The Secret Strategies to Marketing a Cellphone

According to the Department of Customs Data, Nepal imported 86% of the total mobile sets from China in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2018-19. This shows that Chinese brands are slowly taking over Nepal’s market. Today, emerging Chinese brands like One Plus, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi, and vivo are swiftly increasing their market share in Nepal.

While other countries like India and Vietnam also export mobile phones to Nepal, they haven’t been able to match the growth of Chinese brands. Let’s look at some of the secrets that these emerging brands have been following which is leading to their growth in the mobile industry of Nepal.

• If you have built a brand with a unique value proposition, the process of launching new products becomes easier:

This is best done by Huawei in Nepal. Huawei has established a unique brand value as the best ICT solution provider in Nepal as a result of which the process of creating a brand affinity towards Huawei phones among the Nepalese consumers was easier.

As stated by Miraj Gurung, Training and Product Manager at Call Mobility, “Huawei is a trusted brand in Nepal. Because of us being the best ICT solution provider, we help telecom companies like NTC and Ncell control their servers. People know that Huawei brings nothing but the best and in our consumer category there is a belief that Huawei is a mobile phone which will not be accompanied by any problems.”

• Global Presence of a brand determines inclination in the local market:

How a brand does well globally determines how a brand will present itself in the local market. This secret has been best followed by vivo Phones.

The phone ‘vivo’ which is another Chinese mobile phone is doing well in the Nepalese market and a lot of it has to do with the global presence of the brand.

Mr. Piyush Giri, Senior Digital Executive of vivo Mobile Nepal Pvt. Ltd. stated, “vivo provides sponsorship to a lot of global events – whether it be Indian Cricket Premier League or FIFA World Cup or NBA Games. Through such sponsorship programs, we are being able to target a lot of the young audience who are sports enthusiasts which has helped us present our product to them.”

The brand has also collaborated with Marvel Movies and animated comedy like Minions. Likewise, the brand ambassador for the south Asian country of vivo Phones is Amir Khan. Since, Amir Khan is a popular actor who is admired by a lot of Nepalese people due to his credibility and perfectionism, his association with vivo Phones has additionally helped the brand mark a credible presence in the country.

• Setting the right target audience is everything that a brand could ever ask for: 

One Plus is also a Chinese Brand which has been experiencing speedy growth in the Nepalese market.

According to Mr. Chetan Oli, the Chairman at Oliz Store, “The target audience of One Plus is the age group between 18 to 40 years. This is the perfect target audience to connect to when it comes to mobile phones because an age group that falls below the bracket of 18 years usually lacks the budget to buy a phone by themselves and for the people who are above 40 years in age, their phone demands are usually fulfilled by people who belong to the age category of 18 – 40.”

Another major marketing strategy that has been used by OnePlus Phone is creating a hype in the market which can be associated with the fact that the company usually faces a situation of over-demand in the market. The supply of OnePlus Phone is limited and usually, there is a shortage in the market. This shortage itself creates a buzz among the customers and builds a ‘want’ in the customers to have the phone in their hands.

• Going the unsaturated way:

Cubot Mobile Phones from Shenzhen Huafurui Technology have now launched six models in Nepal. The mobile phones provide good design and specifications and their prices range in between NPR 7,000 to 15,000/-.

According to Mr. Puskal Khatiwada, Head of Sales and Marketing Operations at Kasthamandap Asia International, “We analyzed to find out that the market segment for phone prices above NPR 20,000/- was extremely competitive with the existence of many popular brands. We, however, found that when it came to the low range category of phones priced below Rs.15,000/- there was limited availability of the cellphones. A lot of brands that belonged to this segmented category have been wiped out from the market during the last few months so we came in to bridge this gap.”

Mr. Khatiwada further elaborated saying, “We believe that brand building takes time and thus we will be using the slow and steady marketing approach to promote our products. We will properly channelize our marketing funds and choose the best activities which will help us utilize our marketing budget efficiently. We will be having the best of promoters who will explain and help our consumers understand the actual product benefits rather than just explaining the technical specifications which the consumers already know through various reviews and digital content.”

Marketing strategies of mobile brands play a very important role in increasing sales. A popular tech-blogger on the condition of anonymity told, “Today the marketing strategies used by a brand play a key role in determining how popular the brand will become and how fast the sales will rise. Nova 2i was marketed as the first phone with four cameras and this unique selling point immediately hit people as a result of which the sales rose up.”

Hence, in today’s date, grabbing consumer’s attention and influencing the customers to buy a particular cell phone brand has become a complicated process. Today, the consumers have just so many options to choose from, thus the companies need to be careful about how they put out their marketing strategy with clarity in segmentation, targeting and positioning of the brand. If you can present to your consumers something which doesn’t already exist in the market, it is going to be the most challenging yet the most rewarding of all the marketing strategies that any company could use.

Article Written By Mahima Poddar