Beat junk status online
RANDBURG – Leon Marinus, an online cross-channel marketing expert, speaks about the benefits of online business.
With the recent downgrade of South Africa’s currency by Standards and Poor’s and Moody’s rating agencies many people are expected to lose their jobs as the country’s economy shrinks.
Leon Marinus, an online cross-channel marketing expert said there is nothing to fear. He also encouraged residents to venture into their own businesses.
He pointed out that one of the benefits of running an online business, trade or service was the potential to make money in a foreign currency which meant that the business would not be affected by political turbulence happening in the country.
“We found that the online platform is a direction that the whole world’s economy is moving towards and last year online sales exceeded offline sales worldwide,” Marinus said. “Now is the right time for Africa to actually go the online route and we have about 5 to 7 years to really exploit this online trend.”
Read: Zero to hero: Online seminar
Another great benefit that Marinus highlighted was that an online store or company could be run anywhere in the world and did not have fixed costs such as rent and staff. All that was needed was an internet connection and a laptop.
“You can create an entire business and you can generate money 24 hours a day. You can automate the entire process so that you can run your business anywhere in the world using a laptop or even a mobile device. Because the internet is changing every day, technology is also improving,” he added.
He, however, explained that before opening up a business, potential business owners had to first do adequate research and actually find out what it is they need, who the potential customers are and what they would buy.
Marinus said the following mistakes should be avoided: “People think that they have an idea in their minds, that things will be great but they haven’t done any research so they don’t know who their market is. They don’t know who the people are and they don’t know what to sell.”
Details: Leon Marinus, Leon@atkasa.com
Get the latest news by becoming a member of our WhatsApp community. Send your name and surname to 079 439 5345.
