[2011 trends] Harnessing the mobile Internet in SA

This was a marginal decline from the 2.8% growth recorded in the previous quarter and below an expectation of steady growth from economists. Despite the sluggish economic growth of 2010, mobile advertising and marketing became the fastest-growing marketing medium.

Here's what to look forward to in 2011:

More use of mobile tools

Brands and agencies are expected to use more mobile tools - SMS, mobile display ads, applications, in-game ads, search, location-based services, etc to help with branding, customer acquisition and retention efforts.

In South Africa, the use of USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) is growing due to mass market appeal and low cost engagement. Airtime giveaways and competitions are being run by brands using USSD. But, as messages sent over USSD are not defined by any standardisation body, each network operator can implement whatever it finds suitable for its customers.

Mobile audience continues to grow

Africa has seen phenomenal growth in mobile Internet usage. Compared against October 2009, SA has grown by more than 200%.

Mobiles have become affordable to use by many and the falling cost of all sorts of technologies means more possible uses for mobiles. Another reason for this is the challenging price plans by African mobile carriers.

South Africa has some of the cheapest data costs in the world, due to healthy competition among mobile carriers. Recently, carriers such as Vodacom and Cell C slashed their mobile surfing rates. Mobile surfing on Telkom's new service 8ta costs a mere US$0.25 per MB and MTN offers Facebook browsing at no cost.

1. Insatiable demand for information

   The rapid rise of mobile social networking (and user-generated content) suggests an insatiable demand for information, and the key to meeting this demand for media lies in understanding users, and their usage of mobiles.

   Mobile commerce

   Mobile phones have become a dominant force in banking and commerce, with the mobile channel proving to be a great servicing and customer acquisition tool. However, many are not aware of the m-commerce services offered by banks and other organisations in South Africa. Here are some examples.

   • FNB launched the eWallet solution in 2009 to enable the 'unbanked' population to use their mobile to do banking transactions such as sending and receiving money without paying exorbitant bank fees or transport costs.

   • After successfully launching broadcast mobile TV services in Namibia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria in 2008, MultiChoice, through its mobile division DStv Mobile, launched the service recently in South Africa for selected Nokia handset models.

   • By partnering a WAP-enabled mobile phone with a content-rich paper workbook, Star Schools has deployed a tagging solution that allows it to build into the illustrations on a paper tag which, when read with a cellphone camera, activates a wide range of functional mobile phone-based options. The 'mystar' mobile platform has created a virtual classroom that can be accessed anytime, from anywhere and is an important solution for a severely under-resourced education sector.

   • Prezence Digital created a commerce-enabled mobi site using extensive handset content adaptation (HCA), which is a one-stop mobile destination where consumers can browse, book and pay for tickets to their favourite events.

   • Retail outlets such as Spar sent out text-based mobile vouchers for all handsets across all carriers for selected FMCG products with discounts of up to 30%.

   From the examples above, we can safely say that mobile phones will continue as a dominant force in socio-economic development and organisations will carry on using mobile and m-commerce to drive reservations, to promote events, and to increase general awareness of their destinations and venues.

   Mobile content

   The audience continues to devour mobile content and foreign players are cashing in on the SA audience. Mobile commerce and marketing, of course, depends on content, particularly product information.

   Why SA marketers need to convince clients to build mobile sites (mobisites) has been answered, but the challenge now is how they will figure out how to do this. Most understand that the medium is growing but implementation still remains a mystery.

   Mobile marketers are working relentlessly to ensure that marketers understand the value of a mobisite, taking into account the user journey, brand longevity and conformity, and then developing sites that are of value to the user.

2. Vast opportunites in the "unwired" group

   With networks lowering browsing costs, mobile is becoming more accessible and perceptions around the mobile Internet are changing. There are vast opportunities that lie in the "unwired" group - people who are using mobile phones as the primary (and perhaps the only) device to access the Internet. These consumers are presenting themselves on an interactive medium for the first time, and brands can interact with them.

The growth of mobile advertising is inevitable, but in order for South Africa to take advantage of this, understanding the needs and wants of the mobile consumer plays a crucial role in the battle for marketing supremacy. Once this is achieved, more content needs to be deployed in order to fuel the users thirst for content.

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