The effect of media strategy on advertising effectiveness among the mobile service providers in Kenya

Abstract

Billions of Kenya shillings have been spent on the advertising by large corporate companies in Kenya with mobile service providers taking the biggest share of the advertising spend. There are over 40 radio stations, over 10 television stations and a number of print newspapers and magazines in Kenya and therefore is a great need to identify a way to communicate your message to the right target market effectively. Media strategy involves determining which communication channels will be used to deliver the advertising message to the target market at the right time. Decisions must be made regarding which types of media will be used (e.g. newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, billboards) as well as specific media selections (e.g. a particular newspaper or TV program). This task requires careful evaluation of the media options’ advantages and limitations, costs, and ability to deliver the message effectively to the target market. The purpose of the study was to identify what media strategies are being used by mobile phone companies and to determine the extent to which these media strategies influence advertising effectiveness. The study sampled all four mobile phone companies in Kenya; Safaricom, Airtel, Essar and Orange Telecom through census due to the small number of the population study. The study revealed that Radio, TV and Newspapers are the top three most used medium to advertise and the greatest challenge in identifying the media strategy was monitoring. A key objective was to determine the extent to which these media strategies influence advertising effectiveness and the two top most reasons were given as brand awareness and knowledge and recall. The researcher recommends that mobile service providers’ media strategies should be regularly analyzed including all internal and external factors affecting them to measure their influence on advertising effectiveness.