A ‘local’ perspective on SA’s online classified space

In the more than 25 years that I have spent doing business, and more particularly in my time at Junk Mail, I have learnt that South Africans are not easily fooled when it comes to delivering on the promises you make as a service provider.

I have learnt that no matter how much money you spend on advertising or marketing, if you can’t deliver the product or service, it won’t matter for very long. Because when the shine of something new wanes, there has to be something at the core of your offering.

Quality service, longevity, agility and the ability to anticipate local user- and advertiser needs represent the cornerstones of customer expectations.

The local online classifieds space

In South Africa, for South Africans, it is about having enough “local-ness” built into your organisation, to understand what makes individuals, recruiters and businesses tick, particularly when it comes to placing, or responding, to classified advertisements.

Junk Mail was started back in 1992 (the heyday of newspaper classified advertisements)…in a garage…in Pretoria.

It was built on the premise of always delivering a community-based service, first to people living in Johannesburg and Pretoria. It grew, and today, has an online and mobile presence that connects millions of buyers, recruiters, job seekers and sellers with one another.

But in spite of this, today Junk Mail stands like David facing the giants of the global / international online classified industry, who have entered the South African market, companies like eBay and Locanto.

The timing is apt, I suppose for them. After all, online classifieds are propelled by internet penetration, which for the first time, through mobile phones, represents a feasible business model in the local context.

But what these companies bring in size and spend, they lack in local-ness — the local-ness to develop and deploy best-of-breed services and solutions for South African customers through disruptive technologies. And more importantly, the local-ness to continue to grow traffic and the number of advertisements placed, in spite of international players.

Local players quite literally have the power to put classifieds in the palm of the hand of every citizen that has access to a mobile phone, especially thanks to services such as Mxit that reaches millions of people across the country.

Perhaps then, the most important lesson that I have learnt, is that being local, thinking global and delivering a service that is community-driven can rise above the noise and the hype of global spending. As long as what you promise, is delivered.

After all, even in the story of David and Goliath, size isn’t the deciding factor. Ingenuity, courage of conviction and follow through delivers the result in the end.

Image by Bogdan Suditu via Flickr