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Businesses in emerging markets such as China, Latin America, and Southeast Asia are skipping over many of the more seasoned forms of advertising for a mobile-first approach. In some of these areas, print and billboard advertising are used to help drive mobile advertising and mobile economies.

In 2014, mobile advertising expanded faster in China than in any other country, according to eMarketer, and was on track to become the nation’s largest digital advertising channel by 2016, and to reach nearly $50 billion in value by 2019. 

“In Southeast Asia, marketers are increasingly focused on mobile as a highly effective form of customer interaction and engagement,” says Siva Ganeshandan, director of Adobe cloud marketing for Asia Pacific. “Research also shows that the mobile-first business transformation in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole is outpacing the United States in smartphone business.”

According to Ganeshandan, Southeast Asia saw an 18 percent increase in smartphone visits for top Web sites and an 11 percent visit for average Web sites between 2014 and 2015. Web site visits from tablet devices increased 9 percent in the same period.

“The incredible growth in mobile Web consumption has created a core opportunity for businesses to reach their audiences on more platforms,” Ganeshandan says.

Those figures are expected to increase as the user base continues to expand. According to eMarketer, the user base in the Asia-Pacific region grew by nearly a quarter in 2014, and more than 40 percent of Twitter users will be in the region by 2018.

The Asia-Pacific region is not alone in seeing such growth, eMarketer suggests. The market research firm says that more than 227 million people in Latin America—nearly a third of the region’s population—are on social networks. 

TECHNOLOGIES, ECONOMICS ALIGN

Mobile-first marketing has emerged in the past few years due to a combination of legacy factors and new economic developments.

Cable and landline technologies, prevalent in the United States and other developed countries before wireless technologies evolved to the point where they could handle data-rich communications, never gained a foothold in emerging markets. Emerging markets effectively bypassed the older technologies to quickly adopt mobile devices and connectivity, with smartphones gaining traction with the growth of 3G/4G connectivity.

According to eMarketer, there will be 2.51 billion mobile phone users in the Asia-Pacific region by 2016, representing 62.5 percent of the population. Nearly 41 percent have smartphones. China has 1 billion mobile phones in use, with a little more than half of those smartphones. Mobile phone penetration for the region is expected to reach 69.4 percent by 2019.

“Due to the transient nature of many communities, the congregation of many others, and the sporadic availability of postal service and hard-wired technologies, prepaid mobile was huge,” says John Timmerman, global marketing manager for Teradata’s marketing applications. “I noticed this on a trip to India. Since it was so difficult to get adequate landlines run to so many different residences, it was much easier for the community to purchase highly mobile cellular technology. You didn’t need a physical mailing address or a phone hanging on the wall. All you needed was a SIM card and a relatively inexpensive handset.”

Most of the emerging markets have huge mobile penetration and sharp smartphone adoption in areas like Latin America and India, says Alberto Pardo, CEO of Adsmovil, who sees plenty of opportunity to further expand mobile marketing in emerging markets.

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IMPROVE 

Emerging markets are also enjoying improving overall economies, leading to emerging middle classes. Improving incomes mean improving discretionary incomes for items like smartphones, and prepaid plans are prevalent,  rather than the subscription model that dominates in the U.S.

While incomes are increasing, the cost of wireless devices is falling due to the rise of device makers such as Qmobile in Pakistan, iMobile in Thailand, and other local brands providing inexpensive smartphones. Qmobile sells phones ranging from $143 on up to $255, depending on features and functionality; iMobile offers smartphones for as little as $125.

Beyond those smaller, nation-specific manufacturers, Xiomi of China is offering inexpensive smartphones throughout the world, including a small initial penetration into the U.S., according to Cobi Druxerman, cofounder and chief marketing officer of Taplytics. This has driven other device manufacturers, notably Apple and Samsung, to develop lower-priced devices targeting these markets as well.

MOBILE MARKETING CHALLENGES REMAIN 

Each country requires a separate approach, experts advise. So it’s imperative to understand differences in language, culture, and more. Buying trends and needs differ as well, Druxerman says.

Those differences aren’t limited simply by national boundaries, adds Tanisha Gupta, director of product marketing for FollowAnalytics. For example, northern India and southern India vary vastly in terms of language and religion. 

“The biggest challenge is localization,” Gupta says. That means more than simple translation. Some game developers, for example, have tried switching languages without changing anything else and have failed miserably when entering new markets. Each country has its own legends, folklore, and traditions that need to be accounted for when developing or marketing games or other goods or services—whether in India, various parts of Latin America, or elsewhere

Gupta singled out Supercell, the developer of Clash of Clans, as a good example of a company that went to an emerging market, in this case China, to understand the culture and folklore and made the necessary region-based changes before launching the game. Though she had no exact figures, Gupta claims the game has been extremely successful there.

Another important cultural difference is the relative popularity of various sports. Sports marketers in Latin American countries, for example, need to understand the immense popularity of soccer in these countries and take this into account in designing their marketing strategies, Pardo says.

TECHNOLOGY DIFFERENCES ABOUND

The regional differences in emerging markets extend to the underlying technologies, with devices, wireless capabilities, and data coverage varying from market to market, country to country, and even within regions of a country. 

For example, Latin American countries are skipping over tablets to go directly to “phablets” (devices with 5.5- to 6.9-inch screens), says Alessandro Fonseca, senior territorial manager for DPS Latin America. According to IDC, the number of phablets in the region will jump from 3.7 million in 2014 to 38 million in 2018.

Consumers in other countries are buying smartphones, but many of the cheaper models have less processing power and touchscreen precision, making it harder to provide a consistent experience across all devices, Fonseca says. 

Similarly, some countries have relatively good wireless coverage, but 3G or 4G connectivity may be available only in or near population centers, Gupta says. Wi-Fi hot spots, like coffee shops, are popular in areas with spotty coverage.

Device sellers in some countries preload all or most apps on phones; in others, the consumer is more in charge. It’s important to note, however, that consumers in emerging countries don’t download as many apps as U.S. consumers do, so marketers have to make those apps very compelling, says Julie Ask, Forrester vice president and coauthor of The Mobile Mindshift.

DIFFERENT AREAS, SAME CHALLENGES

Mobile-first marketers in emerging countries face many of the same challenges as marketers do in the U.S., experts agree. While smartphones remain the preferred communication device, not everyone has the same device or the same capabilities.

Some consumers have moved to phablets; others use small-screen devices. Still others, albeit a minority, have access to the larger screens of office laptops and PCs. So responsive design, displaying the right message and Web site size for the right device, is essential, says Chuck Whiteman, senior vice president of MotionPoint. “You won’t win if you’re trying to develop a unique experience for each type of device.”

Other experts recommend that mobile-first advertising strategies focus on individual marketing. People who have PCs and laptops tend to be sharing the devices. The mobile phone, on the other hand, is a personal device. But the owner can be difficult to identify.

“The greatest challenge is consistent customer identification,” Timmerman says. “Many of these markets still rely heavily on prepaid access. So the SIM card associated with a customer today may not be the device associated with the same customer tomorrow, or the next week or next month. So these businesses will have to find a way to get customers to uniquely identify or authenticate themselves across a myriad of physical devices. Otherwise, they will always be marketing to the average of the population, not to the individual.”

Companies can overcome this challenge by compelling customers to self-identify so that the enterprise can deliver individualized marketing messages, Timmerman says.

At the same time, companies should consider localized limitations of technology users. Video-rich advertising, for instance, doesn’t make sense in areas where the vast majority of the target audience has only 2G or limited 3G access. “Companies must tailor their mobile marketing accordingly in order to reach the broadest audience,” Fonseca says.

Emerging markets can also demonstrate a lack of alignment between consumer intent and advertising execution, Ganeshandan says. Audience reach is growing in Southeast Asia, he points out, but click-through rates remain extremely low. “Businesses need to gain better understanding of consumer interests in emerging markets in order to improve engagement with mobile marketing content,” he says.

But that can be easier said than done. “To deliver the right message, you have to be able to track what the user is doing; that’s difficult to do with mobile apps in emerging countries because only 60 percent of them include any tracking capabilities,” says Karen Wood, director of product marketing for Encytin.

Start with a marketing strategy for awareness, content, and conversion, says Eric Holmen, senior vice president of global sales for Invoka. “Once you have those three things figured out, you can be really bullish, because the marketing costs are low. The buyer is looking for an easy way to engage on mobile.”

WORK WITH ECONOMIC DISPARITIES

The cost structure for entering and advertising in each market differ, Druxerman cautions. So marketers and their clients need to understand the potential returns in different markets and closely monitor whether actual results keep pace with initial projections. If results lag, determine what strategy shifts the company needs to make in its marketing plan.

“The mobile market is so new in many of these places that, in order to be a mobile leader, you need to quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t by doing some intensive testing and experimentation,” Druxerman says.

While fulfillment, payment, and delivery are relatively mature in the U.S., far more problems exist with bottom-of-the-funnel issues in emerging markets, cautions Moshe Kranc, chief technology officer of Ness Technologies. Companies need to understand and work with local delivery systems, payment methods, etc., to ensure promises aren’t made through mobile advertising that can’t be met on the back end.

Though smartphones and carrier plans have become more affordable, they’re pricey by emerging-economy standards, Holmen adds. While the middle class is emerging in many of these markets, affluent people are few, and a large percentage are still eking out an existence. So he recommends that marketers work with wireless plan providers on advertising subsidized plans and, where 3G and 4G are available, using pre-roll video that plays for a few seconds before the user can opt out—similar to YouTube and other digital video ads in the U.S. It’s essential that any such video has strong product identification and call to action before the user can opt out.

ADVICE FOR SUCCESS

Marketers offer several overarching tips for entering and succeeding in emerging markets. Forrester’s Ask recommends that companies entering emerging markets follow the leads of brands that have been successful with “manufacturing mobile moments,” creating new reasons for consumers to engage, such as apps targeted to pregnant women or entertainment-based apps. Other brands are “borrowing mobile moments” by tapping into the audience breadth on platforms such as WeChat, BBM, KakaoTalk, Line, WhatsApp, and Facebook, to build an initial mobile audience because it’s so difficult to start from scratch.

“Borrowed mobile moments are most essential to winning Chinese customers,” says Xiaofeng Wang, a senior analyst at Forrester. WeChat, with 500 million active users, and a few other mega-apps with a wide range of features dominate consumers’ mobile activity. Half of consumers’ mobile minutes are spent on WeChat alone. So consumers are less likely to download and use individual brand apps, which consume valuable memory and provide less total capability than the mega-apps. Taxi-hailing apps are also popular and offer compelling cross-promotional opportunities.

Work with national and local partners, several experts suggest. Native marketing and business experts understand the language and cultural differences. “Nobody knows a market like a member of that market,” Timmerman says. “A marketing campaign for India won’t necessarily work well in Eritrea, Addis Ababa, or Dar es Salaam. There’s no magic here. You still have to know your market, you still have to individualize your messaging, and you still have to respond at the speed of your customer. The real key is to get some local insight and to use a partner that has experience in the region.”

However, experts caution that local app developers are in high demand and low supply, so they command high compensation. As developers are trying to create and manage assets for the myriad of devices, operating systems, form factors, and connection speeds, mobile development apps that can deliver digital asset management and content management capabilities are crucial, says Fonseca.

“Be as exact as you can when targeting emerging markets,” Gupta adds. “For example, if you go into Latin America, you are likely not going to start off with all of Latin America.” Typically, a company will move into one Latin American country, then expand to others. Concentrate on the culture, language, available technology, and other unique attributes of the initial country (for example, Costa Rica) rather than strategizing for the region (Latin America) as a whole, even if that is in the company’s long-term plans.

The emerging markets still have many challenges, as noted above. But following these tried-and-true mobile-first strategies can help marketers find more opportunities—and increase their chance of success—in these growing economies.  

Phil Britt is a freelance writer who focuses on high-tech, financial services, and other industries. He can be reached at spenterprises@wowway.com.