Date: 2019/09/01

Top on the shopper’s mind today is that she needs to save her money – and that includes when you ask her to use her mobile phone to enter a competition and engage with your brand.

Don’t ask her to spend her airtime or data on you. Data can cost her 100 times more when she buys it in small amounts, and most times when you want her to respond to you, she doesn’t even have any data or airtime available. In fact, over half of South Africans would have to spend 15% to 40% of their income to buy 1GB of mobile data. So, it’s not surprising that about 10 million South Africans are now borrowing airtime and data from Vodacom – and paying up to 60% extra just so they can stay connected. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have money to spend on purchasing your product.

So how can you still reach her without spending her airtime or data? 

Here are some of today’s winning tech tips that South African marketers can use:

1 - Let your brand sponsor the entry mechanic by reverse billing your competition landing page, lead gen form, or app.

• Today, you can wrap your site or part of it so that your shopper does not have to have or use her data to visit and engage with you. We track their data used and bill you for it. '

2 - Advertise on data free apps

• Today, over 1 million South Africans are now using a “WhatsApp like” chat platform that does not use their own data to send text messages
• We ran a Mother’s Day campaign with a digital swipe to win mechanic and 75% of the entries came from this new advertising media platforms and generated over 78,000 plays in 5 days! 

3 - Make your SMS and USSD call to action free to the consumer

• We have seen a 6 time increase in responses from changing the SMS Short Code from Standard Rated to Reverse Billed for a lead generation financial services TV campaign
• Especially if you want to reach stokvel members, reverse Billed USSD lines generate much more entries 

4 - South Africans love using WhatsApp (49% are) but there are specific do’s and don’ts of how to use it to get the benefit of such a popular platform.

• Don’t… use an unofficial account, nor an International mobile number, or think that you can send WhatsApp messages to your base instead of SMS to save costs – there is so much you need to know about that!
• Do… use an official WhatsApp Business line, with a Chatbot to help you guide the conversation. To help you with competition entry mechanics, surveys, store locators and to receive images like till slips for proof of purchase, and audio and video testimonials. 

5 - Shoppers want to play with you, but it needs to be fun and free!

• Spin & Win, Scratch & Win and Peel n Reveal are always a great hit with shoppers – they are so exciting and engaging.
• Today, shoppers can spin or scratch on the mobile phones to win instant prizes or be entered in your draw – and they can do it without it costing them any airtime or data.

First published for MarketingMix Shopper Insights 

About the Author

Candice Goodman was the DMA’s Direct Marketer of the Year 2016. She is currently on Education Committee of the IAB. She has headed up Education at the Mobile Marketing Association of South Africa for the past 5 years and was on the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA of SA) Advisory Board as Chairman and was the first Certified MMA Mobile Marketer in South Africa.  She founded mobile marketing technology enabler, Mobitainment, over 13 years ago. candy@mobitainment.co.za |@CandiceGoodman

About Mobitainment

Mobitainment is one of the founding, most awarded, independent, leading experts of mobile marketing in South Africa. Do you agree that South Africans are not only mobile first, but mobile always? Then you need a mobile specialist that can do mobile all ways…

Mobitainment was ranked #1 Technology Providers in Africa in the MMA Smarties Business Impact Index 2018.  www.mobitainment.co.za | info@mobitainment.co.za