to mine and channel traffic to the merchants or brands they are representing. And lastly, the market needs credible affiliate websites using accountable online marketing practices, who have a loyal following.

Emerging markets such as South Africa are in the very early stages of the first two points. Therefore affiliate marketing as a standard practice within a marketing strategy is still in its infancy.  It would be a challenge to get it right at present but that is not to say it couldn’t be done. The ROI model, that being the commissioning of a third party to market your product, is successful in and of itself.  Right now the model would probably work best as individual partnerships negotiated between interested parties. An example of this is Woolworths partnering with Discovery Vitality to promote themselves on the Vitality website, with their own profile and special offers.

Can you give an example of any affiliate marketing you have done or are busy with?

In the UK I managed two fairly large affiliate programmes with two networks.  I was responsible for the growth of both programmes, oversaw the relationship with the individual affiliates and had to ensure that the brand, Weight Watchers, had continuous exposure across the affiliate networks, with activity peaking during key campaign periods in, line with sales targets.

What are some challenges that come with choosing this route?

Well some of the key challenges are managing an offer portfolio to keep affiliates happy. They like to offer their audience an exclusive deal. And balancing this with over-exposure in the market. Ensuring consistent, high account manager service levels from the networks. This plays a huge role in the quality of the affiliates, general reporting and effectiveness of marketing campaigns, as account managers have to do a lot of following up with affiliates on your behalf. Attracting good affiliates who actually make sales is another challenge. Affiliate marketing follows the usual Pareto principle, which means that 20% of affiliates drive 80% of the sales. Lastly, finding time to talk regularly with the top affiliates to keep the brand top of mind, can be challenging.

How do you think trust is perceived though this type of marketing?

If you had asked that question ten years ago, you’d have been met with a snort and a derisive laugh.  It used to be an industry riddled with a lot of clandestine practices.  Today affiliate marketing is very well established across Europe and the USA.  Most top brands use affiliate marketing as a standard part of their activity.

It has created what are termed Super Affiliates, which have become reputable brands in themselves, churning out thousands of Ecommerce transactions both online and via social media and mobile.

A few UK examples include TopCashBack.co.uk, Quidco.co.uk and Nectar.com.

These are the type of sites which successfully represent top brands across the country and help to build those brands in the Ecommerce space.

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Internet Marketing Makeover: Earn More From The Same Number of Visitors

by Michelle MacPhearson on January 16, 2012

Welcome to Day 16 of the Internet Marketing Makeover!

FuschiaHaving someone visit your website is a good thing.  Having their email address so you can bring them back to your site over and over, or introduce them to affiliate products, is a GREAT thing.

Too many folks aren’t capturing emails (particularly in niche markets) and aren’t maximizing their revenue because of this.

Today you’ll start squeezing every drop of profit from your website visitors by capturing their email addresses.

[Most of the posts here are for everyone to read - but the rest of this post is for members only. The good news? Membership is free. Sign up here or log in here.]

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Internet Marketing Makeover: Week 2 Recap

by Michelle MacPhearson on January 15, 2012

Welcome to Day 15 of the Internet Marketing Makeover!

Today is a recap day if you’ve not finished any of the past week’s assignments. If you have, it’s a rest day – enjoy!

DAY 15 OBJECTIVE

Catch up on any Internet Marketing Makeover assignments you’ve not yet finished!

DAY 15 ASSIGNMENT

Review the previous Internet Marketing Makeover posts and their tasks and complete anything you haven’t gotten to yet:

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09 – Your Niche is Evolving – Are You?

  1. Reaffirm that your main keyword phrase has proper competition and traffic, if not, select a new one
  2. Reaffirm that your long tail keyphrases have proper competition and traffic, if not, select new ones
  3. Find new long tail keyphrases that may not have existed or been attractive when you first researched your niche

10 – Know What Your Competition Doesn’t

  1. Install Google Analytics on all of your sites
  2. Link Google Analytics with Google Adsense
  3. Create an XML sitemap for each of your sites and submit those sitemaps to the search engines
  4. Create a Google Webmaster Tools account and add your sitemap(s)

11 – Search Engine Bait

  1. Optimize your home page for your main keyword phrase
  2. Install WordPress SEO by Yoast
  3. Optimize the long tail pages for their individual keyword phrase

12 – Linking To Your Own Content

  1. Set up automatic internal linking

13 – Open Wide And Stick Out Your Content

  1. Identify pages on your site that aren’t receiving traffic
  2. 301 redirected old, low traffic pages
  3. Updated old posts that could still be helpful to your audience

14 – Making Fresh Content Easy

  1. Loaded up your Google Reader account
  2. Opened a Posterous account and added your blog as an autopost location
  3. Started using Posterous to post curated content to your site with meaningful commentary and insights from you
See you tomorrow with another fresh, new Makeover post!

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Internet Marketing Makeover: Making Fresh Content Easy

by Michelle MacPhearson on January 14, 2012

14 days! You’ve made it through 13 days of the Internet Marketing Makeover, you’ve come back for more and you’re not even crying yet! I’m so proud!

Yesterday you prepared your past posts, articles and pages for a better tomorrow. You also looked at how you’ll schedule future content production.

Today I’m going to give you the best tip I know for creating fresh content for your site quickly and easily. It doesn’t require buying articles, paying per post or hiring outsources (although you can have outsourcers do this work for you if you want to).

Again, with Google’s Freshness Update, having new, unique content on your site matters, so this is a step you can’t afford to miss.

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DAY 14 OBJECTIVE

Implement a workflow for creating content quickly and easily.

DAY 14 ASSIGNMENT

Step 1

Any market you could possibly be in has blogs, press releases, news items and/or articles being written about it. Your job, as owner of a website in the market, is to keep abreast of those items so you know what’s going on in your marketplace. That’s an integral part of market leadership.

You should be subscribed to the most compelling sources of information for your market in Google Reader. If you’re in multiple markets, use Google Reader’s folders to sort the feeds you’ve subscribed to by topic.

Every day you should check in with your market and see what’s new. Seth Godin doesn’t think we should do it in the morning, but I like to read feeds for 30 minutes or so, in bed while drinking my coffee. It’s a relaxing way to wake up.

Whatever time you choose to do it, here are three rules to ensure it stays productive:

  1. Do it at the same specific time, every day
  2. Don’t let the time diverge into checking Facebook, Twitter, etc. – this is purely to check your Google Reader feeds
  3. Set a time limit – be it 10 minutes or 1 hour, you will only work on “intake” for that set amount of time

Step 2

With your Google Reader habit firmly in place, let’s set up the rest of the production line.

Open an account at Posterous. Create a “Space” (this is their name for blog).

Posterous - Settings

With your “Space” set up, click the “Settings” icon and then click “Autopost Setup.”

Add your blog on the autopost screen. What this will do is take anything you send to Posterous and automatically post it to your blog.

Step 3

Back in Google Reader, click the “Settings” icon also.

Google Reader - Settings

From “Settings” click the “Send To” tab at the top. Click the checkbox next to Posterous:

Adding Posterous to Reader

Now you’re Google Reader account can send items directly to your Posterous account (which will then send the item directly to your blog).

Step 4 (Optional)

For those of you who use iPads, iPhones and other on-the-go goodies, you can post to your Posterous (and therefore to your blog) using Posterous’ post by email functionality. To get your secret email address, go to “Your Spaces” and click “Posts” in the dropdown for the Space who’s email address you’d like Click on “New Post Via Email.”

Posterous - Post Via email

Posterous will open an email message in your main email client. Take that “Sent To” address and add it to your mobile address book. BAM! On-the-go posting!

Implementation

Eating Cookies

You’re reading your feeds every day at the time you’ve set aside to do so. It’s an exercise in keeping up to date with your marketplace, but now that you’ve got your Posterous set up, it’s also an exercise in content creation.

Your job while in Google Reader is to look for posts that inspire you to carry on the conversation. Posts that you agree with and want to add your thoughts to. Posts that you disagree with and want to share why with your readers. News that your readers should know about – and why it effects them.

It will take time to develop the eye for what will be of use to your readers. It will take time to develop your voice and to have something to say you your market, not simply repeating facts.

But it’s time well spent. Because once you’ve developed these skills, market leadership comes next – completely naturally.

Once you’ve found a piece in Google Reader that you (1) want to share with your audience and (2) have something extra to add, click the “Send to” button below the item and then choose “Posterous.”

Send To Posterous

You’ll be brought to a “Share on Posterous” page. Enter your comment – your thoughts, where you bring a unique twist to the post:

Share on Posterous

Then click “Post.”

What you’ve created will be posted to your Posterous site, but more importantly it’ll be posted to your actual blog. It’s a new piece of content for you and your audience.

Being the first to your market NOT with news but with ANALYSIS of the news will do wonders for your reputation – and your search engine ranking.

Make a goal of creating one of these posts every day you’re not publishing a something else. So if you publish new content every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, publish one of these every Tuesday, Wednesday and on the weekends.

Those of you on mobile devices can email the posts to Posterous from Reeder. Very snazzy!

It’s the end of day 14 and you’ve:

  • Loaded your Google Reader with relevant feeds
  • Opened a Posterous account and added your blog as a place to Autopost
  • Added Posterous as a place that Google Reader can “Send To”
  • Scheduled which days you’ll post to your blog using this new workflow

See you tomorrow!

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Internet Marketing Makeover: Open Wide and Stick Out Your Content!

by Michelle MacPhearson on January 13, 2012

It’s Day 13 of the Internet Marketing Makeover – welcome home!

In 2005, during the “Adsense Goldrush,” I was first introduced to internet marketing. During that time 7 years ago, having “content” on your site was simply a matter of having words on a page.

The more thoughtful webmasters among us attempted to create something that at least made sense – I can’t say I was part of that group. I just wanted something, anything that would get the right kind of ads to display on-page.

Today your content has to stand on it’s own legs before even your link building or other SEO efforts. You can SEO the shit out of your site, but without great content, it’ll lose – eventually. That’s the climate we’re working in today.

I don’t mind. I hope you don’t either, because these are the rules you have to play by. I been hollerin’ about it since February 2011 and am gonne keep hollerin’ about it  until folks quit trying to weasel around it.

But once you’ve got all that exceptional content, you’ve got to maintain it.

That’s what today’s Makeover is all about.

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DAY 13 OBJECTIVE

Remove and redirect obsolete content. Update good content that could be made fresher.

DAY 13 ASSIGNMENT

Not everything you publish is a grand slam – or even a home run!

One of the ways we remove baggage from our sites is to completely remove pages that just didn’t gain traction in the search engines (or our site visitors). No one is reading them, the search engines aren’t sending them traffic and they’re pulling internal link juice away from your other, more successful pages (or new posts that could use the help).

Let’s identify those pages.

Open your stats package. Find the pages on your site with the lowers number of views in the last 12 months.

In Google Analytics, you’ll go to “Content” —> “Landing Pages” and change the “Show Rows” to 500. Scroll down to the bottom (or change the sort for the “Visits” column to Ascending). Now you’ve got a look at the pages on your site that haven’t received much traffic.

Look over those pages and decide which ones aren’t relevant anymore. Which ones aren’t worth salvaging or updating and which ones are.

These could be everything from administrative announcements, contests, product reviews, or news that’s now old hat.

The ones that are worth editing and saving you should change to being “Draft” status. That way you can find them easily in the WP Dashboard.

Another alternative to the “Draft” trick is the WordPress Content Audit plugin – I haven’t used it and think it’s overkill for most niche sites, but I can see some multi-author scenarios where it would be helpful.

Those pages that you know aren’t getting any traffic and aren’t worth updating do have one thing you want to keep – whatever link equity they’ve gained just by virtue of having been published at one time or another. Because of WordPress’s ping list, social sharing sites and plain ol’ scrapers, even our “dud” pages can carry quite a few links pointing in a them. We don’t want to lose that!

You’ll use a plugin called “Redirection” to 301 redirect the old post URL’s to a new location. By using a 301 redirect you’re losing the least search engine juice possible.

You can create a “Group” specifically for these old posts, so they don’t clutter up any regular redirections you may use the plugin to create.

Redirection - Old Posts Group

(I use the regular Redirections Group in the plugin to redirect and keep track of affiliate links, for example).

After you’ve created a Group to host your old posts, at the bottom of the page you can add a new redirection:

Redirection - Add a Redirection

In “Source URL” you’ll enter in the URL of the post you no longer want published.

In “Target URL” you’ll enter in the URL of the location you’d like visitors – and the search engines to go instead. Whatever you put in this box is where the accumulated link equity of the old page will point to now.

How to decide?

If you have a post that has similar content, but perhaps more recent or thorough, you can redirect the old post to the new post. This is a good idea for posts that were targeting similar keyphrases or variations on the same keyphrase.

If the post was an anomaly and you don’t have a particular place that “makes sense” to redirect it, just redirect it to your home page.

Once you’ve added the post to Redirection, send it to the Trash in WordPress.

Redirection Logs

As you can see, even old, dead posts do get search engine and real visitors, so this is a process you’ll want to take the time to complete.

Now you’ve got a set of posts in “Draft” status that need updating.

Updating a post doesn’t take nearly as long as writing a new one. Can you update one per day? Maybe one on Monday, Wednesday and Friday?

Set a schedule and work it!

It’s a good idea to change the date on these “new” posts to today as well – Google’s Freshness Update looks for more recent content for certain keyphrases. Since your updated content is fresh and relevant today, update the date on it within WordPress as well to alert Google!

I went through this process on this very site by nixing and redirecting approximately 150 posts and can say that it actually led to MORE Google traffic, almost immediately.

By the end of today’s Makeover, you will have:

  • Identified the pages on your site that aren’t receiving meaningful traffic
  • Determined which low traffic posts are worth reviving, moved those to “Draft” status
  • 301 redirected the low traffic pages that aren’t worth reviving & then trashed them
  • Scheduled time to update  and republish the “Draft” posts

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SEO Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, Discusses The Evolving Consumer Experience

by Jo Barrow on January 13, 2012

Gianluca Fiorelli is an avid SEO blogger and is the author of the popular blog ILoveSEO.net. He recently had the privilege of interviewing Avinash Kaushik – one of the most influential thought leaders on Analytics and celebrated author of ‘Web Analytics: An Hour A Day’ and ‘Analytics 2.0′. Hailed by followers as an idol, a mentor, and even an oracle, his sphere of influence is massive and constantly expanding. He is known for his ability to simplify the complex world of web analytics and make it accessible to all those wanting to include it into their digital marketing strategies.

AVINASHHow much is it essential for businesses to understand the value of a well implemented Analytic figure in their structure? I am thinking especially of the small and medium enterprises, which usually tend to underestimate its strategic importance.

A well implemented analytics data collection mechanism is an important price of entry. Without it you are coming to play the football game naked. You look embarrassing, and you are going to lose.

My hope though is that small and medium sized businesses will come to appreciate the value that actually using the data will have on their business. In as much I’ve pushed companies, of all sizes, to adopt the Digital Marketing & Measurement Model. That provides them with a very structured five step process to follow, ask the most important questions before they touch the data.

The end result is a better understanding of why it is that you need data, and once you get it how do you focus your efforts to ensure you are answering the right questions. With that comes an appreciation of why an investment in data is critical.

What do you like of this discipline from your personal perspective? Do you agree with me saying that no SEO can call himself so if he does not own a profound knowledge of Analytics?

I love SEO. It is such a fascinating science and the rewards are awesome. The thing that appeals to me personally is that there are a, mostly, clear set of logical things we have to do in order to rank high for relevant keywords. It is fun to do those things at a system or marketing level.

It would not surprise you to learn that what is a lot of fun about SEO is the enormous amount of data available to understand your current situation, understand what it will take to get to the next step, and, my favorite, quantify the business impact of our SEO efforts. Without analytics it is impossible to even be 10% effective at doing SEO. And that is great.

Finally, what is the newest challenge of the Analytics science? Are maybe the Social metrics the new western frontier of Analytics?

Social is just one more thing to think about, I am not sure that it is a challenge all by itself. In terms of challenges I think there are a couple of very sophisticated ones.

First one is that consumer experience is evolving at such a fragmented rate that most places where we need data from are places where we don’t have, to put it crudely, our analytics tools’ analytics tags. That means that more and more of the data we need to be smart sits outside our immediate purview. Our ability to use APIs, scrapers, multiple tools is going to be super critical.

The second problem, perhaps even harder, is how to deal with this multiplicity from a data analysis perspective. Much of this data is missing primary keys, it is often incomplete, and sometimes even incorrect. And it is rich with information we can turn into actionable insight. Yet from a human capital perspective we don’t have enough people with the right skills. Time will solve both these problem. But I hope that current and future analysts and marketers appreciate this problem and start to invest the seeds of what it will take to solve them in the long term.

The interview sums up the definitive role that analytics plays in any digital marketing strategy. It also provides great insight into the future challenges SEO will face and the kind of landscape we are moving into. As the constantly evolving nature of the web continues to present challenges in this area, a solid understanding of SEO and web analytics remains crucial to successfully carrying campaigns into the future.

Read the full interview published by SEOmoz, here.

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How To Run A Multinational Brand Online – Caroline Mytton

by Wendy Tayler on January 12, 2012

Caroline Mytton is the head of Rentokil.com – the world’s largest commercial pest control company. This global brand is present in more than 50 countries, operates in over 28 languages and have been leading experts in their business since the 1920’s. With plenty of experience managing a multinational organisation, Caroline shares some of her valuable knowledge with us at Heavy Chef.

CAROLINEHi Caroline, thank you for talking with us. How are you using online to help your business stand out?

We try to make our brand as ubiquitous and knowledgeable online as it is on the ground. We achieve this by engaging and sharing insight with the public through social media channels, aiming to keep content original and interesting. We respond to people’s pest queries, fears and concerns promptly via social media. In 2012 we will be launching a few really innovative social media projects so watch this space. It is intended to help drive brand awareness and make us more approachable.

We offer high quality and authoritative web content in all our marketing and we try to reach out to the widest audience and customer base possible though our SEO activity. We are also slowly transitioning our websites from brochure sites to transactional for some key residential pests and some of our product range. This is also intended to make us easier to do business with, and on a 24/7 basis. And we also offer PestNetOnline to our commercial customers.

Which online routes have you adopted (eg: SEO, PPC) and which have worked best for your business?

We use a combination of both SEO and PPC. Our SEO activities are targeted and focused, as driving up our organic web performance increases organic visitors and enquirers, which in turn drive down our CPE.

Paid search perfectly complements the SEO strategy, filling the gaps and covering a wider range of keywords whilst being a cost effective and targeted channel. On the face of it, it appears to be much easier to measure the effectiveness of PPC than organic SEO, purely based on the analysis layout that automatically exists in AdWords. However, if correct goal tracking is set up to track web interaction, then organic SEO can also be measured. This requires far more analysis and planning and is also time consuming.

We find we need to judge the effectiveness of one versus the other on a country by country basis as our search performance is affected by other factors such as online competition and brand awareness. Therefore we adjust our strategy to meet each market’s needs.

You have a blog called ‘deBugged’ that offers some great tips and information. How did this idea come about? And is it very popular?

We are proud to say it’s increasingly popular, and that is year on year. The idea came about back in 2008 when we were beginning to consider our social media offering and we realised that we could increase our online expertise by crafting interesting content with an unusual angle, in our case pest control. We like to think we have a good understanding of the kind of content which attracts our readers and real life stories seem to be hugely popular. Everyone has a pest control story to tell and we are now being approached by guest bloggers, which is extremely exciting. So our early adopter approach for social media has paid off.

The blog, twitter and our other social media channels also bring a personal face to what the public may view as a very large multinational brand and this helps underpin the statement that whilst we are a global brand, our service technicians are almost always local to our customers. We are a service industry and our technicians lie at the core of our business. They have some great stories to tell, and we thought that the blog would be a great place for them to share their tales.

The blog also plays an important support role in our SEO activities and we try and ensure that all posts are focused around a key search term.

RPC_cmyk_tagline_enHow do you manage a multinational site, with each country having specific needs that surely differ slightly from each other? Is each country responsible for their own site?

Ah I wondered if we would come to the 60 million dollar question!

Localisation of each site is critical and core to our strategy.  It is important that our country sales, marketing and management teams feel ownership of their website and that visitors to the country feel that it is country specific rather than having been crafted by a large corporate. At the same time it is important that we operate within our brand guidelines and maintain a consistent look, feel and message.

We have a separate site for each country in which we operate and we tailor the architecture to meet the individual countries needs.  Translation and localisation is carried out within each country and we have regular review meetings with each countries marketing lead to keep the content up to date and fresh.

The rentokil.com is responsible for all the sites but with differing degrees of input, according to resource available, from each market.  We use a CMS system and have really great people managing that side of things within the team. For our larger markets we have dedicated resource for each country that is usually part of the rentokil.com, and they oversee paid and organic search and implement our search strategies on an ongoing basis. We also have language specific people within the team.

Can this make it challenging to maintain a seamless brand image across different cultures and countries?

Challenging is probably an understatement to how it can be at times. I won’t go in to some of the challenges and frustrations a change to the Google Algorithm can bring, but just say that managing our suite of sites and being responsible for all aspects of it is sometimes quite daunting, always busy, sometimes frustrating but certainly never dull.  The success of the site and the hugely important role it plays to support the Company’s Enquiry Generation initiative, is also extremely rewarding.

Do you have any tips for organisations that are spread across different countries and struggle to integrate or unify their brand online?

In brief I would say have a clear, well defined strategy and do not over complicate it.  Make sure that detailed keyword research and competitor research is done on a country by country basis and do not be tempted to roll out a corporate template for this important piece.

When I have spoken about this with our search performance leads in the team and  the social media leads, they have said that if you manage your online activity centrally, you have to be open-minded about country and language-specific needs and how these could affect your online strategy. An overly prescriptive approach can lead to sub-optimal results and unsatisfied regional businesses. A good system allows you to control your global online presence but requires your businesses’ willing cooperation and buy-in.

With regards to Web performance, having one main corporate website with the ability to navigate to country specific sections or with GEO targeting functionality may be the best way, but this may not appear to offer enough of a local solution to a particular market and perhaps may prove to be difficult to achieve top organic results in local markets. Clear direction on brand guidelines relating specifically to web should always come from the very top, so that their is a unified approach to your online message in all the markets in which you operate.

For social media at Rentokil, we have one global twitter account which comments on pest control stories around the globe. It’s important that the branding is consistent right down to country level and that each tweet or facebook comment posted communicates our brand message. We want our customers in the USA to achieve the same high level of knowledge and expertise as those in Belgium.

Start small and only get involved with social media if you have adequate resources. A half hearted attempted at going online will take a lot of time and effort but not yield the best results. Run a small pilot of countries or markets and with trial and error you will soon be able to ramp up the projects to a higher level. Doing it this way, the business impact will be lower than if mistakes are made on a massive scale. But when mistakes are made, learn from them. It happens to us all at one time or another.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us, Caroline. Heading a global brand is no easy task and we are grateful to be able to get a small glimpse of how you do it so well.

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Internet Marketing Makeover: Linking To Your Own Content

by Michelle MacPhearson on January 12, 2012

Welcome to Day 12 of the Internet Marketing Makeover!

Squash TowerIf you’ve made it this far, I’m sure you know that a well linked-to site will generally outperform a site with just a few links pointing to it, everything else being equal.

So one of our jobs when developing a new site is to go out and get links for it (we’ll devote some time to getting external backlinks a bit later during the Internet Marketing Makeover).

[Most of the posts here are for everyone to read - but the rest of this post is for members only. The good news? Membership is free. Sign up here or log in here.]

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Heavy Chef: Demystifying Online Advertising

by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg on January 11, 2012

Our last Heavy Chef event in Joburg last year presented Jennifer Grace from NATIVE and Styli Charalambous from The Daily Maverick who spoke about demystifying online advertising.

Jennifer offered a range of informative facts and figures on online advertising, social media and mobile marketing. If you missed her talk, watch the video above for more insights into online advertising. For more facts and insights from our Heavy Chef events, follow @HeavyChef or search #HeavyChef for tweets.

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The Mobile Money Revolution In Africa – CEO Of iVeri

by Violet Kadzura on January 11, 2012

Unlike the rest of the world where internet access is computer based, most people in Africa access the internet on mobile devices, and this allows more mobile opportunities for consumers. One area where growth is predicted is the mobile finance realm. Mobile transactions would simplify the lives of millions of consumers across the African continent. iVeri Payment Technologies is a South African firm that provides mobile transactional technology to merchants and banks across Africa. Mobithinking sat down with iVeri’s CEO Barry Coetzee to get his thoughts on the mobile money revolution and how it will benefit the African continent.

iVeriWhat does the mobile money revolution mean for the average African consumer?

To me, the most important part of the mobile revolution is that consumers now expect to be able to use their handsets to do financial transactions. The reason consumers are embracing mobile transacting is obvious . Convenience. Consumers put a high value on convenience.

What are the business opportunities presented by ‘mobile money’ in Africa for big and small businesses?

Mobile money is still a newborn. It is still unclear which of its parents, mobile operators or banks, it looks more like. It definitely has aspects of both parents. Nobody really knows what the future will bring, but we are sure that it will be different. Currently we are in an opportunistic phase, with all sorts of companies offering mobile money products/services. However, as scale grows, interoperability between these products will become a big issue. Money has to be inter-operable, without it there is no convenience for the consumer. This should bring maturity to the industry and help to dictate the future direction. Until then, all players continue to jostle for position.

What are the opportunities presented by ‘mobile money’ in Africa for governments, NGOs and other organisations?

Probably the biggest opportunity for all that is gained with mobile money is that it brings accountability for transactions that were previously performed with cash. Cash is the greatest driver of corruption. But when you make a mobile payment the transaction is electronic. This means there is an audit trail for these transactions. This is very important for large organizations, including governments who lose large amounts in the cash economy. Unfortunately many governments aren’t big supporters of auditable mobile money transactions – perhaps the resistance comes from the dishonest people within these governments who would no longer be able to enrich themselves anonymously.

What are the risks involved with mobile money? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

As mobile money grows and matures, the risks it faces will increase and new rules will be required to address these risks. This has always been the case with bank notes. Despite the fact that bank notes are centuries old, we are still making new rules and implementing new technologies to protect their integrity. Along with new ways to pay, will inevitably come a growth industry in new ways to steal. Consumers will make decisions based on their own risk profiles, whether they think the benefits outweigh the risks. E-commerce is  the same. Some people will always avoid purchasing things on the Internet because they feel it is too risky, while for others, the convenience of e-commerce outweighs the risks.

What does the rest of the world need to learn from what’s happening with mobile money in Africa?

Africa will be the first continent where mobile Web access will overtake desktop Internet access. Other continents will follow. After all, one in three people that access Facebook, do so via a mobile phone. In Africa the mobile handset is the main platform for IT development. This means that while developers and entrepreneurs in the developed world will continue to focus on desktop based systems for the foreseeable future, young people in Africa will work with mobile first. This is the foundation for development of this young mobile money industry.

Read the full article by Mobithinking here.

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