Funding boost for SA search engine marketers

Giles Douglas, CEO of incuBeta – parent company to Clicks2Customers. – says the investment will allow several goals to become reality. “Our first priority is to open offices in the heartland of technology in Silicon Valley in California so we can be closer to our major search partners, Google and Yahoo, and our US clients.

Major virtual player

“We are already a major virtual player and a physical presence in the States will allow us to build a stronger brand and accelerate our growth prospects. We will also strengthen our European presence. We ultimately plan to list on either the Johannesburg or London stock exchange within the next 24 months and this funding will assist in this growth strategy.”

incuBeta was founded four years ago by SA entrepreneur Vinny Lingham who recognised the opportunity represented by bidding on Google keyword searches and advertising products and services related to each keyword. The business grew quickly and today it has 50 staff, offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London and turnover of over R50 million a year.

Eben van Heerden, portfolio manager of HBD Venture Capital, enthuses, “We are very excited about this investment. This is a truly South African company with no real local competition. It is rated as one of the top three Internet marketing companies in the world by Commission Junction, part of the Nasdaq-listed ValueClick Inc.

Ensure exponential growth

“The company has developed robust technology in-house and this provides the perfect platform to achieve future expansion. incuBeta’s clients include many of the biggest online retailers in the world and it operates one of the world’s most sophisticated keyword bid management software systems. We plan to work closely with incuBeta to ensure exponential growth happens quickly.”

Douglas says that incuBeta would remain a South African company. “We will keep our headquarters in South Africa and have recently launched incuBeta Consulting in response to local demand for our expertise. The core focus of the consulting business will be to transfer our knowledge of search engine marketing and other Web2.0 trends to other South African companies that are interested in enhancing their brand online. This will enable them to reap real business benefits from the many possibilities which the internet offers.”

Van Heerden hopes incuBeta’s success will inspire more South Africans to take the entrepreneurial plunge. “All too often, we are put off ‘going it alone’ because we believe that our ideas must have already been done abroad – this is often not the case and we encourage local talent with business ideas to explore these to the full,” he says.

“Many of the leading economies of the world were built on small-to-medium size enterprises so this is a definite priority for South Africa’s future growth.”