Content Marketing in Africa: How Far Can It Get You?
In this post we’ll cover:
- What content marketing is
- How to build a powerful marketing tool without spending a fortune
- The strengths and weaknesses of content marketing
- How you can develop a successful content marketing strategy with a few examples.
What is content marketing?
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action”. Content Marketing Institute.
Content marketing is informing, educating and/or entertaining a particular group of people who share a specific passion or problem.
You’re creating and sharing content that helps your audience indulge a unique passion or solve a specific problem.
A simple example of content marketing would be a natural hair products company sharing a video on how to wash and condition natural hair.
Another example would be a software company publishing a blog post on how to customize their software.
Why content marketing?
Whether you’re looking to create brand awareness or boost sales of your products, content marketing is a phenomenal tool.
Smartly executed, content marketing can supercharge your marketing campaign and speed up the growth of your business.
This is especially true when audiences are fragmented, attention is scarce, and traditional marketing methods are not as effective as they once were in reaching or persuading those audiences.
Types of content
Content can be visual, audio or text-based information.
Examples of these are videos, images or gifs, podcasts or radio shows, blogs, articles, eBooks and white papers.
Content can be as simple as a blog post on how to write a blog post. Or a funny meme.
It can also be as elaborate as this documentary on meditation.
It can be a tutorial, case study, interview, question-and-answer session, review, etc.
There are a lot of forms content can take depending on the purpose and intent.
Distribution channel
The distribution channel is where and how you share your content. This is determined by your audience and the content.
Online or Offline?
Your distribution channel can be online or offline.
Traditional media (radio, television and print) is how we share content offline.
In Africa, traditional media is still the most dominant distribution channel.
This is slowly changing as more people on the continent gain access to smartphones and the internet.
Media awareness, impact and influence in Africa. Source Nielsen
The internet has opened up a phenomenal if not complex distribution channel.
The speed and breath with which content can spread online is unlike anything you could achieve with traditional media. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge?
As smartphone ownership continues to grow and internet access expands across Africa, this will only speed up the potential impact of online distribution channels.
African internet statistics.
We share online content through websites, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Signal, content aggregators like Netflix, and SoundCloud.
Most frequently done activities on the web in Africa. Source Nielsen.
Pros and cons of content marketing
We’ve looked at what content marketing is. We’ve examined why you would want to use content marketing. Now let’s look at the pros and cons.
Pros
What do you stand to gain from content marketing?
1. It’s cheaper than advertising
Content marketing is a cheaper way to attract customers. Whether you’re trying to raise awareness around your brand or driving sales, content is especially effective for start-ups with smaller marketing budgets.
2. Breaking through the noise
There is a lot of noise both online and offline. On average, consumers are exposed to 6000–10000 ads per day.
How do you break through the noise created by the constant advertising from competing brands and reach your target audience?
Content allows you to position and differentiate your product.
It gives your brand a face that helps it stand out from all the other faceless me-too products that consumers have blocked advertising from.
3. Better reach
Audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented and harder to reach as they shift between traditional media and emerging platforms.
Consumers are becoming better at tuning out advertising. Ad blocking technologies are on the rise.
Content is a non-intrusive medium to pass through the filter and reach your target audience.
Cons
1. Content marketing is a long game
This is not a go-to strategy for quick wins or short-term boosts.
You need to prepare to invest a substantial amount of time before you see success and the return on your investment. Be patient.
The upside to this is that because it’s a long game, your competitors will be just as reluctant to play.
Also, once it takes off, this will create an unassailable position for your brand.
2. Can be difficult to measure and track your ROI
In the past, it has been hard to quantify your return on investment from content.
It has been complicated to attribute, track and measure how much business you’re generating.
Fortunately, analytics tools have been getting better at making this easier and more precise.
Developing a content marketing strategy
To develop an effective content marketing strategy, you need to keep two overarching questions at the top of your mind.
1. How does it serve your customers?
2. How does it help you achieve your business goals?
Keeping these questions in front of you will ensure you don’t waste time, money and effort on something neither you nor your customers will find value in.
The twin pillars of understanding
The foundation of a solid content marketing strategy is what I call the twin pillars of understanding.
The twin pillars of understanding involve two basic ideas.
First, develop an active awareness of who your audience is.
Second, build an understanding of what it is they want and focus on supporting that.
These pillars are critical as they inform and give form to your strategy.
Understanding the who
It’s important to know who your audience is and what their core values.
This ensures you create relevant content and distribute it through the right channels.
It does you absolutely no good to create videos on snapchat if your audience is mostly retirees who prefer to listen to the radio.
Knowing your audience prevents a costly mismatch from occurring. How do you get to know your audience?
Build a customer profile
Research your customers to give yourself a base level of who they are in terms of age, sex, income, profession and other relevant details.
Our primary identities invariably shape our consumption habits.
A 17-year-old boy in Cape Town is highly unlikely to be on the same platforms or consuming the same content as a 47-year-old mother, even in the same neighborhood in the same city.
You need to build a profile of your customer to get a general sense of what type of content they might want and where. A simple way to do this is to:
1. Look at your existing customer database. If you don’t have one, I strongly recommend you build it as soon as yesterday.
This is invaluable for more than just content marketing.
An existing database of people who have bought from you before is the best place to get insights on who your customer is.
2. Pay for market research. Good old-fashioned market research will always serve you well.
Now you know the who. The who will inform the how, when and where of your content marketing strategy.
It’s time to figure out the why and what.
Figure out the what
Why would a 21-year-old chemical engineering student need a meditation app?
Why would a 48-year-old wheat farmer tune into an agriculture program every week on his radio?
The answer: Each of these is pursuing a passion or a problem, not a product.
You need to figure what problem or passion your audience is pursuing and how your product fits into that.
That is what you will build your content around. You need to answer these questions:
1. What do they use your product/competitor’s product for? What itch are they trying to scratch?
2. How do they use the product? Is there anything specific that sets off that product from competing products?
3. What’s their satisfaction with using that product in relation to their problem or passion?
4. How much more can they get out of using it?
The what is the form of your content.
Put this together with a detailed customer profile and you have the foundations for a successful content marketing strategy that will help you reach your business goals.
Examples of content marketing
What does a successful strategy look like? Let’s look at three examples of content marketing done right.
Woolworths TASTE magazine
Woolworths is a retailer with clothing, supermarket and homeware brands under its umbrella.
TASTE magazine is their online magazine and email newsletter for their supermarket brand.
With over 36k twitter followers and almost 150k Facebook likes, the magazine, which distributes weekly cooking recipes, does the job of promoting the Woolworth brand.
Paystack
Paystack is a payments processor that allows merchants to receive payments from their customers.
This Nigerian startup has a blog, YouTube channel and a podcast.
They use their YouTube channel to post video tutorials on how to use their service.
Kuda Bank
Kuda is a Nigerian mobile-only bank. Their blog has over 500 followers which they use to educate their customers on personal finance and how to use their services.
These are just a few examples I picked out. There are a lot more you can use to get inspiration for your own content marketing strategy.
Check out the examples in this article, and this one too.
Conclusion
Content marketing is an invaluable marketing tool, especially if you’re bootstrapping.
Done right, this can help you blow your competitors away, build your brand and attract customers at a fraction of the cost of what a traditional marketing campaign would.
It’s also a fun way to interact with your audience. Check out the outstanding example below.
Are you using any form of content marketing in your overall marketing strategy? I would love to hear how. Just give me a shout in the comments.
