We’ve all heard of it by now, the Consumer Protection Act or CPA for short, effective since the 1^st of April 2011. Finally the “little guys” have the power, to a degree, when buying goods and services. The act covers various consumer rights relating to buying goods and services; the return, repair and refunds thereof; fixed agreement terminations and a few others. The areas of the act that we will focus on that impacts on marketing, though, are: Right 2: the right to privacy, and Right 3: the right to fair and responsible marketing.

Gone are the days of telesales agents calling you at every conceivable hour of the day to sell you that Cellphone contract that you do not want or need. Also, you have the right to demand being removed from mailing lists if you receive spam text SMS’s that do not give you the option to opt out. This also pertains to all other forms of spam emails and other correspondence. This is certainly great news for the consumers, but how does this affect the marketers of all these goods and services? Well now there are fewer avenues to reach potential customers, but there is one avenue that many marketers are starting to rely on to reach an ever-growing online market.

The online population has exploded in the last ten years, with companies like Facebook having more users than all but 3 countries’ populations on earth and marketing budgets all over the world are moving over from the old traditional forms to the new age of marketing, online marketing. The biggest player on the online information/ search engine market is undoubtedly Google. Whenever there is something you want to know, buy or sell, Google can provide you a portal to literally Billions of websites, information and potential customers.

So what does this have to do with the CPA, well it comes down to two words: Permission Marketing. Permission marketing, the opposite is called interruption marketing, is when consumers give you “permission” to advertise and sell to them by clicking on adverts and websites and by searching for information or products. Thus they are coming to you for this info and thus the CPA places no restrictions on this form of marketing. Many large companies are relying heavily on their websites to sell their products and services and some companies do not even have physical offices anymore.

To conclude, the CPA has contributed heavily to the changing face of marketing in South Africa and marketers everywhere have had to adapt their strategies to accommodate this. Companies are spending millions each month advertising using Google and Facebook ads as well as optimizing their websites to rank high on search engines (SEO). The only question that remains is “Can you afford not to adapt your marketing strategy as well”?

You might be thinking what am I going on about? Most of us are not very observant people when it comes to changes in the environment around us. I know you are thinking but I’m really observant. I really thought this of myself but I have started noticing how many opportunities are passing me by without even noticing it. I now know there are treasures that pass us by every now and then that could have really equated to some great sales or leads at the very least.

In South Africa the national energy supplier Eskom recently increased their prices on electricity by 24.8%. Now many of us would be utterly disgusted by this increase and not even noticed the potential treasure that lies in this situation. If you are a supplier of any renewable energy sources then you should be blowing your trombone as loud as you can. You need to inform worried people of small things that might convince them to buy your products. Did you for instance know that 43% of your home’s energy usage is from water heating. This means that you could in the long run cut your energy bills by 43% by simply installing solar water heaters.

So what should renewable energy suppliers be doing at the moment?? They should be shouting from the rooftops so everybody can hear that their product could save them up to 43% on their energy bills in the long run. Is this happening? The short answer is no. Companies struggle to react quickly to changes such as these and this means that they miss the wave. That point where the need for a product or service is create by what’s going on in the world.

One of the things your company will need is to be proactive, you need to encourage your employees to identify situations like these and use them to your benefit. Secondly your company needs to ensure that they are able to react quickly to change by updating things like your website and pay per click advertising that you might be running. During the course of this week we will have another blog post that will provide you with some tips to help ensure your company can adapt quickly when the need arises.

Now identifying the treasure trove is only the first part. You need to find visitors to show your message to. You need to ensure that you plan out your marketing strategy so your unique selling point will be put across to the right audience. You need to drive traffic using all forms of advertising that your company can afford. Online definitely still is the most effective and because of this I would suggest you start here. If you play your cards right you could even co-brand your product as the solution to a certain need. An example of where this has happened (and the only one I can now think of the top of my head) is Google. Google came into the market as a solution to the need people had. Google offered them a really quick simple and accurate tool to find what they are looking for. To Google something has now even also become a verb. This is exposure that you can’t buy for your brand.

You will also need to look at optimizing your landing pages so that your visitor land on pages that closely resembles solution to the need they have. By making sure you tailor this as close as possible, you will have far more visitors converting and performing desired actions.

Lastly you will need to ensure you make a habit of thinking about how you can identify these hidden treasures. Our theme this week is on how to identify treasures like these and react to them to ensure you get the most out of these situations. So please check in the next few days.