#Promoters as a Marketing Strategy
Hiring promoters has obvious advantages for businesses doing everything from selling caterpillar snacks in Burkina Faso to promoting artificial insemination for dairy cattle in Uganda. Rocket Internet successfully uses promoters to introduce internet brands such as Jovago and Jumia across the continent. That said, the danger is then assuming that the process of building the right team of effective promoters is straightforward and doesn’t require much planning.
Both Kahitouo Hein, founder and CEO of FasoPro, and Joseph Kajerero, Cofounder of Sanitation Africa have learned about the great potential and many difficulties in using promoters as an effective marketing strategy.
##Creating a Promoter/Distribution Network
Hein’s company FasoPro is selling caterpillars on a commercial scale for the first time. Although his main distribution channel is Total gas stations, he saw the benefit of creating a seperate rural focused distribution chain. Those distributors would both sell and promote the product.
People in these rural areas are used to eating caterpillars, but not buying them pre-packaged. Hein’s promoters needed to convince people that the higher quality of this product was worth the price. Simply relying on the product existing on the shelves of Total stations wasn’t going to accomplish that.
“It’s difficult to find the right person at one time, you have to trust in them the first time and give them the chance to feel like it’s their company.”
-Kahitouo Hein, founder and CEO of FasoPro
But Hein has also learned that it’s worth spending the time to pick the right promoters for this job. Simply hiring a group of students may have been enough to prove the viability of this strategy. But, to expand his operation and increase his sales, Hein has to get more serious about who he’s hiring.
##Hiring the Right Promoters
That’s where Kajerero has made his mark, in learning how to find just the right promoters.
Joseph Kajerero has run an 80 person team of promoters spread across 3 countries. How does he do it? He starts with the 7 Ps: product, price, place, promotion. people, process, and physical. These are the factors which will determine the success of failure of his promoters. As such, he has to take each into account both when hiring the right people and crafting the right strategy.
Let’s look at a previous project Kajerero worked on as an example. He was trying to sell artifician insemination equipment for cattle to farmers in Uganda. Problem was, these farmers simply didn’t believe Joseph’s solution would work. Even when they recieved free samples and seemed to show enthusiasm, that didn’t translate into sales.
“They refused, actually they didn’t refuse they said that’s good… You’ve gone ahead and trained the breeders on how to seminate, when you leave they throw it away, but you only realize that after some time.”
-Joseph Kajerero, Cofounder of Sanitation Africa
Kajerero faced similar difficulties selling toilets for Sanitation Africa.
“People who sell or offer sanitation products or services out there are always stigmatized. They don’t even attend public gatherings. You need to rise above if you’re selling it, sell it with dignity. How you come, what you communicate, will make a customer convinced that this is a different game.”
-Joseph Kajerero, Cofounder of Sanitation Africa
In both cases, the benefits of the products he was offering weren’t enough to get anyone to buy them. They required skilled promotion. That meant hiring a team of locals with a deep understanding of the mindset of the potential customers. So in applying the 7 Ps, Kajerero asked himself if this is the right promoter for this product, the right promoter for this price, this place, this promotion, etc. Everything from their tribal background to their physical appearance and life experiences fit into whether or not they’re the right promoter for a particular project.
By successfully employing systems which could continuously source and train promoters, Kajerero has revolutionized cow farming in East Africa and been considered one of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s major success stories there. Now, with Sanitation Africa, in less than a year his promotion networks have successfully deployed their products in three cities in Uganda. Without using promoters to grow fast, there’s no way Kajerero could have achieved this much this fast.
Can you relate to the stories we told here? How is your experience different? We’d love to hear from you. Your questions and comments are what will help us make better lessons in the future.