OLX Pakistan Investing heavily in advertisement
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OLX is a global online retailer and auction site. They have an impressive footprint in a little less than 100 countries, each with their own specific domain (like .pk for Pakistan and .in for India).
In Pakistan they have been operating under olx.com.pk for some time with people using it to sell things online.
Recently they have started advertising heavily on Television, a medium seldom used by online businesses previously. The ads (two of which have appeared ) are witty and fun to watch.
The most important factor of these adds is that they are being advertised on media which previously none of our online businesses have used.
Most of our existing online retailers and auction sites usually advertise through online medium only on websites and google adsesne, so their target were people who were already online.
However by stepping up its ad campaign and bringing it to wider audience OLX has taken a gamble which might be just the doze of direction or persuasion our consumers need to bring their business online.
Most of our home consumers usually sign in to check their facebooks and maybe watch youtube videos of talk shows etc, some also it to connect to their loved ones abroad. A minority of our online users use internet for businesses or other purpose.
Majority of our online userbase do not completely comprehend the usefulness of this medium. With this much advertisement there might be more converts who will try to sell their stuff online, maybe in the process of creating a market for itself OLX might also increase the number of eyeballs for other sites such as shophive.com, beliscity.com, bolee.pk and hafeezcenter.com.pk.
But this might as well be the waking alarm most of our online retailers need, people out of Pakistan will soon realize the potential of Pakistan. It is the 6th most populous nation, internet penetration growing exponentially and a virgin market, this might soon become the destination of other companies. And when they come they will have huge budgets and better resources at their disposal, if the experiment of OLX proves to be a success it might intrigue other companies to follow suit. Which means our local companies need to step up their game and capture as much share as they can.
This competition will create better market for the consumers however it would also mean fierce competition for our existing businesses in online space, they should prepare for the onslaught and be ready to fight for survival .
Posting the adds (Love the tag line :Sab Kuch Bikta hai )
9:05 pm
Actually, these are OLX.in (India) ads that are being used for the Pakistani market. Since the languages are similar, they work for Pakistan also.
12:15 am
Abdul Hameed, you are correct these are Indian adds however the point was that they are going to Television Adds some thing not a lot of our online businesses have done.
8:56 pm
Qazi, yes I agree with you. It s a good effort. Do you think that it is having a positive impact on the popularity of the website? Is there value in it? I believe that traditional social media advertising works best for websites in Pakistan and has a lot of impact on its own.
7:24 pm
Yes I believe it will have huge impact on popularity, because as a nation we have just in last few years have started selling/buying used stuff online (and that also is mostly cellphones ). but still a lot of people even though having access to internet do not use it for trading so OLX can push these people to start using internet for selling/buying stuff, and the fact that it does not take me any cent to put my item to sale on multiple sites people will actively start using it. lets see how it goes
6:16 am
I believe the day we have a paypal or another secure online payment system in country (firmly believe it has to be paypal). Pakistan’s online businesses would compete internationally. all the guys in college can find something they can sell and keep cut for their selves
11:33 pm
What other sites do we currently have in Pakistan that provide similar services as OLX. What happened to Bolee?