If you have launched a new startup and want to increase your sales and website traffic, social media is the way to go! A good marketing strategy coupled with social media marketing is a recipe for success for any startup. In South Africa, there are more than 3.83 million registered Facebook users, 55k Twitter users, and more than 1.1 million Linkedin users. This shows that there is deep internet penetration in South Africa and people are using social media every day to interact with brands and startups.
RocoMama’s Success Story in South Africa Using Social Media
Startups in South Africa are leveraging these statistics to create a successful social media strategy and target their customers for increased sales. RocoMama is an example of a successful South African startup that has used social media to increase sales and brand awareness. It has more than 17,000 followers on Twitter, 30,000 followers on Instagram and 200,000 followers who have checked in on Facebook. RocoMama is a South African restaurant that serves a variety of burgers and their social media message is trendy: ‘we are not normal’. Their social media marketing is incredibly active with vibrant pictures, witty posts and instant interaction with customers. Their overall marketing strategy is closely aligned with their social media strategy. They have created a successful hype about their products on social media, used user-generated content and targeted youth on social media. All of these resulted in increased sales.
Winning Social Media Techniques for Increasing Sales
As a business owner, you should also know how to generate more sales, increase your market share, gain more customers and engage more with your audience. Social media marketing is your magical tool for this. There are many techniques and strategies that can be implemented especially for SMEs. These strategies are as follow:
- Study Your Audience
- The Right Platform
- Use Paid Campaigns
- Use Social Media Influencers
Going International
There are other startups in South Africa which have been similarly successful in increasing their sales through social media. Once these SMEs became successful, they were also able to expand operations in international markets. A challenge commonly faced by these companies while they are expanding is the difficulty of adapting to a different culture and language. Different markets speak different languages and perceive marketing tactics differently.
Therefore, it is very important to hire marketing translation services. Marketing localization services plays an important role in ensuring that your brand’s message is adopted and accepted appropriately in the new market. What works for one market may not work for another. Therefore when targeting international customers, you have to ensure that you speak their language and your marketing appeals to them while paying attention to the cultural differences.
South African Companies That Are Taking On the World With Localization
There are many notable companies in South Africa which started off small but quickly became successful and expanded their operations in international markets with the help of marketing localization and translation. Localization helped these companies to recreate their marketing message to appeal to the new international markets and as a result, it increased their sales by reaching new customers. Here are two examples.
Mimi Women
Founded in 2013, Mimi Women is a South African brand of sanitary pads. It aims at empowering women and young school-going girls especially from disadvantageous backgrounds who are often held back from going to work and school because they don’t have access to sanitary pads. Mimi Women gas helped more than 32000 school girls through donations of sanitary pads. The brand is getting funds to create a R10 million worth of manufacturing plant and expanding operations in the African continent.
Quicket
Quicket is an example of a successful South African startup that is going big! Co-founder, James Tagg founded it in 2011. It is a payment platform for South African events and it is now working on partnership in Uganda to operate there. James Tagg said that the biggest challenges he faced were around the legal structure for co-operation and in building a cohesive payment layer which binds all available payment channels in the region. He openly advises startups looking to expand in other countries to first fully understand and embrace the nuances of the different markets.
Afritorch Digital
Founded in 2017, Afritorch Digital helps research agencies in conducting market research through its knowledge of the African continent and the use of the latest digital technologies. The company has become quickly successful by helping clients in their research on marketing in South Africa. Their digital tools became so popular that many research agencies are lining up to make use of their services. Afritorch Digital works with research agencies that conduct research on behalf of their clients.
Now they are taking their operations global. Localization and marketing localization has greatly helped Afritouch Digital and such companies in expanding the operation and reaching out to new clients who use different languages.
Ways to Expand Inside South Africa
Any company that wants to start a business in South Africa must know the languages that people are speaking. In South Africa, besides English, there are 3 top languages spoken; Zulu is spoken by 23% of South Africans, Xhosa is spoken by 16%and Afrikaans is spoken by 14%.
Companies expanding their operations in South Africa should ensure that their website should be localized into these three languages so that they can reach and connect with the customers. When customers visit a website and are able to read about a product in their own language, they are more likely to purchase the product. This will increase your sales.
Choosing the Right Translation Partner
Hiring a trusted website translation service provider can help you to achieve your goal. It is important to choose a professional translation company like Afrolingo that understands the South African market well enough to translate your website accurately. Afrolingo offers high-quality translation and localization services to businesses that want to truly connect with the South African market in its language and through its culture. Afrolingo has worked with hundreds of clients globally and successfully offered its localization and website translation services.
Get in touch today to get a custom quote for your project. We work on projects of all sizes.
