Best marketing strategies in South Africa are listed and explained in this article. The year 2021 had major ripple effects from the pandemic and, even when it’s over, consumer behavior will never go back entirely to the way it was before.
Best marketing strategies for the year
Customers and prospects in 2021 want to connect with brands, and they want to do it fast. They expect answers to their questions when they need them. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020, “Half of the customers choose a channel based on how fast they need a response.”
And if you want to communicate quickly as a business, there are plenty of options. Instant messaging apps like Kik and WhatsApp became increasingly popular in 2020. Meanwhile, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are still channels where people seek answers. Having a presence on these channels can help your business communicate with customers and prospects faster.
So what are the best marketing strategies in South Africa?
Of course, in an ideal world, you would have the budget to hire hundreds of live customer service reps to work 24/7 to help you do that. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t have room in their budgets to hire that many live reps.
Don’t worry, though — we’ve got a workaround for that.
Investing in a chatbot is a great customer service alternative that can give your business the fast, responsive communication your customers and prospects want without adding an extra burden on your live reps. Chatbots won’t replace live reps who still play a critical role in the marketing and sales process, but they can streamline many simple asks.
More Detailed Audiences are one of the best marketing strategies in South Africa
It’s critical to learn what things matter to customers and prospects. Having a strong grasp of those items can help you create better content for consumers, which can also be used to market to their specific interests and needs.
Social listening technology, such as Alexa’s Content Exploration tool, can help you uncover content that is generating interest on social platforms — and getting amplified by an audience — for a given topic.
Personalized Recommendations at Scale
Technology continues to evolve, and how consumers get information is evolving along with it. There are so many ways to build connections through technology now, many of which will become a part of the best marketing strategies.
One prime example of technology that builds trust is chatbots. And there’s a great opportunity to start utilizing them more in 2021. Less than 30% of businesses offered self-service, live chat, social messaging, in-app messaging, bots, or peer-to- communities in 2020.
And outside of their most obvious use case as customer service boosters, chatbots can also function as trusted confidants for potential customers and prospects.
Branded Entertainment is another best marketing strategy
We love to be entertained. We want to be moved much more than we want to be sold to.
Some brands have caught on to this and are producing a form of entertainment that doesn’t feel like advertising. The idea is that when you provide entertainment, you’re likely to build awareness through social sharing. And, at the same time, you build affinity for your brand.
Google, for example, made this commercial for Super Bowl LIV in 2020, which has since amassed over 62 million views on YouTube. It featured an older gentleman trying not to forget the love of his life, who had presumably passed away. He used Google to help him take a trip down memory lane and remember all the good times they’d shared.
