by anton | Dec 18, 2016 |
Small business is the engine of the South African economy with over 60 percent of jobs being generated by SMEs. Recognising the power of small, medium and micro-enterprises to make progress towards the country’s developmental goals, government fairly recently established a small business ministry for the first time, while SMEs are receiving more attention in successive State of the Nation Addresses. It’s not just government, but business, too, seems to be customising products, services and tools towards the needs of SMEs. Today, any would-be business owner with limited funds and a great idea can register a co.zadomain and build a website in 15 minutes for just R80. Banks are offering ridiculously cheap SME accounts for the equivalent of a cup of coffee. Mobile marketing tools also represent a highly-affordable way for start-ups to get their businesses going in a flash – for little cash. Bearing all of this in mind, let’s take a look at some expected mobile marketing trends for 2017 that are particularly relevant for small business. These days, it is not enough to just be “mobile friendly”. Because the number of consumers accessing the web via mobile devices now outweighs desktop users, your SME definitely needs to be visible via mobile search in 2017. Simply confirming that your SME’s website is “mobile responsive” (automatically adjusts to the device being viewed on) will immediately help your rankings with Google, ensuring you don’t lose potential customers by not appearing in Search results. SMEs should identify key mobile word searches relevant to their industry. It is imperative to figure out what potential customers are typing into their mobile searches,...
by anton | Nov 21, 2016 |
Mobile marketing is most often defined as marketing to or on a mobile device. Therefore, one could say that the decidedly low-tech telesales call to mobile users was the original example of mobile marketing in action. Most of us, however, tend to think of the humble SMS as the original mobile marketing bearer. The old reliable text message continues to deliver outstanding ROI to mobile marketers who remain impressed with its universal acceptance amongst mobile users. Practically all GSM handsets can receive text messages, and on a continent where the feature phone still commands quite a following, that’s a definite plus. Far from being a mobile bearer set to be replaced by over-the-top messaging applications like WhatsApp, MobileMarketingWatch.com this very week predicts that “SMS Will Reign King in 2017”. The respected mobile marketing platform takes us back to 2011 when it says influencers were first predicting the end of SMS text messaging, due to the app’s growth in the mobile marketplace. Today, SMS’s convenience, simplicity, universal acceptance and ease-of-use ensures that it remains the preferred channel for business-to-consumer communications year after year. Many of us have no doubt noticed that while mobile users might prefer IM communication on a personal level, tens of millions of us are very happy to receive commercial text messages from companies we know. Reinforcing this conventional wisdom is the fact that in 2016, texting became the number one preferred channel for notifications from businesses for millennial audiences. Email came in a close second. Voice, apparently, lagged behind in a distant third. We just don’t like receiving many phone calls anymore, but we like SMS so much...
by anton | Nov 21, 2016 |
Live chat is becoming the new next big thing in customer service. And, judging by some recent informal polling conducted over dinner, South African consumers seem to love it. It’s easy to see why if one considers how we like to communicate these days. Text is king. Few of us relish dialing into a call centre for reasons as simple as the fact that most local consumers do from our cellphones and mobile calls to customer care centres still aren’t toll free. Aside from how we communicate in 2016, let’s also look at when we communicate. The explosive recent growth in free Wi-Fi hotspots means many South Africans are doing their admin in coffee shops and other semi-public areas. This, of course, means few of us are comfortable dialing a contact centre and having a very public and loud spat with whatever large corporation is annoying us that week. Even if hundreds of thousands of us do still work in traditional office environments with desk phones, the ever-popular open plan design again means text-based communication with call centre agents is preferred for privacy reasons. How utterly convenient to be able to engage in written customer communication while one’s furious keyboard typing is mistaken for work by impressed colleagues. When it has become so obvious what connected people prefer, it’s disappointing to read that over 70% of online retailers do not care enough about their customers to properly address their communication preferences, according to OpenMarket research after polling a selection of online retail operations. The eye-opening research revealed that 64% of consumers prefer texting vs a voice call for customer...
by anton | Oct 20, 2016 |
Here’s a mobile marketing topic we haven’t yet addressed in these pages: how do brands engage mobile users in-app? It’s surprising we haven’t yet started this conversation as in-app is where all the action takes place in mobile marketing. Well, we mean rands and cents action but that’s really what marketing’s all about, isn’t it? Making sure your app doesn’t get uninstalled in today’s competitive mobile environment means staying true to the foundations of marketing. In particular, keep in-app communication real and regular. By ‘real’, we mean communication needs to always be personalised and relevant to individual mobile consumers. You can do this by creating in-app messages that can be set to trigger at appropriate moments. For example, an onboarding message can be created to help users understand their preferences or settings within an app. Paying special attention to the actual wording of in-app messages can also create an environment that feels customised to the user. Don’t use generic terms or phrases like ‘we value your feedback’ or ‘valued customer’. Be creative and come up with brand’s own approach to in-app messages. As brands like Kulula.com and Nando’s have shown, the mundane or routine can be turned into an extension of a brand’s personality. Also don’t restrict in-app conversations to the usual two-horse, binary type of responses. Try allowing users to respond in more colourful, personalised ways that go well beyond the obvious ‘Yes/No’. European airline Ryanair used these principles it to build an in-app customer satisfaction survey that triggers upon landing, rather than sending via email at a later date. The survey was kept simple — just three...
