Companies that have embraced digital marketing are enjoying brand dominance both online and offline, says Martin Muli, Founder East Africa digital Marketing Summit & Show, an annual event designed to bring together key players in the digital marketing space from the East African region.
42 per cent of consumers they use their phones to conduct deeper research about a product and a staggering 38% use a mobile device when making a purchase. As a result retailers’ apps with store mode gather five times more engagement according Pornt Inside, 2013. This further supported by data indicating retailers’ apps for instance take up the most of consumers’ time at 27%, followed by online marketplace at 20%, purchase assistant at 17%, price comparison at 14%, and daily deals at 13% according to 2013 data by AdMedia Partners.
“Mobile is also an extremely powerful tool for reducing churn and deepening customer engagement, forums like East Africa Digital Fair that enable developers to further optimize their products in order to increase customers interaction with digital marketing platforms,” says Mr. Muli.
“By using mobile as a marketing tool, brands can increase the frequency of transactions with customers and, in many cases, increase the amount of each transaction. Just as important, marketers can reduce customer churn and increase customer satisfaction. All of these benefits have a distinct and immediate impact on the ROI of the marketing campaign,” he adds.
E-commerce platforms for instance frequently use push notifications to increase customer engagement by driving traffic up 150% while further increasing conversion by 20% to 50%. Push notifications further provides endless flexibility as it can be adapted from global to user segmented to location-based marketing.
The Digital Fair to be held on 9th and 10th April 2015 congregates providers of digital products and services under one roof to showcase the latest digital trends at a time when the profile of consumers is evolving to a more aware consumer, and an emerging middle and upper class driving demand for the applications that support their lifestyle
Consumers’ ability to access services more conveniently is one of the main drivers. Globally, the Starbucks app has been downloaded more than one million times and allows customers to locate stores, re-load their Starbucks Cards and share their locations and favourite drinks with their friends via social networks. Domino’s Pizza has created a mobile app that makes ordering a pizza a surprisingly easy experience. And Chase (which country) allows banking customers to deposit checks via a photograph taken with their smart phone.
In Kenya, applications such as Rupu, Hello Food, Easy Taxi, Uber, Ma3route have made life convenient. From making consumers aware of ongoing product and service deals that are available to aiding motorists and passengers aware of traffic on the road. Government apps such the Nairobi City Council Ejijipay has made accessing parking tickets, Land Rates, Rent Payment, Construction Permits, Single Business Permits and county services much easier.
In the same breathe global companies are now tapping into the growing Kenyan digital market, Uber a global technology company connecting riders with drivers, through a Smartphone app, launched its services in Nairobi.
Parinaz Firozi MD Jumia Kenya, “The potential of digital marketing in Kenya is towering, unexplored and unexploited, if we can harness and equip our generation with the skills and knowledge through such summits and conferences then, we can make the Kenya of our dreams.”
