How to drive SME growth post-pandemic on ‘zero budget’

As economies begin to rebuild from the impact of COVID-19, the Nigerian economy’s recovery could lie in the continent’s growing digital sectors. After all, Nigeria has the most vibrant tech hub across Africa. Globally, movement restrictions have impacted businesses that traditionally operate in physical spaces but there are now more businesses learning how to find their customers online. This is a great opportunity for Sub-Saharan Africa, arguably the largest mobile-first region in the world.

For the huge swathes of small and medium businesses across Nigeria, navigating the mobile commerce space is unchartered territory, but one that can be mastered fairly quickly and relatively painlessly. What most small businesses also have in common is a very limited budget to communicate and engage with their existing or target customers. So how can businesses recover and see growth conducting business in the mobile ecosystem without spending all their revenue on their marketing budget? Daniel Junowicz, ‎Managing Director LATAM & Africa, AppsFlyer gives us a guide to running effective mobile marketing campaigns on ‘zero budget’.

The digital marketing mix

For businesses who find themselves operating in the mobile commerce space, ensuring customers can find and buy their products with ease luckily doesn’t require too much technical know-how. A great digital marketing mix blends paid, owned, and earned media into one comprehensive strategy. Mobile web-to-app journeys, emails, and social media are all marketing channels that can significantly grow your customer numbers when used together optimally. This can result in getting customers to where you need them to find your goods or services without any friction, helping you achieve your customer acquisition goals at little to no cost.

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Convert web users into loyal app users

Apps are an integral part of the mobile experience for many users so tapping into this could open up a world of new opportunities for your business. For businesses with a website and a mobile app, it’s worth noting that nearly 90% of users discover brands on the web, while 70% of digital revenues occur in apps. So it makes sense to focus on attracting users to your website, and then creatively and seamlessly routing that traffic to your app. One proven way of moving users from web to app is by prominently displaying banners on your home page and on key product and category pages. Another creative way some mobile commerce businesses ensure customers are attracted to downloading their mobile app is by offering services or functionality which is only found on the app. However, it is essential to ensure that the app is easy to download, navigate and ultimately offers a better user experience overall than the website. In a Nigerian market where data is expensive and competition for engagement is high, an app that takes up too much space or uses too much data will be deleted very quickly to make room for something else.
Raise customer acquisition and visibility with social channels
The use of social channels have grown in recent years and Nigeria is ranked as having one of the most active users on social networks. Social channels are equal to websites in providing brand visibility and awareness and, with almost 30 million social media users in Nigeria and the figures set to grow to 44 million in the next five years, optimising the use of your owned media can yield great results. They also continue to rank as a top channel for user acquisition and engagement with most people accessing their social networks on mobile, on the go. So whether you’re intent on growing your app user base or engaging with existing customers, It’s important to make sure that your social channels shine with up to date, relevant, engaging and exciting content.
Analysing mobile marketing

Whether using email marketing, a targeted SMS campaign or social media marketing, understanding how effective each campaign has been is essential to achieving real customer growth. It may be that your customer base responds best to SMS campaigns or that you operate in a sector where customers spend more time on social media. How likely are your customers to open your emails and what is it about each campaign that motivates recipients to take action? To answer all these questions, you need a good system in place that can provide data and analytics and helps you make sense of your digital marketing efforts.

Opportunities on mobile

Whatever your business field or expertise, you need to be able to connect with the right customers for your goods or services. While print advertising, TV and radio are all very effective in the African market, these means of marketing to your audiences come with a cost that most small and medium-sized businesses can’t afford. Nigeria is the tech hub of Africa with one of the highest rates of users online and on mobile devices. This presents a great, affordable avenue to use smart, targeted digital marketing approaches to find new customers as well as retaining valuable loyal customers.

It’s also relatively straightforward, requiring just a few clicks, planning and continual review to ensure the campaigns are effective. While it may take a while for economies to recover to steady levels, the remaining uncertainty on easing movement restrictions means people will continue to look for goods and services online. Forward thinking businesses that grab the opportunity to engage with the millions of customers already on mobile devices stand to benefit a great deal. And the best part is it doesn’t need to cost them a huge amount of money.

Author Bio:

Daniel Junowicz is the Managing Director of LATAM & Africa at AppsFlyer, the global leader in mobile attribution. Prior to joining AppsFlyer Daniel worked in the manufacturing sector in China for over six years. In 2014, Daniel brought his passion to AppsFlyer as the first employee on the Chinese team.

Holding a double BA in Business Administration and Far Eastern Studies, Daniel is also fluent in Hebrew, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese. Currently, as the managing director in LATAM and Africa, Daniel works to bring his knowledge on digital marketing and innovation to provide a holistic view of the mobile landscape in LATAM, Africa and more.