12 Marketing Secrets to Break into the African Market

There is only one thing Africans care about — price

Cape Town, South Africa (source: Pixabay)

Africans primarily care about price. Everything else is secondary. Whatever strategy you are bringing to the African marketplace must offer a better value for money. And there is more to this.

I have witnessed a lot of companies try to break into the African market. Those who continue to be successful are those who have been on the continent for a long time. Many of them paid a tough price to achieve their first success.

You can consider this a hack to avoid catastrophic failure in Africa. Today, I see some companies venturing into Africa like it were North America. They are currently hailed as successful but I know they will fail woefully very soon.

To understand how to do business in African countries, you need to learn the culture, lifestyle, and attitude of the people. You need to understand what makes them buy. Just as an example:

A new company launched in Nigeria a few months back. It is a transportation initiative. I believe some investors backed it up with $120M. They are subsidizing transport fares to ridiculous rates. And they are having serious traction.

Here is what they don’t know. When their “promo” stops and the fares go back…