Are you speaking their language?

In a society as multiracial and full of diversity such as South Africa, the use of English only as language of mobile communications seems to be hampering customer-companies relationships, especially in areas where many consumers have difficulties communicating in English. This week, one expert suggested that marketers look at communicating with as many of their customers as possible in their home languages when using the mobile phone as a marketing channel.

Sean van Deventer, Cellsmart technical director of mobile marketing, said: "Companies can certainly move closer to their customers by communicating with them in the languages they are most comfortable with - their mother tongues

“Communicating with people in their home languages could improve acceptance of mobile marketing among people who do not speak English as their first language.

"What better way to communicate in a personalised manner with one's customer than in their mother tongue!”

Unlike other European colonies, where English, French and Portuguese languages have a deep penetration and are widely spoken by the general population, SA is quite a unique case in Africa. Only 8% of the country use English as their home language, while Zulu language accounts for around 23%, distantly followed by Xhosa, Afrikaans and Sotho.

"There is a vast diversity in the languages spoken in South Africa, and these languages are all well represented in the cellular subscriber base since the penetration of cellphones in the country is so high. Marketers should not stereotype their entire target audience as literate English-speakers,” Van Deventer advised.

No statistics, but…

Asked to analyse the impact of using mother tongues in mobile marketing in SA, he replied: “There is no captured statistics available but if we could predict the percentage of companies that are marketing in various languages it would be estimated at less than 1%. There could however be companies that market in a specific language other than English but the majority still markets only in English.”

He added: “Marketers could also segment their target markets according to demographic and psychographic categories such as LSM banding, geographical location and declared interests to address each customer with relevant information and messaging.”

However, some observers said mother tongues and mobile marketing might not be matchmakers, but instead seems, for now, like a fairy-tale and a headache for most companies who would have to increase resources to adopt this strategy.

Van Deventer said: “As mobile marketing start to mature and gets seen as an effective way of reaching customers, so will the popularity and the need to reach the customers in the correct manner increase.

“This then means that the criteria that have been used to breakdown the customers will become more thorough. The drive will come from the customers who would start to realise the values in targeting the correct customers based on the language the technology is already available.”