Effectiveness of Digital Marketing on the Promotion of the Botswana Human Resource Development Council’s (HRDC) Services

Since 2015, Botswana Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) has been using digital marketing platforms to promote its services and reach out to its stakeholders, customers and clients. This was meant to augment traditional marketing platforms such as television, radio and newspapers, which were not reaching out to all stakeholders due to geographical spread. As a result, the Botswana HRDC decided to incorporate digital marketing in its Marketing Communications Strategy. After this shift, it became necessary to know whether digital marketing platforms, mainly Facebook and Twitter, were achieving the intended results. The study sought to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of digital marketing on the promotion of Botswana HRDC’s services. The study targeted Botswana HRDC stakeholders, customers and clients. A mixed-methods research approach was used. Purposive sampling was used to select 420 respondents, of which 348 answered a questionnaire, while 26 participated in interviews, and two focus–group discussions were conducted with seven and 13 respondents, respectively. The response rate was 82.4 per cent. The findings suggest that participants generally preferred to use digital marketing; however, due to the unaffordability of data to some and inaccessibility of the internet in rural areas, some still preferred traditional marketing platforms. The findings also showed a relationship between the use of digital marketing platforms and the type of stakeholder, age, position, location and level of education. The findings further recommended the use of Instagram, WhatsApp and Pinterest. The significance of this study is that the research findings inform Botswana HRDC on how to plan for its next strategic plan of 2021–2026 on digital capacity building, agility, management, budgeting and how best to exploit digital marketing for reaching out to all types of stakeholders.