Waking Up to a New World – Digital Marketing

By Hira Zaffar

2010 has just started and if we take a look around we live in an entirely different world today as compared to what it was almost a decade ago.

One might wonder that what would be the reaction of those, who never lived to see this wireless cyber age, if somehow manage to get back to life, they’ll die again instantly of surprise and amazement. What once used to be shown in super fictitious movies has now become reality.

The world literally transformed over the last few years and the credit goes entirely to Internet. Not only the developed counties are entirely dependent on the internet but this statement holds true for developing nations like us, Pakistan, too. What once was a luxury has now become a necessity for success and growth in every walk of life.

Growth of Internet Usage

Pakistan is a developing nation where political instability and turmoil has become a norm. Despite all the problems faced by this nation, its growth in the internet world is staggering and comparable with the most progressive nation. Given the direction in which the world is going, this trend will continue and will only accelerate.

According to the Morgan Stanley Report, Pakistan is within the top 5 countries with the highest addition of internet users. From 2006 to 2009, there has been more than 50% addition in the number of internet users. Though internet penetration is still quite low in our part of the world as not everyone can afford a computer but internet cafes popped up like mushrooms everywhere to fill in the void, hence internet is within everyone’s reach.

This growing trend can also be witnessed in the cellular sector in which the number of subscribers is increasing at an exponential rate.  Yes, the boom has definitely reached Pakistan or in other words this boom became a big bang in Pakistan.

Advertising in Pakistan

Once upon a time a great philosopher (no names taken) said, “legalize it or I’ll advertise it”. Dynamics of marketing and advertising changed phenomenally over the last few years. From one national television and a few newspapers, today hundreds of new mode and mediums of communication are available.

Traditional marketing and advertising has become stale and lack novelty. With a variety of options and opportunities, the internet has become the unique and innovative advertising medium. Not only does this medium provide prospects for all kinds of businesses and their communication, but it also presents a mean to flaunt the message incorporating creative ingenuity and distinctiveness.

As the rules clearly state that there are no rules in advertising but logic has it, a campaign must appeal to the targeted audience and they should be able to associate with it.

With conventional forms of marketing:

  • Message is being delivered to the masses in a static form. They involve negligible levels of user interaction and not targeted to a specific audience.
  • Not only is the time and cost to market through these mediums is very high but it is also impossible to measure its effectiveness.
  • What’s more is that if any campaigns launched via these mediums raise negative comments and reaction, it is again costly to react, recall, revise and re-launch.

Compared to this, the digital medium:

  • Provides targeted advertising and any message can be customized according to the target audience.
  • Any campaign can be launched for testing, revised and re-launched in a matter of days.
  • Furthermore, with verifiable and transparent reporting tools, it is easy to measure the effectiveness and performance of any campaign.

Though internet usage is growing at a very fast rate in Pakistan, marketers mostly are unaware of the advertising opportunities associated with this medium. Compared to other nations, we are still lagging in this domain.

Considering the fact that UK online spending has exceeded spending on traditional advertising mediums, Pakistan is nowhere near par.  With mostly telecom operators taking the lead in this domain, it is time that organizations take full advantage of this medium as well.

Together with print and television a brand should be activated through internet. No matter how much we disagree but it is true that frequency sells and with the changing lifestyle of an average Pakistani, how ingrained this medium has become in our lives, digital marketing is the next step which marketers have to take.

If you are interested to make your product into a brand seek our expert advice, visit www.strategicalliancez.com for all your online needs.

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • Reasons of rapid growth were these IT, Telecom and now Internet were really revolutionary concepts. They not only given ways to people to communicate quickly but they are way of earning for millions world wide.

    If one morning we get up and come to know that the internet is vanish or banned for normal public how horrible the lives would be. Anyways lets not think of that stuff coz this is now gonna always grow and there would be no stopping…

  • Mostly SMEs can get better advantage with the opportunity of online marketing due to the reason that these businesses have limited budget to spend on marketing and advertising. And in online marketing they can make their mark by spending very low amount or sometimes free of cost activities for selling their product and services.

  • I need to know the internet population of Pakistan till todate, can anyone help me out in this.

    As far as telecom advertisers are concerned, Internet is still not largely in focus mainly due to the small amount of internet population in Pakistan ( 18.5 million as compare to Telecom subscribers 96.7 million), but yes! still one can’t deny the importance of online advertising and power of social media.

    the overall growth of broadband subscribers and penetration of internet in Pakistan, in coming years advertisers will have to focus more on internet than on traditional media.

    By the way! wat u guyz think, which Pakistani Telecom company is doing best on Internet? lets have a debate on this :)

  • I would definitely say that we have the Technology but we do not know how to use it in the Proper and Profit Oriented way.
    No doubt, we are having great potential in Internet Marketing but whats the loophole? it is the Local Vendor who is unaware of the Pakistani Websites and the other hand is the Pakistani Web Masters (who are still working with google, non-pakistani company)
    There should be some Awareness Platform where the Local Vendors targets the Local Webmasters, this is how there would more intractable Marketing and more profits within lesser cost !
    We should Open our eyes and see how can we get maximum profit from this technology w/ minimum resources.

    Umer –

  • Newbies at internet marketing are for sure destined to failure if they try to begin an internet marketing business without a solid plan or strategy. |Internet marketing is not much different than marketing an offline business. Marketing online uses the internet to market a product or service to a vast audience through sites, blogs or paid advertisement just as a business owner would market their business through the Yellow Pages, TV Advertisements, Billboards, etc.

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