The biggest problem with most digital marketing efforts is that they are not aligned with business goals. There are many distractive statistics available in digital marketing. Without a clear goal to be achieved, people end up celebrating successes that are worthless. After being pitched on the benefits of using digital marketing techniques to grow a business, you may be taken aback by the realities and quickly conclude that digital marketing doesn’t work in Africa.
The truth is, digital marketing works and it is very efficient here in Africa; the problem is most digital marketers struggle to tie their digital marketing activities to the real tangible results that actually build the business they are working for.
Here are a few tips to help you solve this problem:
Align digital marketing with business goals
The first thing to do is to determine the business goals that your digital marketing efforts should achieve. Real business goals may include revenue growth, an increase in the number of customers, brand awareness and sales. At this point avoid digital marketing metrics like mailing list size, social media audiences and engagement.
When the business goals are clearly defined, it becomes harder to be distracted by unrelated impressive numbers.
Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy that achieves your Business Goals
The development of a digital marketing strategy is simply outlining the methods, techniques and technology you are going to use to achieve the business goals. If you have a chicken business, the goal is to sell all the birds in time, the development of strategy is to determine the digital marketing activities that will help you sell all the birds on time.
Chicken business case study;
To continue with our chicken business example, here are a few questions that a person with this type of business would ask as they develop their strategy:
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Who is interested in what we have to offer?
Homemakers are interested in buying live chickens.
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How old are they?
Usually, they are women who are 25 to 50 year of age
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What else are they interested in besides what we are giving them?
They are interested in eating organic food and keeping their families healthy. They are also interested in buying something that is valuable – getting more for less.
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What are their goals in buying what we have?
Their goal in buying live chicken is to get more value for money, eat real chicken and not GMOs etc.
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Where are the people?
This question is meant to help you identify the digital platforms where your target audience can be available. The reason why people are on social networks which are not working for them is that they did not take the time to see where their target market is. In light of this, most ladies of the age range who are homemakers are on Facebook and WhatsApp. This is where most of your digital marketing activities will be.
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How do you get them to come?
What can you expect to be noticed by your target audience and where are you taking them to? Even though the audience may be in a social network, the traffic may need to be taken somewhere where conversions will occur. You may have to make a discount offer or give new chicken recipes. The interested people will be sent to your website to read recipes or allow them to claim the discount offer. They can also place orders for chicken on that website.
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What do we want them to do?
Most digital marketing campaigns are weakened by the fact that people cannot take the desired action digitally. There is a need to make people take action immediately if possible. You want them to buy chickens (main goal), claim their discounts and read recipes. You can measure your success by monitoring the statistics on these three numbers.
Is what you are doing working?
Once you engage in digital marketing, you will need to start measuring and analysing if things are working well. Look at the numbers around your digital marketing efforts to see if you are achieving the goals. Digital marketing campaigns can be built and put on autopilot.
In our chicken business example, there is no room for celebrating Facebook Likes, weekly reach or any such numbers, which are not directly tied to the goal of selling more birds in time.
What do you think is the problem with digital marketing in Africa? What have you experienced? Let us know in the comment section and add any suggestions or tips of your own. We would love to hear what you have to say.