Integrated Marketing Communications and Subscriber Growth in A Sub-Saharan Telecom Sub-Brand
Abstract
Telecommunications operators in Sub-Saharan Africa increasingly compete for subscribers not only through their master brands but through targeted sub-brands—distinct propositions aimed at specific segments such as youth, data-first, or value-conscious consumers—and the growth of these sub-brands depends heavily on the quality of the marketing communications that build their awareness, meaning, and appeal. Integrated marketing communications , the discipline of coordinating an organization’s communications across channels and touchpoints so that they reinforce a single, coherent proposition, is particularly consequential for a telecom sub-brand, because a sub-brand must establish a distinct identity quickly, in a crowded and price-driven market, across a communications environment that spans mass media, digital and social channels, below-the-line and trade activation, and the operator’s own owned channels. This paper examines how an IMC approach drives subscriber growth in a Sub-Saharan telecom sub-brand and develops the elements that make IMC effective in this setting. Drawing on the IMC literature, the brand-equity and communications-effectiveness traditions, and the emerging- markets marketing literature, the paper argues that the value of IMC for a sub-brand lies in the strategic consistency it imposes across a fragmented communications environment, the integration it achieves across the channels through which Sub-Saharan consumers are reached, the alignment of message and positioning to the sub-brand’s target segment, the sequencing of communications to the stages of the subscriber journey from awareness through trial and activation to retention, and the measurement of communications against subscriber outcomes rather than communications activity. The paper presents these elements, illustrates them through an anonymized account of a Sub-Saharan telecom sub-brand, and draws implications for how operators should configure communications to grow their sub-brands. Two themes recur: that integration is more valuable, not less, in the fragmented and multichannel communications environment of Sub-Saharan markets, because the coherence it produces is harder to achieve and more differentiating where it is achieved; and that IMC delivers subscriber growth only when it is measured against subscriber outcomes and managed as a driver of the subscriber funnel rather than as brand communications evaluated on awareness alone. ISSN 2545-5273 www.iiardpub.org
Keywords
integrated marketing communicationsIMCsubscriber growthtelecommunicationssub-brandbrand equitymultichannel integrationSub-Saharan Africamarketing communicationsemerging markets.
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