Kenya's 7.4 million MSMEs and the marketing data nobody collects
The national survey counts the businesses, the jobs and the share of GDP. It does not count what their marketing returns, because almost nothing measures it.
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Insights
Growth marketing,written for Africa.
Field notes on Kenya's MSME economy, the cost of a real customer, and what actually moves foot traffic. Every figure is sourced.
2.2 million closures: what the MSME survey says about survival
Most closed businesses were young, and most were in trade. Neither fact is about marketing, and both are made worse by marketing you cannot measure.
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45 million mobile money subscriptions: why a reward can reach almost anyone
Kenya's telecoms data explains why reward advertising works here: the phone number is already the wallet, the ID and the channel.
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What KSh 4,840 buys: reading a TAM package like an owner
A package is a price, a number of guaranteed engagements and a unit cost. Here is how to hold each one up against your own till.
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Advertising for businesses customers visit twice a year
A hardware yard, a mabati dealer or a furniture maker does not need daily footfall. It needs to be the name remembered on the day the roof is bought.
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Young Kenyans are not ignoring ads. They are ignoring bad deals.
Skipping an ad is a rational response to an exchange that gives nothing back. Change the exchange and the behaviour follows.
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MSME advertising in Kenya, by the numbers
Kenya runs on micro, small and medium enterprises. Most of them advertise; almost none of them can say what it bought. The data on where the money goes and why it rarely comes back.
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What a verified customer action actually costs
Advertisers are used to cost per click and cost per thousand. Cost per verified action is a different animal, and the difference is where the money is.
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The Mama Mboga advertising playbook
The smallest businesses have the tightest feedback loop between a customer arriving and money in the till. That makes them the best possible test of whether advertising works.
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How Kenyan retailers can double foot traffic without increasing ad spend
The budget is rarely the problem. The unit you are buying is. Here is how shifting from impressions to verified actions changes the arithmetic of retail growth.
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Why most online ads never create real customers
The attention economy has a supply problem: attention given for free is withdrawn for free. Understanding that collapse explains why performance keeps eroding.
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Reward-driven marketing: the next wave in Africa
Mobile money made value transfer instant and universal. That single piece of infrastructure makes a reward economy possible here before anywhere else.
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Consumer reward psychology: why instant beats bigger
A small reward received now consistently outperforms a large reward received later. The design implications for campaigns are significant.
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Playbook: designing a repeat-visit campaign for a restaurant chain
A worked design, not a case study: how a quick-service chain could use a second reward to turn first visits into a habit, and what to measure in TAM.
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How African businesses can acquire customers profitably
Profitable acquisition is a discipline, not a channel. Four constraints that decide whether growth compounds or quietly burns the budget.
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Stop guessing. Start measuring.
See what a verified customer actually costs in your category.