Online Marketing in Africa: A Definitive Guide for Small Businesses
Globally, people spend almost 7 hours online every day. That’s quite a lot of time. How about in Africa specifically? Does someone in South Africa or Mozambique spend as much time online as someone in, say, Switzerland or New Zealand?
As someone with a deep interest in digital marketing, I’m curious about the answers to questions like these. How do people around Africa use the web? How effective is the internet in reaching its Africa’s 1.3 billion inhabitants?
In this post we’ll look at internet marketing in Africa. We’ll cover:
- Internet use in Africa
2. The challenges of online marketing in Africa
3. Effective internet marketing strategies
The state of the union
In 2000, there were less than 5 million internet users in Africa. In 2020, there were over 590 million. While this is a 12000% growth, this represents only 43% of Africa’s total population.
Internet penetration on the continent varies between regions and countries. Regionally, Southern Africa has the most internet users while Kenya, in east Africa, has the highest penetration (at 85%) of any country.
Let’s dig a little deeper into it.
A mobile first economy
There are currently over 490 million mobile subscribers in Africa. This represents 46% of the continent’s total population. Mobile phones are a central part of Africa’s digital economy.
In 2020, mobile technologies and services generated more than $130 billion of economic value added in Africa. Mobile money is particularly important to Africa’s productivity. Of the 797 billion U.S. dollars in mobile money transactions made in 2020, 490 billion was exchanged in Africa.
More than half of Africa’s web users access the internet on a mobile device. Across Nigeria 75 percent of web traffic is on a smartphone. This is because mobile is cheaper and doesn’t need infrastructure like fixed line connections required for PCs.
Smartphone adoption in Africa more than doubled between 2015 and 2020. Cheaper smartphones will likely play the biggest role in spurring internet access and use in Africa. With over 40% of the region’s population under the age of 15, young consumers owning mobile phones for the first time will be the primary source of growth.
So, what do these numbers mean for advertisers? How should you interpret them if you’re a large retailer in Mombasa or a small startup in Cape Town and you’re looking for ways to reach your local or regional market?
Where are advertisers spending their money?
Television and radio have a near universal penetration in urban areas. In Zambia for example, TV and radio have 79 and 85% penetration respectively in urban areas. In rural areas, radio has better penetration, 68% for radio and 26% for TV. This is a general pattern across Africa.
The internet has lower penetration and is mostly biased towards more affluent consumer segments. It makes sense that advertisers spend more on TV and radio.
Why then would you want to spend on internet marketing? Television has a penetration of 42%. Mobile phone subscriptions are at 46%. Seeing as though mobile is the offramp through which people in Africa access the web, we could see internet access grow quicker than TV access.
A 12000% change in internet access isn’t something you should ignore. Aside from the fact that the internet is widening its reach, there are several reasons online marketing in Africa makes sense.
· Digital marketing is much cheaper than traditional marketing. This makes it suited to small businesses.
· Internet marketing provides you with data you can use to improve your business all around, from marketing to product development.
· Reach a global audience without needing to establish a physical footprint.
Given these advantages, why aren’t more advertisers shifting their campaigns online?
1. For most businesses, at least those that have the budget, the numbers support a traditional rather than digital marketing first approach.
2. Advertisers haven’t quite woken up to the potential for online marketing. There’s still lingering doubt whether the internet can deliver results.
3. Shortage of skilled digital marketing professionals that can successfully carry out campaigns.
If you’re a small to medium business, online marketing is a cheap alternative to traditional marketing. Not only is it a cheaper alternative, it’s a necessary compliment to offline marketing in an increasingly connected world.
Digital marketing can help you reach new market segments for a fraction of the cost of traditional campaigns. But where do you start?
An online marketing playbook for Africa
There are several ways to market online. They include:
1. Social media advertising
2. Content marketing
3. Search engine optimization
4. Pay-per-click
5. Email marketing
6. Instant messaging
7. Influencer marketing
8. SMS marketing
9. Automation
10. Community building
Each of these has its strategic advantages. Some, like social media advertising, are barely being used, so there’s massive opportunity for first mover advantage if you act quickly.
Let’s briefly explore how they work and what they can do for a forward-thinking business.
Social media advertising
With social advertising, you pay to have your content shown to a large audience on social media. This differs from posting your content for free and having people find it organically.
Social networks have largely become pay-to-play. Organic content from businesses typically gets buried and users don’t see it on their feeds. Organic content has a reach of 5% versus 28% for paid ads.
Not that organic content doesn’t work. It does, although it takes longer since only people who follow you see your content.
That’s where social ads come in. Done right, social ads will speed up your growth quicker than organic posting since you’re paying to have your content shown to a bigger audience. It s like how ads on TV work.
Globally, there are 8 million active advertisers on Facebook. Most are small and medium-sized businesses. But are there enough people using social media in Africa to support paid advertising? Let’s take a look.
Almost half of Africa’s 590 million internet users have a Facebook account. This varies with each country. 88% of Egypt’s internet users have a Facebook account. In Zimbabwe, there are Facebook groups running into the tens of thousands in categories like construction, property and real estate. 1 out of 8 internet users in Zimbabwe is on Facebook.
Nigerians, Ghanaians, and Kenyans spend on average three and a half hours on social media per day, compared to the global average of two and a half hours. In Nigeria, 6 million people joined social media networks for the first time in 2020.
We’re using Facebook as an example because at 76% penetration, it has the highest usage on the continent. It’s the best place to start if you want to use social media ads. Here’s a beginner’s guide to Facebook ads.
Pros
Social media ads have the best reach since most people who use the internet use social media.
Con
It’s the most expensive online marketing strategy.
Content marketing
Content marketing is creating and distributing information that engages, educates, and entertains your target customer. Content marketing can create brand awareness, get customers, and drive sales.
Content can be blogs, white papers, videos, podcasts and even memes. Content is a grossly underutilized internet marketing strategy not just in Africa, but in mature markets. Most businesses struggle to develop and distribute content that meets their business goals.
Content marketing is a much cheaper way to bring in customers than advertising. This is, however, a long-term strategy. If you’re looking to get customers right away, this might not be the best way.
If you’re wondering if content marketing is worth the investment, consider this. In 2020, Netflix increased its footprint in Africa. It launched a mobile-only subscription plan, and a ‘Made in Africa’ collection. These are series, movies and documentaries produced in Africa.
The demand for content is there. Tiktok is one of the top 5 downloaded apps in South Africa. Netflix streaming rose 65% in South Africa in the first half of 2020.
Here’s a guide to developing a content marketing strategy.
Pro
Build and differentiate your brand.
Con
Consistent good quality content is a challenge to create.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
78% of Internet users research products online. 68% of online experiences start with the use of a search engine.
Search engine optimization is optimizing your website so it appears whenever people search for your products or services on Google, YouTube, Bing or any other search engine.
SEO doesn’t have any upfront cost. That’s what makes it an attractive marketing strategy. While it’s cheaper for getting customers, it does, however, take time before you see results.
It’s for this reason that SEO is a more long-term strategy than a short-term fix. Over time, SEO will make it cheaper for you to get customers as it supports both your paid advertising and content marketing.
Here’s a great beginner’s guide to SEO if you want to explore further.
Pro
Customers that find you from an organic Google search are more likely to buy from you than customers who come across your paid ads.
Con
SEO won’t deliver immediate results. This is a long play strategy.
Pay-per-click ads
Pay-per-click is paid advertising on Google. This can be search ads on a Google results page or display ads on one of Google’s partner websites. Search ads generate 32% of visits to ecommerce stores.
According to Google, its display network (a group of over 2 million websites, videos, and apps where display ads are shown) reaches 90% of internet users worldwide.
Paid advertising can onboard customers quicker than social media advertising. This is because when people see your ad on Google, it’s because they are actively searching for your product or service.
Paid ads and SEO complement each other. Data from your search ads can be used to better optimise your website and direct your SEO strategy. You can also leverage the data from your SEO campaign to create more precise ads, making them more accurate and reducing your ad spend.
Here’s a free eBook if you want to get started with pay-per-click advertising.
Pros
Global exposure and reach for your brand.
Cons
One of the more expensive internet marketing methods.
Email marketing
Email is the most neglected yet one of the most powerful internet marketing strategies. An email list of prospects is arguably more valuable than Facebook followers. Email is 40% better at converting people into customers than Facebook or Twitter.
With email, you have a direct line to your customer. You’re not dependent on a platform. Even if that platform dies (Myspace), clamps down on how businesses use it, or just experiences an outage (Facebook) you still have unrestricted access to your customers.
Remarkably, most brands invest more time and money in building a social media following than they do collecting customer emails. It’s a questionable prioritization based on the misleading metric that followers = sales.
Most businesses, especially in the B2B space, would see better returns from collecting emails than gaining followers. Get started on collecting your customer’s emails as soon as you can. Here’s a guide to email marketing for small business to help you do that.
Pro
Great for customer retention and increasing their lifetime value.
Con
Ensuring deliverability. Your emails might end up in your recipient's spam folder where they won’t be seen.
Instant messaging
Instant messaging apps are the most downloaded in Africa. Most smartphones have either or both Facebook messenger and WhatsApp installed. Instant messaging is a great way to deepen your customer relationships by providing a low-cost communication channel.
Instant messaging and automation (chatbots) can help your business with everything from product catalogues to customer support. It’s a simple touch point which, if used intelligently, can solve basic customer queries and generate revenue for your business. Here’s how to use instant messaging for marketing.
Pro
Younger demographics gravitate more toward instant messaging apps. 40% of Africa’s population is under 15.
Con
It can decrease productivity, as you can get stuck responding to a lot of messages.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing can help you build awareness of your brand. With this strategy, you’re leveraging the following a content creator has built up on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter. You’re putting your brand and product in front of their audience.
Influencer marketing is more effective with younger people (15–25) as they actively follow content creators online. The key to influencer marketing is having a synergy between your brand and the content creator. It works better when there’s an overlap between your target customer and their audience.
If there’s no synergy, your collaboration will look like a poorly disguised celebrity endorsement. In which case, the creator loses their credibility and you don’t see any results. If working with content creators sounds like it could work for you, here’s a video on how to launch an influencer marketing campaign.
Pros
Exposure to a ready-made audience that’s more receptive to your product.
Cons
Verifying if the influencer’s audience is made up of real or fake followers.
Community building
Instant messaging can help you deepen one-on-one customer relationships. Building a community allows you to focus on a core group of customers.
Community building can create trust, loyalty, and greater customer satisfaction. There are several ways you can use this to build your business and provide customers with added value. You can use it to test a new product or feature with a small segment of your customer base before you offer it to all your customers for example.
Community is going to be an important part of how businesses build and grow their customer base. There are several apps built around just that, Discord being a prime example. Here are some examples of how to build a community around your brand.
Pros
Build a deeper affinity for your brand with your customers.
Cons
This is a very hands-on strategy that requires a committed investment of time and effort.
Automation
Automation gives you the power to do things that previously took a team of people to do. It allows you to reach people at scale with a more personalized message.
Software and artificial intelligence are making it easier to deliver personalized experiences for your customers. You can use automation to create email sequences welcoming new customers or chatbots that answer frequently asked questions about your products.
Automation is going to play a big role in creating better customer experiences as artificial intelligence improves. Here’s a guide on how to use email and automation in your marketing.
Pros
Marketing at scale without a large team. Software doing the work of ten people.
Cons
Only works with strategic implementation.
SMS marketing
SMS marketing is having a renaissance after it was outmoded by instant messaging apps. SMS is particularly important in an African context. There are more mobile subscriptions than there are internet connections on the continent.
SMS is thus a low-tech solution to reach consumers that are not yet connected to the web. Also, it’s an effective work around for issues relating to power outages and bad or no connectivity. You need to meet your customers where they are and SMS can help you get there.
Here are some great examples of SMS marketing.
Pros
Cheap, simple alternative that can widen your reach to different customer segments.
Cons
Character limits. You only have 160 characters to play with in a text message.
A word to the wise
For many businesses, 2020 and 2021 have been extremely difficult. We’ve had to find ways of operating in uncertainty.
These two years have sped up the shift to digital and given us a precursor of things to come. A lot has been said about “having an online presence.” I would argue that just being online is not enough. I would argue that without a coherent online strategy, you’re better off concentrating your efforts offline.
Internet marketing presents some interesting opportunities if you’re savvy. If it makes sense for what you’re doing.
Don’t do it to be trendy. And don’t be misled into thinking it will transform your business overnight. Do it because it delivers on your marketing goals. Do it because it serves a purpose for both you and your customers. That, after all, is the reason we’re in marketing. To serve.
P.S Email or text me questions you have regarding any of the topics discussed and I’ll get back to you.
