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Kenyan startup Wowzi has secured new funding to broaden the attain of its platform, which turns social media customers into model influencers, to West and Southern Africa — because it faucets the growing utilization of social websites throughout the continent pushed by the proliferation of smartphones and a deepening web penetration.
Wowzi, which connects social media customers with advertisers and gives shopper insights, has secured a complete of $3.2 million from buyers over the previous few months, a part of which features a not too long ago concluded $2 million seed spherical that was led by the Africa-focused enterprise capital agency 4DX Ventures. This was preceded by a $1.2 million pre-seed spherical.
Different buyers within the seed spherical had been To.org, Golden Palm Investments, LoftyInc Capital, Afropreneur Angels, and Future Africa. Andela co-founder Christina Sass, and former Andela executives Jessica Chervin, Justin Ziegler, in addition to Johnny Falla, who at present serves as chief growth and development officer at Wowzi, took half within the spherical too.
Wowzi plans to make use of the brand new funding to arrange operations in Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, searching for development alternatives past Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the place it at present has a bodily presence. It plans to make use of these new hubs to enter extra nations throughout the continent.
“We’re primarily centered on increasing throughout Africa in 2022 and in different rising markets globally,” Wowzi co-founder and CEO, Brian Mogeni, instructed TechCrunch.
“We’re additionally including new product capabilities and options, as we proceed to develop our expertise and supply extra worth to our communities,” he stated.
Wowzi makes it doable for manufacturers to companion with social media customers for advertising and marketing campaigns. This a brand new type of digital advertising and marketing that pivots from the norm of utilizing celebrities for advertising and marketing campaigns. Wowzi stated through the use of regular web customers, it’s tapping “extra genuine engagements or product endorsements” from individuals who work together with these manufacturers every day.
The startup additionally relieves manufacturers from the stress of managing influencers because the platform operates in an automatic style. To publish a marketing campaign, manufacturers filter out their most popular influencer demographic teams primarily based on traits like gender, location, career or earnings ranges. Wowzi then matches them with with the best kind of influencers for his or her wants. The manufacturers then refine their search (primarily based on the content material shared or stage of exercise) after which attain out to the influencers they need.
“Managing influencers is troublesome; from establishing contact, negotiations, contracting, making certain that content material is delivered and is posted on time to following up on fee. It’s lots of work. We handle the whole course of with the model to guarantee that it’s profitable,” stated Falla
Wowzi influencers are categorized as nano, micro, mega, meta and tremendous (celebrities), and so they perform advertising and marketing campaigns for manufacturers by way of their social media accounts on websites like Tik Tok, Twitter, Fb and Instagram. Nevertheless, Wowzi’s focus is principally on nano and micro influencers (social media customers with lower than 10,000 followers).
Anybody with no less than 250 (nano influencers) connections on a social web site suits the profile of a Wowzi influencer, however candidates should undergo a number of verification ranges earlier than they begin getting gigs.
“Manufacturers need to have extra genuine engagements or endorsements for merchandise, from individuals who use and love them, and might discuss actual sensible purposes. Our campaigns present that nano influencers ship higher gross sales leads due to the upper belief with their following,” Falla instructed TechCrunch.
“Manufacturers additionally entry a group of their most definitely prospects, and so this makes the campaigns hyper focused for them as nicely,” stated Falla.
Wowzi co-founders (l-r) Mike Otieno, Hassan Bashir and Brian Mogeni. Picture Credit: Wowzi.
Wowzi works with artistic companies or straight with manufacturers to assist them scale their campaigns. It has up to now labored with Coca Cola, Netflix, Safaricom, Diageo, P&G and Absa Financial institution.
The processes are automated, which implies that manufacturers get information they will use to judge the attain of the advertising and marketing campaigns.
“We provide a extremely complete reporting dashboard on-line. So, manufacturers can verify in to see precisely what occurred, what posts had been made by the influencers, which of them carried out the most effective and analytics of the demographics for individuals who had been really reached,” stated Falla.
Wowzi is the brainchild of Mogeni, Hassan Bashir and Mike Otieno, who co-founded the corporate mid-2019 however the platform went reside a day earlier than Kenya’s president imposed the primary lockdown final 12 months. Because it later turned out, a window of alternative opened as extra manufacturers realized that they needed to undertake different methods of selling as journey and human interplay remained restricted.
The startup has up to now labored with 200 manufacturers, carried out over 15,000 campaigns and delivered over 200,000 paid gigs thus far. Wowzi has grown 20-fold during the last one 12 months.
Extra not too long ago, manufacturers are capable of publish market analysis jobs together with the engagement of influencers in polls or surveys. That is a part of Wowzi’s plan to develop past an influencer advertising and marketing platform to a jobs aggregator.
“We not too long ago rolled out a market intelligence service which allows the identical manufacturers, SMEs or growth companies to drag info in a sooner, focused and richer format from their focal segments,” stated Mogeni.
Wowzi is now eyeing over 1 million job alternatives within the brief time period because it establishes a powerful pan-African presence. This aim is achievable for the startup, which has efficiently carried out campaigns throughout a number of markets in Africa together with Mauritius, Mozambique, Zambia and Cameroon.
“We really had our first engagement in Cameroon not too long ago after Netflix requested us to work with them in an extra eight nations. And so, what now we have seen is that we are able to scale simply, even with out the necessity for a bodily presence,” stated Falla.
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa 303 million folks, about 28% of the inhabitants, are related to the cellular web in line with the 2021 GSMA Cell Economic system report. That is anticipated to develop to about 40% of the inhabitants by 2025, providing an even bigger market to internet-based companies like Wowzi.
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