The Good News, The Bad News and what you, the smart marketer, can do about it!

First, let’s get the bad news out the way.

If you are a marketer in South Africa today then the bad news is bad and in the short term getting worse…

  • Rand decline and continued volatility
  • Increased input costs driven by the above
  • Inflation rising and expected to reach 8% by year end 2016

A debt laden, under pressure consumer, driven by all of the above

The last 6 months have been pretty horrific on the economic front and just so we capture the impact at consumer level, consider the recent price surveys reported in the media measuring Year on Year price increases of some critical staple foods.

  • 10 kg Potatoes up 120% from R33 to R73
  • 2 heads of Cabbage 60% from R17.95 to R28.95
  • Onions 30% from R34 to R45
  • 4 litres of cooking oil 38.8% from R62 – R87

Food prices are up 15% YOY, with CPI currently at 5.3% and it will get worse in the current year… food is expected to increase beyond 15% in 2016.

Now that makes for a very tight market situation.

Marketing budgets are stretched, shrunk and ditched all at the same time. However there is an alternative to considering giving up, canning every good idea, riding out the storm until things get better or going for every cheap solution.

One thing we do know for sure is that Mobile is continuing to grow at a fast pace, people will retain mobile as their key engagement tool and will be interested in relevant content, what’s going on in the world, communicating to others and reward offers that are, relevant, useful, instant, enticing and enable them to stay connected.

South Africa is still a predominantly pre-paid market with over 89% of the market on this format and downloading over R100million of airtime per day! The demand for airtime and data is massive.

Here’s a pretty safe prediction – the phone stays on!

They may be turning off the lights, saving on that fashion accessory, postponing that holiday, trading down on the next car, looking at specials more closely BUT the phone is always going to receive monetary attention.

It’s not going off – ever!

That mobile phone going off means that their connection to the world is lost and that would be catastrophic for any individual. Think about yourself and your own phone behaviours. Google just released a stat that people unlock their phones for a view 110 times per day – it’s habitual, its part of our DNA nowadays to have that phone on and within arm’s reach at every waking moment.

So the good news is….

Mobile represents your best opportunity to connect with your consumers, gather significant information, learn about their needs and wants, re engage and build meaningful 1-2 -1 relationships.

Our experience in delivering multiple mobile activations for leading companies has proven that the smart marketer needs to

  • Get your marketing mobile orientated
  • Run mobile first promotions
  • Reward them with really useful things like airtime, data, cash etc.
  • Include simple instructions, easy gamification, instantaneous gratification and frictionless technology
  • Make sure your promotions run a 100% redemption model (Lately we have seen a number of insurance models being pedalled around town as well as a few companies that sell a non-redemption model – you can spot these ones they usually advertise an obscene number of prizes or value and the reality is they just put obstacles in the way to prevent redemption) Consumers fatigue quickly of these offers, and end up frustrated meaning your brand loses trust, faith and potential future sales.
  • The TMARC 100% redemption model has proven itself. We recently ran a consumer promotion for a leading multi-national brand over the past year and we generated an amazing connection result. An interaction every 6.6 seconds! Every 6.6 seconds they were getting a consumer connection and interaction as well as gathering important profiling information. Building your consumer asset base every 6.6 seconds – now that’s really adding value.
  • Mobile achieves the lowest cost per consumer acquisition when compared to other media tools and allows for responsive dialogue between brand and consumer – immediate and personalized.

The Smart Marketer – yes that’s you…

realizes that the following is true:

  • Engaging with connected consumers is top of mind and a constant activity
  • Mobile & Digital are inextricably linked
  • Mobile promotions set up correctly with the right partner deliver the results
  • The more people I reward the more re engagement I get and the more data I receive
  • The more data I have about my consumers the better my re engagement strategy is
  • The successful re engagement strategies I employ lead to healthy 1-2-1 relationship and extend the lifetime value of my consumer base
  • Promotions provide the best platform to acquire and profile my consumers
  • During promotions the more I reward the more I create good brand associations and the opportunity to drive repurchase and positive viral communication

Why we should be talking…

TMARC is best positioned to enable your marketing strategies to

  •  connect with relevant consumers,
  • drive purchase,
  • build a significant consumer base asset (we like to call it an audience base, we find it makes you think and behave differently), and
  • provides you with the best re-engagement strategies driven by insightsWe believe the solution is a Digital Consumer Engagement Company – that’s TMARC

The TMARC model is simple

  • Acquire & Profile – simple, smart & effectively using all of your incoming media channels
  • Analyse & Segment – deep understanding of the resultant the audience base
  • Personalise & Convert – identifying the key consumers segments for personalized and targeted content
  • 1-2-1 connected consumer relationships – rolling out the re-engagement strategy using data, content and technology.

TMARC, a Trusted Advisor that understands you, your company, your strategies, your consumers and your market place.

Looking forward to a good conversation….