A survey conducted by Belva Digital, a Pan-African digital marketing agency, and Uganda Marketer’s Society shows that social media marketing is offering marketers in Uganda the best business results.
Most businesses in Uganda are emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic and seeking the best channels to generate business results.
Belva Digital partnered with the UMS to survey hundreds of marketers in Uganda on the role they are playing to help organizations during this recovery period and the responses were collected digitally over four (4) weeks covering 7 plus sectors of the Ugandan economy.
58 percent of the surveyed are mid to large organizations with revenues of more than USD 1 million (Shs 3.6 billion) and more than USD 20 million (about Shs 72 billion). The rest (42 percent) represent businesses with a turnover of less than USD 1 million per year.
The survey revealed that 50 percent of businesses with more than USD 5 million (about Shs 18.1 billion) are spending more on marketing (more than 10 percent of their total revenue) compared to SMEs (those with less than USD 5 million in annual revenues).
58 percent of SMEs are spending less than 5 percent of their revenue on marketing.
50.4 percent are spending less than 5 percent. This points to a lack of understanding and capacity to carry out and measure the value of marketing. Belva Digital recommended that there is a need to develop a correlation between marketing spend and revenue growth, this will unlock more budgets and more growth for organizations.
When asked what percentage of the marketing budget is allocated to digital channels, 55.3 percent pointed to less than 5 percent of the marketing budget and 23.6 percent indicated that it is more than 30 percent.
Similarly, larger organizations were found to be more comfortable with digital marketing, and are allocating more budgets to it in comparison to SMEs. Belva Digital recommended that Digital marketing is the only medium that can be measured end-to-end and with more than 22 million Ugandans now accessing the internet, it benefits organizations if budgets allocation is higher.
Belva Digital said that Marketers have taken a collaborative approach to work with agencies.
Whereas some organizations have in-house teams for social media marketing, a significant number are engaging agencies for creative work, strategies, paid media, website development, and influencer marketing. Ultimately what the survey shows is that marketers are assigning the right work to the right resources to ensure the organizational goals are met.
In terms of prioritization, marketers are 48 percent keen on customer acquisition and revenue growth, while 31 percent are prioritizing increasing customer referrals. Marketing is no longer an expense centre but a revenue generator and that will continue to be the case as brands pursue value from their marketing efforts.
