The man with the [online marketing] plan

In this day and age of instant messaging and second-by-second updates on events, it is quite surprising that online advertising is still in its baby shoes in South Africa.

But, that is all about to change, says Dr Oren Dayan, who is set on educating and informing South African entrepreneurs about online marketing and advertising with the help of one of the biggest authorities in all things digital, Google.

It is actually a case of Dayan and Google helping each other, with him being selected to be part of a global panel of 19 academics from countries all over the world promoting the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

Dayan, Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the Wits School of Economic and Business Sciences, was chosen to represent South Africa, an area where Google has had limited success in furthering online and digital marketing.  The other 18 academics are from Australia, America, Mexico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Switzerland, Taiwan, England and Austria.

“The approach of the challenge is to start with educating people about how online marketing works – and they do this to help small and medium businesses to grow,” says Dayan.

According to the website, the Google Online Marketing Challenge is an exciting opportunity for students to experience and create online marketing campaigns using Google AdWords and Google . Over 50 000 students and professors from almost 100 countries have participated in the past five years.

With a $250 (about R2 300) budget provided by Google, students develop and run an online advertising campaign for a business or non-profit organization over a three week period. The teams that develop and communicate the most successful campaigns win prizes, including a trip to the Google headquarters for the students and their professor. Students also have the opportunity to participate in the optional Google Social Media Marketing Award by maintaining a Google Page for their clients over a six week period.

The challenge is open to student teams of three to six members, regardless of what they study.

Dayan says this initiative is right up his alley, as he has been trying for years to educate about online marketing and its benefits.

“The great thing is that Google gives you the training and the money to do it – you get to use Google facilities and thereby you improve the online environment. So when you search on Google, they give reference to you and you are on Google’s database, which in turn, improves the economy,” he says.

“Google’s approach is really good and I welcome this because I have been trying to do it for the last three years in South Africa – improve and enhance the online presence of companies and make them see it is good for the economy. They can use the same infrastructure with a lot less funding. With online marketing you can reach segmented parts of the population and very defined target markets, but the costs are way cheaper than mass media.”  

The challenge has been done elsewhere in the world for about five years with great success, but the problem in South Africa is that people don’t register, says Dayan.

“This is such a great challenge and I am eager to help expand the online marketing environment in the country. We believe that most of the users are young and if given the education, they could go into the industry and get a job. Our vision is that they will eventually implement the online and digital marketing plans they develop.”

Dayan, an Israeli national, graduated cum laude with a B.Comm degree from the Netanya Academic College in Israel in 2000, which he followed up with an Honours degree in Commerce in 2003 from the University of Port Elizabeth (now known as the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU)).

He completed a Master of Commerce degree in Port Elizabeth in 2004 (cum laude), and in 2009 he could add the prefix “doctor” to his name when he completed his PhD in Business Management, also at NMMU.

Before joining Wits in 2011, Dayan lent his expertise to various companies as Marketing Director in 2004 and as consultant on World Bank projects in 2007, followed by his entry into academia at NMMU as Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences in 2009.

Currently, third year and honours students in the Wits School of Economic and Business Sciences have the pleasure of benefiting from Dayan’s expertise. He lectures in brand management, marketing research and online marketing at SEBS and marketing strategy, digital marketing and customer equity at the Wits Business School.

This month Dayan chaired an online marketing session at the International Symposium on Business and Social Sciences in Tokyo, Japan and in June 2013 he will be chairing a session on technology and digital marketing at the 2013 Annual Conference of the Emerging Markets Conference Board taking place on Port Elizabeth, which is associated with the American Marketing Association, Academy of Marketing Science and European Marketing Association.

One of the major discussions at the online marketing session will be ‘how can online marketing strategies be exploited here in in South Africa?’ “More companies have spending for online marketing in theory but not in practice. South African companies are very traditional – so it is up to me to educate them. It is not a case of lack of infrastructure anymore, it is education. They believe in paper advertising, while in South Africa nearly each person has one or more cell phones. We just need to take advantage of the opportunities staring us in the face,” he says.

Read more about the Google Online Marketing Challenge

Read more about the 2013 Annual Conference of the Emerging Markets Conference Board