The Caribbean comprises 700 islands, reefs, and islets. It is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. If you are planning to start a business or expand your existing business in this region, you should use digital marketing.
Gone are the days when the traditional form of marketing was sufficient to reach a wider audience or to expand the business. These days, digital marketing is the only way to move forward. But it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when it was very difficult for businesses to move online. Let’s take a look here.
Digital Marketing in the Caribbean: The Early Years
The idea of digital marketing began sometime in the late 2000s. This was the time when people were slowly getting their hands on cellphones. However, they weren’t smartphones because they had just been invented yet. Jamaica, specifically, saw a mobile phone penetration of about 94%. Moreover, there were also 2 million people in Jamaica who were remaining in touch through texting.
Entrepreneurs who experimented with digital marketing at the time were restricted in their approach as they could only send SMS about their businesses. However, it was a cheaper and effective form of marketing. Sadly, many entrepreneurs didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, and the few who did find it difficult to break into the market.
The launch of different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter didn’t make things better. Although advertising through these platforms was definitely cheaper and more powerful, the quality of the internet in the Caribbean made it impossible—thereby making it difficult for budding entrepreneurs to grow.
Added to that is the fact that the Caribbean is a developing region, which made it impossible for entrepreneurs and people alike to have access to high-quality internet. Without proper access to the internet, there were no way businesses could set up online and go from there. It was next to impossible.
The State of Digital Marketing Today
While it was difficult for online transformation to take place in the Caribbean during the early years, things have become a lot better today. For starters, the use of the internet has increased exponentially. A study shows that there are 186.6 million internet users in Latin America and the Caribbean combined, which is a growth of 1033%.
Moreover, the number of households with internet in the Caribbean has grown by 14.1 % on average in the past five years. And that’s just the internet. Presently, millions of people in the region use social media, and 75 percent of the population in the Caribbean were online at some point.
This has caused a massive shift in marketing and has also forced entrepreneurs—even the more seasoned ones—to leave the traditional forms of advertising and join the online world. Of course, COVID-19 only helped in this sense. For starters, lockdown orders went into place restricting people from leaving their homes and joining the workforce. While some firms saw this as an opportunity to lay off more people, other firms decided to go online.
In Jamaica, for instance, a leading broadband firm connected more than 70,000 homes to the internet the first time. This meant that more people could shift online, work from there or even do some shopping.
Even in places like Trinidad and Tobago, COVID-19 has made matters better as far as the internet is concerned. However, Trinidad and Tobago were one of the few places in the Caribbean that were already doing well with internet penetration even before COVID-19 hit. Since 2017, almost 77.3 percent of the population was using the internet—a figure that’s up from 48.5 percent in 2010. Even the download speed increased to 12.9 megabits per second.
Unsurprisingly, this has caused a boom in the field of digital marketing. Added to that is the fact that the corporate world is largely interconnected. The Caribbean is quick to catch on and adopt the trends in digital marketing from leading developed countries such as the US and UK.
Moreover, more and more entrepreneurs are coming around to the idea of using the internet and ensuring that their businesses have an online presence. For this, they are dabbling into the eCommerce industries and also making use of Google algorithms and SEO knowledge to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, strategists are also targeting their audience by using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. What’s unique is that influencers are being hired to promote products because they have access to the right audience.
It’s crucial that budding entrepreneurs take on the challenge of digital marketing and keep an eye out for the latest trends to attract consumers. With a major proportion of the population now online, it’s become impossible to expand without turning to the virtual world and make a presence there.
