Advertising

Smart retailers have turned to SaleSearcher, www.salesearcher.co.za, the online sales and specials listings site, to drive additional traffic to their stores despite the current tight economic conditions.

Latest shops to use the site to promote their special offers include Foschini, the leading fashion retailer; Keedo, children’s clothing store; wantitall, online comparative shopping site; tour operator Thompsons Holidays; ShoeHQ, fashion shoe shop; and Springleap, crowd-sourcing online T-shirt site.

These retailers have taken advantage of this innovative way of reaching people who have money to spend, but want to make their Rands stretch further by taking advantage of sales and special offers.

The SaleSearcher site offers online listings of promotions from both online and offline retailers in South Africa. The site allows customers to search for sales according to merchant or by specific product category.

As well as giving retailers a new platform to promote themselves, SaleSearcher aggressively drives traffic to the site via targeted online advertising using channels such as Google Adwords and Facebook. It passes these traffic reports on to the retailers, demonstrating the effectiveness of the service.

In addition, the flexible pricing structure is based on a daily rate and contract so that retailers can quickly and easily ramp up a campaign around the time of a promotion, without being locked into longer than necessary contracts.

“Signing up for SaleSearcher was a no-brainer,” said Nelia Schutte, founder of Keedo. “We can quickly and effectively drive customers to our stores across the country and our website during a promotion, and then convert them into loyal and regular customers.”

“South African shoppers are incredibly savvy and love seeking out a good bargain, especially in tougher economic times,” said Ryan Ferreira, founder of SaleSearcher. “We’ve been getting a great response from our marketing initiatives and seeing traffic grow rapidly on the site.”

“A great idea in my opinion and a foretaste of things to come in the ‘on demand’ era,” said Chris Moerdyk, corporate marketing analyst and advisor, writing about SaleSearcher in Biz-community.

About SaleSearcher
SaleSearcher, www.salesearcher.co.za, offers a quick and easy way for consumers to search for sales and special offers from retailers located around South Africa. It allows consumers to make the most of their hard earned Rands by pinpointing the sales they are looking for, and gives retailers an additional platform to engage with South African customers that have money to spend. The site is the brainchild of young South African entrepreneur, Ryan Ferreira. After working and travelling abroad, Ryan spent six months researching the viability of SaleSearcher before launching it in November 2008.

Social entrepreneur, Arye Kellman, wants to change the way you shop in 2009. And given his energy and passion, he almost definitely will.

“I am trying to create a new type of South African consumer … who truly wants to only support companies who support their country,” said Arye. “I believe that South Africa will grow exponentially socially, politically and economically when South Africans truly support fellow South Africans.”

Arye is the founder of www.500k.co.za, a website that sells advertising by the pixel in order to raise money for Childline South Africa. When I first wrote about the site last year I wondered about the model and why people would visit it more than once in order to drive the traffic that would make advertising on the site worthwhile.

Arye happily explained.

First up is his vision of creating a new South African consumer that willingly consults sites like this and Proudly South African in order to choose companies based on what they give back to South Africa.

“I want to get to a stage in this country where before buying anything, consumers evaluate the product according to the Proudly South African criteria,” said Arye. ”500K.co.za is a website consumers can go to, to see what companies give back to South Africa and build this country as they build themselves as a company.

Secondly Arye says he is very happy with his efforts to drive traffic to his site thanks to the media coverage he achieved at the end of 2008 and into 2009. This ensures a steady stream of new visitors to the site.

And thirdly, Arye is creating a community around the site via the related blog, behind the scenes details on his press activities, and giving advice to other budding social entrepreneurs and people wanting to go online.

The first point is a nice example of the ultra-niche trend that seems to be gaining momentum. Think of things like the popularity of the Neighbourgoods Market in Woodstock near Cape Town, the general rise and rise of community newspapers and magazines (have you noticed how glossy titles like Getit are?) and the popularity of niche-interest titles like BPM and Muse music mags.

But back to Arye Kellman and 500k.co.za … In 2009 Arye plans to use the media momentum from 2008 to approach corporates for advertising. They currently only have one advertiser, which I am sure will change soon. He is also launching a reseller programme to drive sales.

In addition, this all-round cool guy is working on a top secret TV programme, a couple of other projects, and also somehow fitting in his second year BCom at Wits University.

An Internet advertising opportunity, www.500K.co.za, was launched at the start of November by 19-year-old Johannesburg student Arye Kellman. The idea is to sell 500,000 pixels of Internet space, where you can place an online ad for R 1 per pixel. 60% of the profits go to Childline SA.

Similar things have been done before: in 2005 The Million Dollar Homepage earned English student Alex Tew enough money to pay for his first year at university in a mere two weeks. The irony is he dropped out of university after the first term thanks to the hype surrounding the site. Read more about Alex Tew here.

Later a US-based web designer called James tried to boot strap himself out of poverty using a similar tactic on his site The Million Penny Home Page. You can read more about that here.

The thing that I struggling to understand is: what is in it for the advertiser? Apart from the fabulous amounts of media interest that Arye is doing an amazing job at generating, what will attract repeat visitors to the site, to see your ad, and drive ROI for you – which, presumably, is the intention?

In my opinion we see ads for two main reasons: location and interesting content. Location meaning that I see the same billboard five days a week while sitting in traffic. Content meaning that I read a certain publication or website and watch a certain TV programme because I derive value from the content, and so form a captive audience for related advertising.

I like the Childline angle though, and maybe here is twist in the tale that I haven’t thought through or worked out. Perhaps the ad spend will be filed under corporate social responsibility and left at that.

This certainly will be an interesting one to watch.

US ad spend has seen the steepest quarterly drop since 2001, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Ad spending during the second quarter of 2008 was off 3.7 percent versus last year for the same period. While the economy is partially the reason, the report also sees marketing spend moving to media that offer the opportunity for more targetted campaingns.

“While expenditures are certainly indicative of the challenges being presented by the economy, they also suggest the continuation of the long-term trend of marketing dollars migrating to media such as the internet, cable TV and syndication that provide the ability to more effectively target specific audiences,” said Dean DeBiase, CEO of TNS Media.

“With advertising budgets and CMOs under pressure and uncertainties continuing to exist relative to consumer spending, it appears marketers are placing an emphasis upon enhanced efficiencies for their brands and the ability to engage with well defined audiences to ensure ever greater return on investment.”

Read more here.