Free Blind Mice

Because the Internet is not an academic priority in most Marketing Programmes in Zimbabwe, Web Marketing has been a nightmare for many marketers, seen by the inability to thrive online as they do offline. My first business mentor is one of Zimbabwe’s top Marketers, who took me up early 2003, when I quit my comfortable IT position at Zimpapers Natprint. I noticed that he was a student of online marketing ever since then, only to take up online business four years after, with a serious innovation, if I might add.

I know another brilliant Marketer with more than ten world class food brands at her disposable, yet has only one website – a corporate website, that talks more about the company - Corporate Profile, than the products or its consumers.

I will not mention bankers, clothing manufacturers, department stores, bookshops, car dealers, insurance institutes, asset managers, chemists, sports institutes, just to name a few. I love our marketers, but can not stand and watch them be overwhelmed by foreign institutions online. The online competition is stiff, and some websites serve the Zimbabwean web market uncontested. It is as if Zimbabwean marketers become blind as the three blind mice, yet online innovation is free for all. It just takes the same concepts as the offline, to build success on the Internet.

What I have seen to be the problem is how marketers perceive the Internet, especially websites – a business card, company profile, and a notice board. We come from a Mass media oriented marketing background, relying heavily on TV, RADIO, and NEWSPAPER to market products, services, promotions and brands.