You’re afraid your marketing content will not appeal to customers in the African market.
Maybe it’s a new market you’ve decided to expand in, or if you’ve been there a while, you don’t know how to connect effectively with users of this geography.
Moreover, you know ineffective connection means no readers for the posts on your website, no viewers for your videos on YouTube. Also, no engagement on Facebook.
Think you must sweat a dozen hours of learning to master your audience? Probably not.
You can use reliable tactics, proven schemes that have been there for a long time.
The Little Mistake That Could Ruin Your Content
Content failure can start with the lack of using proper inputs for your piece, like language or visuals. If the audience cannot identify with the people in the story you’re trying to tell them, they will seldom read, listen, or watch it.
People should quickly associate themselves with persons in a video, listen to a voice that can be familiar to them in an audio, and laugh or cringe while reading some words or expressions of your last article or blog post.
If you’re mutualizing your content for many geographies, adapt it as possible.
To connect emotionally with the audience, be sure to include local accents and colloquialisms. See, Facebook currently has many African languages, and more and more users are interacting within the platform and their friends in those languages. Microsoft also provides products in local languages.
Even if you’re writing in English, ask yourself which English to use. British, American, Cameroonian? Sometimes, a simple language switch can push your results to the next level.
The Right Way to Connect with Your Audience
As a marketer, you know the power of storytelling, how it allows brands to connect with people, and moves them to act.
If you study African storytelling, you’ll learn how good stories encapsulate wisdom and convey emotions; you’ll see the code by which proverbs carry messages and transmit values.
Use this scheme for your content, including the elements of the narrative structure directly inspired by the local environment. Wise quotes will enlighten your topic and inspire the audience.
Consider switching the perspective with clever analogies between your product and the features of objects surrounding you. Similarities are compelling, and they boost the message in your content.
The ABC of Getting Audience Attention
When a griot tells a story, he uses tricks to get attention and dive the listener in the inner world of imagination. However, first, he must be credible. The audience must recognize the storyteller as a respected community member, trained, and skilled to inform, entertain, and educate people.
Your message must be relevant, assuming that your brand or your organization is already well established.
With credibility comes real facts. The attention lasts if only ideas spread are exciting and authentic, far from clichés that quickly turn off the audience.
In this way, you stay plugged into the user’s dreams, fears, hopes, and desires.
The Magic Ways to Get the Right Engagement from Your Audience
How does the storyteller start and maintain a conversation in the African environment? He and the listeners set up formal and informal rules for participation and interactions.
Use a conversational tone with your audience to reinforce proximity and push users to engage with you: ask questions, launch games, write posts with blank spaces, and let users fill them on social media in the comments. Answer questions and show a real interest in their opinions.
You have the opportunity here to work with relevant, localized stakeholders. Typically, agencies, bloggers can help you outspread your message and boost interactions with your content. Even back up with some insights to fill an initial culture gap. Also, influencers will fire up community involvement by endorsing your products.
Build an Audience of Raving Users with Content That Rocks
Producing content no one reads is painful.
Your content can get astonishing results within an African audience.
And spread the message on your product, service, or organization along the way.
To make that difference, you must know your target audience very well and use elements they can quickly identify with. This way, you get and sustain the attention your stories deserve, and people use your content time and again, actively interacting with it.
Thus, you could supercharge your content creation and gain raving content users overnight.
What are you waiting for to create your next epic piece of content?