media update’s Nikita Geldenhuys highlights three topics that stood out during the presentations. When it comes to marketing your brand on mobile, marketers should ask and answer the following questions:

1. Does your mobile campaign suit your marketing strategy?

As the use of smartphones increases in South Africa, more consumers have access to mobile sites and apps. Brands should ask themselves whether their sites and apps meet business objectives, solve problems, and whether they’re sustainable.

This is according to Bongi Mvuyana, CEO of The Red Stripe, a recently launched digital marketing consultancy. She notes that many local brands still do not have mobile marketing strategies. “That’s shocking, especially in an environment like Africa where we’ve got so many mobile devices and so many ways of fuelling mobile engagement.”

“We’re not connecting, as marketers. Social media is a place to engage and connect. But what do we do as marketers? We hard sell and then we wonder why people are not engaging with our ads.”

To successfully connect with local audiences on mobile, brands have to give consumers the right content and recognise that mobile is a specialist area, Mvuyana said.

She also emphasised the differences between mobile sites and apps, and the benefits of each to businesses. ‘Mobi-sites’ can attract new customers, allows for effective SEO, and also let consumers explore a business.

A mobile app steps into the customer-brand relationship after the customer’s first conversion. At this stage, an app can help to retain customers by providing direct, ongoing interaction.

2. Are you ready for your new consumers – Generation Z?

The next generation of consumers need brands to be transparent in their marketing. To reach these consumers, brands also have to increase their focus and awareness of social equality issues.

Elizabeth Mofokeng, media manager at Avatar Agency, shared these insights in her presentation, ‘Understanding the challenges of marketing to Generation Z’. Her advice to brands is to make sure their marketing campaigns to Generation Z reflect reality. Campaigns like Pepsi’s advert with Kendall Jenner did not reflect the real-life situation of protests in the United States, which is partly why it failed.

Reaching Gen Z consumers on mobile requires transparency. “Show your true, weird, and funny brand personality,” Mofokeng said. “Brands need to be responsive on mobile. Don’t let a tweet from a customer hang. Waiting 24 hours to respond to a customer complaint on Twitter is not going to fly for Gen Z.”

3. Is your mobile communication built for humans?

The day concluded with an impromptu presentation by Joanna Mondon, digital marketing manager at Hollard. She reported on the 2017 Conversions@Google event in Dublin, where she was in attendance.

Her main takeout from the event was the importance of having a strategy behind mobile. “In South Africa, we take desktop to mobile without a strategy,” she said, explaining that too often marketing assets that have been created for desktop display is transferred onto mobile sites. Local marketers should look at building digital products for each platform separately.

After attending sessions on the evolution of apps and mobile sites at Google’s event, it was clear to Mondon that, globally, not enough brands are developing mobile UX with a progressive, futuristic vision in mind.  

“It showed me that we are not looking at mobile solutions that work for the user. The question that came up was: How do we incorporate the Natural User Interface when we design for mobile?  Mobile users will expect a fluid, frictionless, one-tap experience.” She mentioned Amazon’s one-touch swipe functionality to complete a sale as an example of a function that allows people to use just one finger to complete an action. This design keeps users and the way the human form interacts with mobile devices in mind.

What should content on mobile look like? Find out in our article, Why mobile content matters: A Q&A with Camilla Clerke.

Want to stay up to date with the latest marketing news? Subscribe to our newsletter.