Ole! Media Group highlights importance of effective African mobile communication strategy

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Ole! Media Group highlights importance of effective African mobile communication strategy --

Wed, 26 Feb 2014 11:38

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Ole! Media Group (OMG), one of Africa s largest digital content and media networks, cautions businesses to be aware that not everyone has access to the latest mobile Apps, despite Africa s rise in terms of its economy and infrastructure deployment, connecting more and more Africans to the communications grid.

As the vast majority of customers still use basic feature phones, companies operating across Africa which focus on smartphone and tablet apps, are in danger of not reaching audiences with the result of leaving their brand unengaged.

According to Ole!, smartphones still account for less than 30% of cell phone users and estimates are that there will be 5.6 non-smartphone users to every one smartphone across the continent in 2015.

There are approximately eight million laptop or PC users in South Africa who access the internet in contrast with more than five times that number of cell phone users. As such, with mobile internet and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) access available to 90% of the user base in Africa, an effective communication strategy in Africa should include content that is available through a wide variety of mobile devices.

Says Desere Orrill, CMO and co-founder of OMG, Being at the cutting edge of technology is important and you have to plan ahead. But don t be so beguiled by the technological cool factor that you lose track of where your customers are right now. In our role as marketers and communicators, we have to talk to the target audience through their chosen channels, and for many of them that still means SMS, feature phone browsers and USSD.

What ultimately drives bottom line success is what you give people, continues Orrill. It s not about the platform but about how you use the platform that matters. If you get this right, you engage and retain your audiences.

Orrill s business partner, Tim Legg, CEO of OMG, spoke at the Mobile East Africa conference in Nairobi last week and confirmed that a changing media audience on the continent necessitated a change in approach.

Legg comments: The conference reiterated how mobile has become an agent for social and economic change in Africa. Entire industries are adapting to the mobile world media, advertising, banking, insurance, photography, broadcast to mention but a few.

Particularly in emerging markets where around 75% of users own a feature phone, SMS, USSD and Wireless Application Protocol are still key methods of communication. In this regard, Africa is a hotbed of innovation and people are coming up with inventive ways of using the old technologies , he concludes.

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