What is your answer?
Yes or No. If somebody asks this question from me, it’s difficult to give any
direct answer. My answer may be both. Why would I say like that?
In 1978, Sri Lanka introduced open economic policies. After that Sri Lanka
connected with the world and involve with new technologies. Sri Lanka went
through the stages of different technologies and media such as Radio, TV,
Internet, Mobile phone etc.
First of all we should know what Digital Marketing is? “Digital
marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices such
as computers, tablets, smart
phones, cell phones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage
with consumers and other business partners”. (From Wikipedia). Internet Marketing is a major component of digital marketing.
When I say YES for above question, there are some facts to prove it. Computer
literacy in Sri Lanka is about 35% and the main objective of the government is
to increase the computer literacy up to 75% by the year 2016. And also internet users in Sri Lanka are 15.1%
(2011) of the population. There are nearly 1.2 million users’ accesses the
internet weekly or more often. When talking about Social Media in Sri Lanka,
Facebook come to a major position. Currently, there are 1.21 million Facebook
users in Sri Lanka. According to TRCSL, the total mobile subscription as of
2012 was 20,324,070. That’s almost equal to the current population of
20,869,000.Approximately 46% of internet users access the internet through
their mobile phones. These all facts are saying the current position of Sri
Lanka in the digital world. So now a day’s lots of companies try to do their
promotion through the digital marketing campaign. And also some companies sell
their product online. Moreover there are some online shopping malls such as
anything.lk, kapruka.lk, wowmall.lk, gadget.lk, tickets.lk etc. Considering
these factors we can say Sri Lanka is ready for the Digital Marketing
Revolution.
But, is
this enough to say Sri Lanka is ready? Above mention facts and data are
collected from the entire country. But we should analyze these data according
to the geographical areas in Sri Lanka. Percentages of the computer literacy
and internet users are high in the Western and Central province. When we
consider the other provinces, their percentage is low and these rural area
people are not aware about the digital medias. If some companies want to reach
their brands to the rural area customers, digital marketing is not the ideal
communication method.
Sri Lanka
is still developing. So in another 5 years time these all data and facts will
be expired. And also digital marketing will get the highest proportion of the
promotion budget of the companies and other Medias will be vanished.
