5 Steps to Use Online Advertising in Kenya | Blog | Growthpad
Communications•12 min read
5 steps for using online advertising in Kenya to increase sales
GT
AuthorGrowthpad Team
PublishedMarch 11, 2024
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Getting started with online advertising in Kenya can seem scary and intimidating….
Getting started with online advertising in Kenya can seem scary and intimidating. Understandably so, I mean between Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, pay-per-click, YouTube, influencer marketing, and more it can all seem very intimidating.
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5 steps for using online advertising in Kenya to increase conversions and sales
You might be wondering where to start and feel like it’s too much to even consider paid internet advertising. If that’s you, then this article is here to help. Together we’ll walk through five simple steps to get you advertising online like a pro.
We’ll go over the five main steps as well as a few underlying factors that will affect your online advertising success. By the end of this article, you will have the confidence to tackle online advertising for conversion and sales in Kenya with ease.
1. Create a buyer persona for your online Ads
The beginning of online advertising in Kenya is a buyer persona. What exactly is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience.
This is not a real customer, it’s a fictional person who embodies the characteristics of your best potential customers. You’ll give this buyer persona a name, demographic details, and psychographics which is just a fancy word for their interests, values, motivations, and lifestyle choices.
How to create a buyer persona for online advertising
If you haven’t done this sort of profiling before don’t panic, you simply have to look at the people who have been buying your products or paying for your services.
How old are they? What do they do for a living? Are they mostly female or mostly male? What are their interests? See it’s simple but if you are still struggling, here are a few free tools to help you create your buyer persona.
Importance of creating a buyer persona for your online ads
Now that you have somewhere to start with the buyer persona let’s briefly discuss why it’s important to create a buyer persona.
It informs the advertising message
In the process of creating a buyer persona, you might realize that you have very different groups of customers and this is important because it will inform the advertising message you create, the tone and type of language you use as well as the channel you use for your online advertising.
It tells you where to find your customers
Creating a buyer persona gives you a hint as to where you can find your target customer for your internet ads.
For instance, if your persona is between 18 and 34 years then chances are you will probably get them on Instagram, if your buying persona is between 35 and 65 years then you can get them on Facebook and if your persona is mostly working professionals then chances are you will get them on LinkedIn.
All that aside, all these different age groups have one thing in common, they all use search engines and online websites. That is where Google ads and pay-per-click or PPC advertising come in.
2. Select channels for your online ads
Once you have created a customer persona you’ll have a pretty good idea of where to put your online ads. You will advertise on platforms that your buyer persona frequents.
Some avenues for you to explore are search engines/Google Ads, social media advertising, and Pay-per-click advertising.
Online advertising in Kenya through Google Ads
There are factors to consider to make sure you get the most returns from your online advertising in Kenya. Let’s begin with search engine ads/Google Ads.
For Google ads, you’ll have to do something called keyword search. Many tools can help you do this with Google’s Keyword Planner and Moz’s keyword search tools at the top of the list. Here are links to free keyword search tools.
You might be tempted to go for all the high-traffic keywords but don’t. Instead, you should focus on many long-tail keywords that are more specific to your product or service offering.
Why is this a better strategy?
Because the customers who are looking for long-tail searches want something more specific and are more likely to be ready to make a purchase.
Online advertising in Kenya through Social media
With social media advertising, a few things precede your social media campaign. Regardless of the platform, you need to make sure that your account is a business account.
Optimize your business account for online advertising in Kenya
This means that if you have a website it’s in your biography, your biography should also give a general description of your product or service offerings, and in this COVID-19 age include that you make deliveries and things of that nature.
As for posting and content, you should consider posting shoppable posts and most platforms have this feature. When potential customers click on a product you have posted, it should show them the price and the platform they can go to get it.
Post helpful content
Aside from the optimization aspects you also have to adapt to today’s customers. Today’s customer dislikes a salesman and can see one coming from a mile away.
If you wish to succeed on social media you will have to post content that sounds human and helpful. Give your audience value before they can give you their money.
It’s the rule that says that you should post 80% of content that adds value to your audience for example tips and hacks that have to do with using your products or how to care for them and things of that nature. Then 20% can be ad banner-type posts.
This is how you build your platform organically and build a community around your brand on social media.
Targeting for online advertising
The rest is pretty easy because it is all about targeting and between the buyer persona you created and the targeting tools that are built into social media platforms you should be fine.
Simply fill in all the required fields and schedule the ads to go live when your target customers are engaging with the app and your marketing success is all but guaranteed.
Online advertising through Buy-sell Ads
Buy-sell ads/Direct buy ads are when you rent out space on someone’s platform to advertise and pay them per click or per a thousand clicks.
This is also a good way to advertise online however, it isn’t the best place to start from. When your brand is still new, the best route to take is either social media or search engine advertising for optimal results.
3. Establish online advertising goals and KPIs
The next step is to decide what your advertising goals are and what the metrics will be for measuring the success of achieving said goals.
What is it that you are trying to achieve?
Are you trying to create awareness or are you trying to make sales?
When you are creating a copy for your ads, be clear on what your goal is.
If you are trying to increase awareness then some of your KPIs might be to increase website traffic and if this is on social media then you will be looking at metrics like follower count, impressions, engagement, and share of voice.
If you are looking to make sales then you are looking at KPIs like click-through rate, number of leads, and actual sales from the links you included in your advertisement’s CTA.
One more thing to keep in mind is that if your customers are different groups either in terms of age or other demographic factors you might want to split the campaign and come up with a copy that targets one group at a time for the highest chance of success.
4. Website and landing page optimization for Online advertising in Kenya
Next up is website optimization. You are ready to launch a massive campaign, is your website ready for that heavy traffic? Or will it crash as soon as the campaign goes live?
Ensure that your website matches the customers you are trying to target. If you sell a premium product, your website should offer a premium experience.
This premium experience should cover the site aesthetic and the user experience. The loading speeds should be fast and that there are no bottlenecks during the shopping process.
Here are free checklists to make sure you don’t miss a beat.
The other thing you need to have ready is the landing pages. Each product or service you are advertising should have its landing page with a clear call to action or CTA for short.
If you wanted an increase in traffic, you ought to set the goals you were hoping to hit. If your goal was sales, you have tools like Google Analytics which you can incorporate right into your website.
Google Analytics can show you how your campaign performed as well as track link clicks and indicate where sales were coming from. This way you know where to invest more advertising money and where to hold off on for the moment.
The only tip for tracking and advertising is to be objective. If ever there was a time to remove emotion from decision-making, this would be it.
You might be very excited about a platform however, the results speak for themselves, and return on investment is the name of the advertising game.
In conclusion, remember that paid advertising is not a get-rich-quick scheme by any means.
As we have walked through the five steps together you can see there are several factors all contributing to the success of your online advertisements.
Online advertising in Kenya is nothing to be afraid of or intimidated by. Now that you pretty much have the online advertising blueprint go forth and take online advertising by the horns.
All you need to do is to follow the five steps listed above.
A quick recap. Create a buyer persona, select your online advertising channels, establish key performance indicators, optimize your website and landing pages and after your successful launch, track the results and make the objective evaluation and adjust accordingly. That is all there is to it.
Need help or guidance on the next step for your brand in regard to online advertising in Kenya, reach out to one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Kenya-Growthpad Digital Consulting on +254 721314242 or email strategic@growthpad.co.ke
