As part of its successful global marketing thought leadership series, Meltwater hosted its second annual Outside Insight event in Johannesburg that saw a packed house with over 250 people in attendance.

The event focused on how South Africa’s top businesses have disrupted outdated industry best-practices by exploring how companies could apply a “growth hacking” mind set towards their marketing strategies. “Growth hacking”, initially a phrase that emerged from a tech start-up community, relies on innovative and inexpensive tactics to drive client acquisition and engagement. A key takeaway was that digital marketers need to start ‘humanising’ their brands if they want to see renewed business growth.  

Leading South African digital heavyweights, Brett StClair (Barclays Africa), Jeanine Ferreira (Vodacom), MJ Khan (Sasol) and Jarred Cinman (NATIVE VML), exchanged knowledge on how brands and agencies could be more innovative, and more importantly, effective, when it comes to online marketing.

According to MJ Khan, Sasol’s Group Online Manager, content has very little value if it doesn’t address where the audience is right now. The reason a product or service resonates with an audience is because it was right for them at that point in their life.

“Brands need to ask themselves, how can we address the needs of people’s issues right now, instead of the generic ‘spray and pray’ approach,” explains Khan. He emphasises the need for content to be about the audience and not about the brand in the digital age. Meltwater’s own Johannesburg Managing Director, Matthew Barclay, also reiterated the point by touching on howsmart media contact database software could allow companies to “growth hack” their digital influence by communicating highly specific messaging to industry relevant influencers and journalists.

Khan also touched on the importance of instant messaging and referenced the popularity of WhatsApp. He used the example of Sasol’s Bursary Programme campaign last year, whereby they dedicated a WhatsApp number and a community manager for the specific channel. They went from 30 000 applications to 52 000 applications just by using the WhatsApp platform alone. “Students just want to ask questions, they don’t want to call or engage face-to-face and we tapped into this,” says Khan.

Brett StClair, Head of Digital Products at Barclays Africa, shared in this sentiment by stressing key partnerships that have relevant platforms for your brand’s audience. His advice is to find the right partner so that you can develop a ‘win-win and win’ – the third win being a happy customer.

How does one, “growth-hack”

StClair also went on to share that growth-hacking starts with really understanding who your customer is; encouraging marketers to embrace failure on the journey to discovering how best to interact with their customers:

“You’ve got to try things so that you can fail and then try again. We’ve tried campaigns based on our own assumptions of what our customers wanted and we failed. When growth-hacking, be sure that you are either proving or disproving assumptions so that you have a good understanding of what you are promoting. It’s important to listen to what your audience wants. Growth hacking is about taking advantage of your early adopter, someone who is willing to try your product and give you feedback.” StClair used the example of ‘dogfooding’ which refers to companies using their own staff to try and test products or services.

Jeanine Ferreira, Digital Marketing Portfolio Manager for Vodacom, showcased the company’s recent NXT LVL campaign as an example of how to secure wide-scale buy-in from the youth market, with specific emphasis on young women. She had advocated that in order to maximise campaign success, brands should:

• Make sure your campaign instructions are clear and form part of the overall campaign
• Combine online and offline for maximum effect
• No brand is an island – enlist the help of subject matter experts to grow your reach and engagement
• Find the balance between love and money – there needs to be a visible link between your brand campaigns and sales conversations.
• Put your money where your mouth is and follow through with your campaign commitments

Panel Discussion: Digital faux pas, transformation and trends

On the topic of where brands are missing the mark on digital, Meltwater’s EMEA Marketing Director, Heidi Myers, went on to explain that the most common mistake she’s identified in the digital space concerns a lack of consideration for organisational goals and ROI when committing to marketing activities. 

Brett StClair added that marketers tend to throw away campaign data. “We think it’s great that our campaign trended, but we don’t delve into the data behind it to understand what went wrong.” This underpinned the necessity of using a media intelligence platform to capture data and analyse conversations that are taking place online.

Jarred Cinman - NATIVE VML’s Managing Director - went on to explain, “A big challenge in the digital industry in South Africa is that we are still untransformed. The marketers in this country are mostly white people who are talking to a market they don’t understand and because of this we are seeing a lot of badly worded content that is completely out of touch with the audience. It all comes down to authenticity, people are looking to make a connection, to feel moved or touched by something, and they will then amplify the message for you.”

When tasked with identifying future trends across South Africa’s digital landscape, the panellists had forecast:

• A normalisation of social media in everyday life Increasing focus on instant messaging marketing, e.g. WhatsApp
• A move toward experiential marketing
• Mobile operators shifting focus from calls to data
• Continued development of technology and apps to improve African lives
• A shift to the chat environment – speaking to the customer through chat and voice chat channels
• More practical applications for virtual reality and augmented reality technology