Businesses need to build salience

MBOMBELA – Times are tough and businesses are feeling the pinch. The reality of a thin market is that you need to build salience – the brand’s propensity to be thought of in a buying situation.
Your goal is to be thought of first when decision makers are in the market for your product or service.

In a difficult economic climate shoppers tend to shop only when they need to. Which means all the time spent on traditional bulk shopping is not the current buying trend.
These are just some of the interesting facts recorded in Caxton’s ROOTS 2013 research project. ROOTS is conducted every three years by the research company TNS and for this it conducted 28 500 face-to-face interviews with decision makers.

The sample included 115 communities in all nine provinces. It is the largest urban, community-level qauntitive survey.

Based on these findings, ROOTS concluded that different people come into the market at different weeks and months of the year. You need to talk to them regularly and reach them when they are in the market for your goods and services. Businesses need to advertise as often as possible to maximise the chances of being seen and heard by the various pools of shoppers. Why would you advertise only at month-end, when shops are open every day?

By advertising regularly you remain “salient” and are less likely to be forgotten about. It reminds potential consumers that you are still in the market and have products and services they need.
ROOTS has also shown that markets and neighbourhoods have changed.
Think of where you live – gone are the days where your home didn’t have a fence and children roamed the streets.
Nowadays, communities live behind walls and security gates. In Mbombela, 14% of decision makers live in a secure estate or complex and the average household income is R21 663. In this business environment it is vital to keep abreast of changes and know your potential clients or markets.
This will enable you to talk to them and get them to choose your products or service.

In the ROOTS findings it was recorded that LSM 7 – 10 groups had an even spread of wealth from 21% to 27% . Only 5% of people in Mbombela earned less than
R3 999 per month while 3% earned R50 000 or more. Locals are generally hard-working, with 72% of respondents working full-time. The demographics between the sexes were spread 45% men and 55% women, with 68% of residents categorised as white and 29% black. Other areas of research included language groups, marital status and children per household.

The survey also included spending patterns in the small business sector like home and beauty, DIY and travelling. Consumer behaviour and market fundamentals still hold true with interesting findings that people prefer to shop locally, people aren’t loyal to a brand and that they plan their shopping. ROOTS showed that 88% of Mbombela, White River and KaMagugu food and grocery shoppers planned their shopping, with 85% planning during the week and 77% doing it over the weekend.

Advertising has become a numbers game. Your media need to provide high reach within your catchment area in the product that is locally relevant.

If you take into account that local newspaper circulation has increased by 174% since 1997 while dailies and weekend have experienced declining numbers, it becomes so much more important to advertise in the publication your market knows and reads. In the past three years Lowvelder’s readership has increased from 54% to 72%. Some of the popular dailies and Sunday newspapers sell only 11% in the same market.

This short film illustrates the power of words to radically change your message and your effect upon the world.

In 2013 Mr Warren Buffet invested $341 million in the local American press. He said, “Newspapers continue to reign supreme in the delivery of local news.
“If you want to know what’s going on in your town – whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football – there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.
“A reader’s eye may glaze over after taking in a couple of paragraphs about national or international news, but a story about the reader himself or his neighbours will be read to the end.” You have to make the decision which publication lives up to this expectation!

• The statistics shared in the above editorial focus on Mbombela. The research information for other Mpumalanga towns was also included in the survey. Lowvelder clients are welcome to contact Linda Pieters on 013-754-1600 if they want to book a seat at our ROOTS presentation.