2022 Marketing Trends in Uganda

Many marketers have already touched base on how we can expect marketing to evolve strategically in 2022. To make a solid plan for the short term, it’s important to keep an eye on where you’re heading in the long term. Nobody can say with 100% certainty what the future of marketing will look like, but industry professionals can offer useful insights and predictions into some of the possibilities.

In my last episode of the #MarketingAtDatamine space, I hosted one of my lecturers, PAUL LEMI, a marketer, the National Sales Manager for DKT International, and a Tutor at DATAMINE and we talked about the upcoming 2022 Marketing Trends which included;

Metaverse Marketing

Metaverse marketing is a very new concept and it’s taking its toll. Most of these innovations in the digital world take us by storm on the global scene and we are yet to see how Africa will respond and particularly in Uganda.

Take Metaverse as a 3D version of the Internet. It’s very exciting and we are yet to see how it will go because currently, many Ugandans have not yet embraced even 3D imaging. However, let’s see how things go… 

Audio content (Podcasting)

Podcasts are becoming very common and one thing I can say is that the online/digital channels are going to be a very instrumental part of Marketing. The Pandemic opened so many eyes of people and organizations across the globe, even in Uganda to the need of being digital since they were not interacting physically anymore.

The UCC publication on data downloads from various organizations shows you that there was a 19% growth last year and that is expected to go higher as we see many people embracing digital.

Podcasts are going to be very big. You’ll see that Twitter Spaces have been growing rapidly and over 187M people are using them.  Club House which launched before Twitter Spaces is also at about 10M people at the moment. Locally we are seeing Kabushenga & Kyamagero as one of the guys using TWITTER SPACES quite a lot and many people are listening in each and every episode. This was later followed up by different media house Twitter spaces so YES, it’s an area that brands can use to engage their audiences and build a loyal following because of it’s real-time interaction.

Video Content Marketing

Video content marketing is one of those areas that is going to continue to grow. You’ll notice that YouTube has also launched YouTube shots for short videos, TikTok still at the number 1 position of most downloaded social media apps, and Instagram videos have all been converted into reels as of TODAY.

If you look at TikTok in 2017, it had 65M users and by the close of 2021, there were over 1 Billion users. If you look at it by region, you will see that in South-East Asia by the end of 2020, we had over 198M users of TikTok. From TikTok reports, there is a group of 19-29-year-olds who form 35% of the Users of the application. The next group that is big on that is that of under 18 which is around 21% is for them.

You will notice that TikTok has grown to take over Snapchat which was starting to become popular in Uganda. You will also see that videos in Uganda nowadays all have the TikTok logo on them and this shows you the strength of video marketing. A few Ugandans that were able to see this trend have now started making money off TikTok by simply endorsing brands. Various brands should figure out how to use the video landscape in creating engaging and good content for their audiences.

With video brand endorsements, the game is really changing & I’ll give you an example of my girlfriend, who follows APASS & is taken up by his content, even though she doesn’t know the language he communicates in. However, his creativity behind the screen is THAT GOOD. Don't get me started on UNCLE MO & his hilarious short clips. 

E-Commerce

E-commerce is becoming something very big and somebody who is not thinking in that direction to have people easily get their products/services is probably doing a disservice to him/herself. This also has a relationship with search engine optimization (SEO) which is more to do with optimizing your website, technical configuration of content and all pages to become easily found on different platforms. I want to link E-commerce to that, the reason being that there was a study done by emarketer.com and they were trying to look at the behavior of shoppers and they found out that 61% of people research for products online. So when someone wants to buy something, the first thing they will do is to go to their search engine and search about a product before they make any decision to buy. Then of those that were researched on, 13% of these went to a physical store while the rest purchased it online.

That alone shows you that, indeed e-commerce is something we should embrace.

Influencer Marketing & ambassadorship

The influencer-brand relationship is something important and it involves ethics – the right or wrong. If you want to build your brand in the right direction, definitely you are going to make sure that you are responsible as an individual for whatever you are posting out there. You don’t want to be misleading people, I mean, it’s just a moral authority for you.

However, it will be very important for brands to assess how an influencer behaves online or their track record so that it reflects positively on the brand when that particular influencer is hired. This is called an “influencer audit” – it identifies the influencers akin to your brand or competition.

Virtual Reality (VR) Marketing

On the global scene presently, Rwanda played smart at the recently concluded DUBAI TOURISM EXPO because they knew the kind of audience they were going into and they needed them to experience this. VR is definitely something quite heavy to invest in for certain brands, who might be looking for just a QUICK WIN instead of the vision of building a brand.

Virtual Reality can actually be related to experiential marketing in the traditional age whereby someone is getting a memorable experience. It is a new way of creating an experiential moment, without a lot of moving parts. It’s not very popular here but the brands that can afford it should definitely try it out.

Green Marketing as CSR

Sustainability, also referred to as the triple bottom line whereby organizations are thinking about the people, the planet, and the profits is something that’s very big, especially in Europe, and America, where they think much about their carbon footprint.

Here it is quite misunderstood and many people don’t appreciate it however, it is a trend that many organizations like; Stanib Bank & UBL are trying to adopt especially those with a global affiliation, they are trying so much to see how they can be sustainable in whatever they do.

The good thing is that these organizations invest in a lot of communication to educate various masses about this. I would like to relate this to an example of various companies that are doing production locally. This is a global challenge but the earlier we start on it the better and let people appreciate that.

I am hoping we wake up to a day where Ugandans start appreciating those green concepts and start using brands like 2GULE which appreciates and tries to save the earth. Incidentally, everybody has their own thoughts on the impact of global warming. If you have been following global trends, you should be worried about what the environment might be like tomorrow.

Storyline Marketing

When you make up your mind that you want to build your brand, remember that it’s not a one-time thing so you have to invest heavily. This means investing in the right talents. The same thing is applicable when crafting campaigns and that’s why we really need to appreciate agencies that are coming up with most of this creative work when it comes to things like storyline marketing.

Although many people are running away from agencies and going to radio stations directly as a way of cutting costs, I see big brands continuing to dominate this landscape. I for one can tell you Coca-Cola has consistently executed this WELL and I can remember as far back as their 1997 Tyrese commercial when he got onto a bus singing, which shows you the power is storyline content.

This takes me to the traditional media side. A trend from the traditional media side is that there is going to be quite a lot of interaction because people have been really missing their brands. It’s going to be interesting how we see different companies market their brands.