Nigeria Mobile Marketing

Nigerian Brands have started looking at the mobile critically as a medium to reach the mass market using the channel that is always with them, always on and personal. With more than 53M subscribers, no other medium offers such clear cut advantages than the Mobile Phone.

It has interactivity which is lacking in today’s Marketing, engaging and in some instances it is location aware and such can greatly influence the purchasing decision of the consumer like no other channel. Mobile marketing can be great fun if the campaign is well planned out and relevant to the consumer.

Despite the advantages that it has over other mediums, there is need to clearly understand the workings of the mobile and the thinking of the end user. Reason why most Mobile marketing projects fail in Nigeria are not because the market is not ripe for it or inadequate technology but copy and paste attitude of the implementation. Bill boards, Tv commercials and Newspapers adverts may look alike but it does not work for mobiles.

The major error that brand marketers make with the mobiles is to transfer their knowledge and capacities from existing channels to mobiles instead of treating mobile as a new media with its own methodologies. Most marketers using wap are guilty of these. Their wap sites are the replica of existing website with loads of information while not considering the behavioral patterns on the web differs from the wap. On web, the screen is bigger with better resolution and mouse helps to navigate while on the mobile,the screens are small with some funny keypads. Browsing patterns for wap is straight, relevant information people on the move.If what they are seeking is not on the second page, then they get bored and try elsewhere.

The worst that will happen to a brand manager is for a citizen to call for spelling errors on a bill board!!! Its happening in the mobile landscape. End users in most case do point out the errors in using the wap because end user testing was not done or was conducted using a particular phone model. What would display well on a Nokia might turn out to be horrible on a sony Ericcson.Bear in mind, your targeted audience do not work in same firm where the company has given them same phone, they are scattered all over the place with more than 100 mobile phone models cutting across different technologies.

For mobile marketing, it is important for the Brand marketer to do a Know your customer survey (KYC ) before setting out. Don’t do wap if your targets are low end phone users. There is always something for everyone across the pyramid.

Where there is a call to action like an SMS Short code to relate with or switching on, of Bluetooth, make it bold and well placed. Consumers will not stop by or make customer service calls to ask for your campaign short codes. If they are not able to get over it in a New york minute, they will move on to something else. Many campaigns are suffering because consumers don’t know what to do.

Lastly, because of the nature of some mobile marketing mediums like SMS which are disruptive in nature, don’t Blanket send SMS to millions of people. You are going to annoy them and achieve the exact opposite of what you wanted!. Build strong content and relevant information that will attract them to opt-in. They will patronize you for this. Respect your targeted audiences by not spamming them.


Emmanuel Okoegwale
Mobile Marketing Specialist
emmanuel@gomobileng.com