eMarketingEye (www.emarketingeye.com), the award-winning Sri Lankan online marketing agency and a pioneer in the industry, celebrated its 8th anniversary recently. Established in 2007, eMarketingEye is a pioneer in the online marketing industry in Sri Lanka and has grown to be one of the best in the Asian region over the past eight years, having gained international recognition for its expertise in providing online marketing solutions to the travel and hospitality industry. eMarketingEye works with over 400 hotels around the world over 70 hotels in Sri Lanka.

Speaking about the company’s journey, Rajitha Dahanayake–CEO of eMarketingEye emphasized on the important role online marketing plays in today’s connected world. Within this context, following are excerpts of an interview conducted with him.

Q: Why did you start eMarketingEye and how did eMarketingEye come to life?
A: I saw the need for a specialist online marketing company for travel and hospitality industry in the Asian region so we decided to launch eMarketingEye targeting travel and hospitality industry. Our first clients were from Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. We entered the Sri Lankan market after completing two years of international operations.   

The first eMarketingEye office was based out of my office room at my parent’s house with just two employees. We got a few clients and expanded to our first office at Pagoda Road back in late 2007. We were at that location till the staff grew to about 20-25 and then moved to the current location in 2009.

Q: How has the company matured during these 8 years?
A: While we have grown from essentially a home-based operation to become a company employing over 80 individuals in just 8 years, we have also matured in so many ways. As a company, we have focused on obtaining world-class certifications such as Google AdWords and Analytics certifications. Online marketing is a fast-changing field and our team members are continuously being trained on the latest trends, tools and technologies available. This is one of the key reasons for our continued success. Our clients’ feedback and requirements have also helped us to evolve.

For instance, initially, we did not want to focus on web development but based on the requests from our clients, it has been an area which we had to venture into. Today, I am proud to say that we are one of the top web development companies in Sri Lanka deploying cutting-edge web solutions, not mere run-of-the-mill websites. Similarly, we had to expand into systems development because our clients in hotels and travel industry wanted us to provide a one-stop-solution and hence we started developing our own Internet Booking Engine (IBE).

What all this means is that today, eMarketingEye is able to provide the total range of online marketing services in Sri Lanka and abroad, from e-strategy consulting, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC), web development, social media optimization, online reputation management, e-mail marketing, web analytics and Internet Booking Engine solutions.

As a company, our flat hierarchy means that we make decisions very fast. There is no red tape and this means that clients always get a faster, more efficient service at all times. It’s a highly-competitive industry, not only for us but also for our clients. Hence, quick decision-making is vital to everyone’s success. Over the years, this attribute has been one of the keys to our success.

Q: What are your company values?
A: We believe in being honest, transparent and performance-driven principles. This applies to both our clients and our team members. We work very closely with our clients at all times and have transparent dealings when it comes to their projects. For example, if a client wants to run a Google Adwords campaign, we would tell the client how much we pay Google and give them access to check on the performance of it on their own so that there is complete transparency. This is something other agencies may not do or try to avoid.

Q: What are the key areas eMarketingEye is looking at in terms of educating the industry and the Sri Lankan business community?
A:We have gone to great lengths to educate both the future online marketers as well as the business community. We have provided on-the-job training for over 200 individuals over the past 8 years, most of them were freshers. These individuals are now excelling in other companies, with most of them driving the respective companies’ online marketing. This is an enormous source of pride for us.

To reach out and educate the companies, we organize various events such as conferences, workshops and seminars. We conducted two digital market conferences in Sri Lanka in the recent past. We are also working on plans to work with schools, universities and other educational institutes to introduce more students to online marketing. This will ensure that there is a steady stream of talented individuals with new ideas and innovative thinking, who can elevate the online marketing industry in Sri Lanka to a higher position, both regionally and internationally. At the end of the day, as a company, we are not about having the largest share of a small pie. We want to create a larger pie so that all online marketing providers and the clients can grow together.

Q:  What are your future plans?
A: While we are the market leaders in the hotels and travel industry, we want to also move into the smaller verticals such as Finance, FMCG, and Transport etc where we see a huge opportunity in Sri Lanka itself. It will be a carefully planned expansion as we don’t want to go into new areas for the sake of it.

Internally we are looking at increasing the efficiency by introducing new systems. We have already introduced an automated reporting system for Pay per Click (PPC) Marketing campaigns, SEO performance monitoring etc. We are in the process of developing new systems for SEO, Social media monitoring and reporting.