A Complete Guide to Digital Marketing in Africa

What is digital marketing? What would a digital marketing strategy look like for a modern African startup or established business? These are the two questions I’ll answer in this post.

I will briefly explore the different types and the factors that determine how you would use digital marketing in Africa.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is marketing through digital channels or media. These channels include traditional ones like radio and television or the newer media like websites and social media.

When most people think digital, they think of online marketing or internet marketing as it is also known as.

However, digital marketing can also mean offline marketing of which radio and television are the most popular.

Types of digital marketing

There are a variety of digital channels businesses around the world use to reach and grow their customer base. These can be online, offline or a mixture of both.

Online marketing

Online marketing is advertising or marketing on the internet. This includes search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising (pay-per-click), affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, mobile apps and of course email.

Let’s briefly look at each of the types of online marketing.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is what Google and other search engines use to score or rank a website with the view of delivering or presenting the website as the best match for a search query.

In Europe and North America, SEO is one of the most important online marketing strategies used by startups and businesses to reach their target audiences.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is any piece of information that educates a target audience and helps them decide about a product or service.

Content can be blog posts, white papers, articles, videos or podcasts. I’ve written about content marketing in Africa before.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is advertising on a social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Social media marketing is a popular form of online marketing primarily because it has a large reach since most people who use the internet have at least one social media account.

Paid advertising

Paid advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) is where you pay to advertise to a specific audience. PPC can be used either on Google and its partner networks or on social media.

One of the major advantages of paid advertising is that it is more targeted than traditional advertising, although the latter can have a wider reach.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is where individuals sell a product, usually through a website, and collect a commission from that sale.

Affiliate marketing is more common in Europe and North America where they have affiliate programs like ClickBank, ShareASale and Amazon’s affiliate program that provide the structure in which people market third-party products.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is where you piggyback your product onto a personality with a large social media following that ideally matches your target audience.

The idea is to leverage the influence that person has to advertise your product to their audience.

Mobile advertising

Mobile apps are another hyper targeted way to market and sell. You can use an app not only to encourage online purchases but to drive foot traffic to a physical location for offline sales as well.

Email marketing

Email is arguably the most effective online marketing tool. This is because it is personal and allows you to build a “one-to-one” relationship with your customers. In that respect, it's like mail order or direct advertising.

This is just an overview of a handful of online marketing methods. Check out my guide to online marketing for a more in-depth view.

Offline marketing

Offline marketing is marketing using traditional digital channels like radio, television, phones and other electronic devices.

Radio

Radio is a popular digital marketing channel because in most African countries it has the widest reach.

While not every home has an internet connection or even a television, there’s a good chance there is at least a radio in that household.

Television

Television has for a long time been the holy grail in advertising. But the internet may yet change that.

With the continued growth of internet access on the continent, it will be interesting to see how big a role it will play in marketing in the future.

Phones

Phones are an attractive online and offline marketing channel. Offline, you still have access to the enormous opportunity presented for contacting your potential target audience through calling and SMS.

Also, the increasing rate of smartphone penetration in Africa means they will play a big role in online marketing.

Other digital channels

Other digital channels like in-store or on-site video displays, digital product demonstrations, and samples are also effective offline marketing tools you can use to educate consumers about your product.

Now you know what digital marketing is, and that it isn’t just internet marketing.

But how do you apply this knowledge in your context? Is digital marketing in South Africa or Nigeria or Zimbabwe any different from digital marketing in France or the USA?

Developing a digital marketing strategy for Africa

It’s estimated that there are between 1500 to 2000 languages spoken across Africa’s 54 countries. How do you reach people in just one of those countries?

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you need to understand the context in which you apply a solution to a problem.

To create a successful digital marketing strategy anywhere, it’s important to consider the context in which you create it.

To create a country-specific digital marketing strategy, there are certain factors unique to that country that you would need to pay special attention to.

At the risk of making gross generalizations, I’m going to explore a few that I think would apply in just about any African country.

Access to electricity

It might seem off key to mention electricity in a post about digital marketing, but it shouldn’t.

Many parts of the continent are badly in need of infrastructure development, and energy access is one of the key areas in which a lot of work is needed.

Africa has the lowest rate of access to electricity at 47% compared to the global average of 87%.

Since digital marketing requires an electronic device, take this into consideration when developing not just a digital marketing strategy, but sometimes, the product or service itself.

Demographics

The current population of Africa is about 1.35 billion growing at just over 2% per year.

East and West Africa are the most populous regions, each contributing over 400 million inhabitants. Southern Africa has the smallest population at 67 million.

Top ten African countries by population. (Source: IWS)

Roughly 43% of the continent is urban. With a median age of 19.7 years, Africa has the youngest population in the world.

Younger people are early adopters of new technologies, products and distribution channels.

A detailed understanding of the demographics and the media consumption habits of a specific country is crucial to developing an effective digital marketing strategy.

For example, of the 7,8 million LinkedIn users in South Africa, over 60% are in the 25-34 age range.

Age distribution of LinkedIn users in South Africa. (Source: NapoleonCat)

Media mix

Although there may be slight variations between countries, traditional digital channels like radio and television are still how most Africans get their information.

This is changing however with improved internet access, smartphone penetration and affordable data driving the move toward mobile internet as an information source. This is especially so with young people.

It’s not too far-fetched to assume that mobile internet may yet become the dominant information source for Africans.

Internet access

Along with electricity access, Africa lags behind the global average in internet access.

Of the world’s 4.5 billion internet users, only 11% are in Africa.

Internet penetration in Africa. (Source: Internet World Stats)

On a country-by-country basis, Kenya leads in terms of internet penetration with 87.2% of its 53.7 million citizens being internet users.

In terms of sheer numbers, Nigeria has the highest number of internet users, although it has a lower internet penetration.

Top ten African countries by internet penetration. (Source:Internet World Stats)

Naturally, if you were considering making online marketing a part of your overall digital campaign, you would need to consider the internet usage trends of your country in order to figure out how big a role it should play.

Social media

We can’t talk about online marketing and not touch on social media.

Knowing the social media habits of your country will inform which platforms are worth concentrating your social media marketing efforts or even make it a part of your plans.

It’s no use investing time and effort on Reddit or Quora if your target audience is on Facebook or Twitter.

Africa has 526 million internet users. 40.2% have a Facebook account.

You also want to avoid being overly simplistic in your approach to social media marketing.

Just because Facebook has the largest subscriber base than any other platform in Africa, it does not mean you should base your entire social media strategy there.

Your target audience might not be as active there, or your product or business model might not be a great fit for marketing on the platform.

You might need to segment your social media strategy and use a cross-platform approach between different networks (Facebook + Snapchat or Instagram + YouTube or LinkedIn + Twitter).

In some cases, you might want to just focus on a single platform that’s not Facebook. The important thing is to understand how social will fit in your overall marketing strategy.

Your product

The nature of your offering should guide your digital marketing strategy.

Different products will require a unique mix of marketing channels. How you would market software developed for B2B companies will differ from marketing consumer goods.

Certain products or services aimed at a specific target audience might lend themselves to a heavier bias toward offline, as opposed to online marketing channels.

With some products, it might be the complete opposite. For instance, it might make more sense to lean more toward online marketing to sell software that automates tasks for developers.

What type of digital marketing strategy is best for you?

As always with questions of this nature, the quick answer is “it depends”.

Above, I’ve given you some tools you can use to build a picture of what an effective digital marketing campaign would look like for you.

Taking into consideration these and other factors specific to you like budgets, expertise and personnel for instance, you should be able to develop a coherent digital marketing strategy that will help you reach your overall business aims.

If you have got this far, thank you for reading. If you have found something in this post that might be of help to you or you have questions, I would love to hear from you so drop a comment below.