Case Studies

A website needs a marketing strategy, just like any other venture.
And a marketing strategy needs some goals, and goals need numbers.
It’s a common problem: Assuming an adept marketing plan, just how many website visitors is a realistic expectation?

Of course, you can also ask how long a piece of string is. The audience numbers depend a lot on the target audience, especially if the segmentation occurs across geographic lines.

To get a clearer indication of reasonable expectations for South African websites, I decided to crunch some numbers. I used data available from the www.opa.org.za site, which represents the leading web publishers in the country. Most numbers are second quarter, 2008.

I only looked at Domestic Traffic, since I assume it is better to focus your marketing efforts on a market that is on your doorstep. Obviously, there are valid exceptions to this, but one has to start somewhere!

I started off with 103 websites that are monitored by OPA, and I ignored all email sites (such as Webmail, Mweb mail etc).

Here is what I found (rounded off):

Average unique browsers per site: 151,000

Average page impressions per site: 2.5 milion per month

Those numbers are quite impressive, but are skewed by the big players that get well over 20 million impressions per month. Once News24.com , Vodacom4me, MSN and Mweb sites are removed, the stats are as follows:

Average unique browsers per site: 103,000
Average page impressions per site: 1.4 million per month

And when I looked at all sites whose traffic was under 5 million page impressions per month, the stats are as follows (sample base of 89 sites):

Average unique browsers per site: 96,000
Average page impressions per site: 1 million per month

Assuming you are launching a new website, with a well thought out offering, marketing plan and budget, and are targetting a wide South African audience, these last numbers are most realistic. Bear in mind though, that the 89 sites that these stats come from are still made up of “big players” like Women24, Yellowpages.co.za and Fin24.co.za. These sites have worked hard to get to their status, and overnight success for you is not very likely. In order to compete in their game, you must be prepared to run a very tight and strategically brilliant venture.

Also, a lot of these sites have a strong offline presence, which acts as an excellent marketing channel.

Visual Representation of the 89 sites and their unique browsers (click for larger image):

Visual Representation of the 89 sites and their page impressions (click for larger image):

All numbers from AC Nielsen and www.opa.org.za

Of course, these stats are only representative of websites that are represented by the OPA (Online Publishers Association). That makes for a very selective bunch. If you have personal experience with drawing traffic to a new South African site, please add your comment below!

It is seemingly impossible to sell a client on the idea of Social Media without good case studies to back up your claims.

Unfortunately, case studies are hard to come by. There is lots of anecdotal evidence, and we have all seen what impact social media can have if you are not paying attention.

But what about those times when a client has applied the Social Media philosophy, and got spectacular (or not) results?

This page is a collection of case studies I have found scattered across the web. Hopefully, I will come across enough good new one to keep this page updated regularly.

Socialtext manages a wiki for case studies, and there are five there now. I list them below, with a short summary, and a link, so you can pursue them in your own time.

Case Studies:

• Angel.com
  Angel.com required an easy-to-use wiki solution with enterprise-class features delivered as a secure, reliable hosted service; Socialtext provided a robust wiki platform for collaboration between Angel.com’s employees, with its business partners, and as the foundation for its public community.
• AT&T Collaborative Integration
  This case study provides an overview of the first 5 years of an evolving journey with Enterprise 2.0 applications within a large telecommunications company.
• Boston College Case Study
  Boston College required social software to stimulate the education process & create lively interactions between students and faculty; Socialtext provided easy-to-use platform for wiki collaboration that seamlessly integrated with email, RSS feeds, search and other popular web-based technologies.
• MWW Case Study
  MWW Group required rich collaboration tools for managing projects, tracking status & collecting relevant competitive intelligence into a searchable knowledgebase; Socialtext wikis provided easy-to-use platform that users could get comfortable using in minutes, plus integrated with traditional tools like email, RSS feeds & search.

Now is Gone also maintains a blog page linking to case studies. It is definitely worthwhile checking out. I have chosen some of the best entries and listed them below.

• Up Your Budget Treasure hunt for Budget Car Hire, created by BL Olchman in 2005 resulted in 1 million site visits. It was the first campaign driven solely by bloggers and blog advertising.
• CMP’s TechMash
  How Social Media was used by Engage in PR to drive attendance to a tech show in Boston.
• SplashCast’s use of social media for Marketing, written by Marshall Kirkpatrick outlines basic, but essential steps and techniques to make drive traffic for your blog.