South Africa: Better weather AND cheaper PPC

by Heidi Edelmuller

Three months ago, I was working for an eMarketing company in Dublin.

One of my responsibilities in that position was managing the PPC campaign for an international hotel group. These days, working for Quirk in Cape Town, one of my responsibilities here is managing the PPC campaign for another international hotel group; local giants, Southern Sun.

Having run these similar Google Adwords campaigns in different markets, I cant help comparing them. And I'm surprised that, despite the massive growth in the South African tourism industry over the last few years, keyword bidding prices are still relatively cheap. Irish bidders are still paying more than double the price for the phrase “Dublin Hotels” than us locals are paying for “Cape Town hotels”.

In Search Marketing, CPC is directly related to the amount of competition for the keywords. The simple fact is that competition for keywords in South Africa is markedly less than overseas.

One might argue that Dublin is a major European city with an established tourism industry. One might also argue that having the European Head offices of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Dublin has an advanced, Internet savvy population. While both of these facts are true, the difference in size between the two places almost makes them void. Cape Town with a population close to 3 million is more than three times the size of Dublin, and South Africa with an estimated population of about 45 million is ten times bigger than the population of Ireland. So despite Ireland's technologically advanced population, the two countries, and their online tourism markets, are still comparable.

Of course there is another factor involved, and that is how much money is being spent on PPC. Predictably, marketing departments in Ireland and the UK are comfortable spending large amounts on PPC while in South Africa eMarketing companies are still trying to gain their trust and a portion of their budget. South Africa is lagging behind because many companies here have not yet realised the benefits and transparent ROI of Search Marketing.

The recent introduction of new South African Search engines Twofour and Sekamo prove that the Search industry in South Africa is starting to pick up.

As more people turn to search, so too will more companies turn to search marketing. It is only a matter of time before PPC marketing becomes mainsteam. Until then, early adopters like Southern Sun will continue to benefit from a marketplace with little competition and high ROI. Afterall, the early bird catches the worm.

2006/11/06 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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