Google’s Lorraine Landon Highlights Growth Barriers Limiting Marketing ROI In Sub Saharan Africa

Lorraine Landon is the head of advertising solutions for Google in sub-Saharan Africa. Source: Supplied.

In sub-Saharan Africa’s dynamic digital landscape, this means the conversation between CMOs and CFOs is changing. We’re moving away from viewing marketing as an expense line item and toward a reality where it is a vital revenue driver.

Yet, despite the mindset shifts taking place or the tools at our disposal, many brands are hitting a ceiling.

Through my work with brands across our region, I’ve identified three primary growth blockers that consistently stand in the way of true ROI. Here is how we can dismantle them:

Growth blocker 1: Closed-door budgeting is closed-door thinking

Demand is not a flat line; it fluctuates. And one of the most common blockers I see is the "closed door" policy created by rigid monthly budgets. When a marketing team relies on a fixed budget, regardless of market demand, they effectively turn customers away as they are still trying to get in.

For example, you may see more demand for a certain product on Sundays or higher search interest for a specific keyword in the evenings, but your daily budget has capped how much demand you’re allowed to capture and convert.

Moreso, fixed budgeting isn’t just about changing numbers on a spreadsheet, but evolving the psychology of the finance team. CFOs have traditionally enjoyed the control that finite, capped budgets have afforded the business, and thinking of budgets in fluid terms is the antithesis of that.

Here’s how CMOs in sub-Saharan Africa can can convince their finance team to see demand-led budgeting as the path toward ROI growth:

Quantify the loss: Show your CFO exactly how much value is being left on the table by budget constraints by running a test over three-to-six months to show the varying results of rigid versus demand-led budgeting. By opening the tap for a controlled experiment, you can provide the data validation needed to prove that fluid budgeting anchors directly to the business’s profitability goals.

Show the value of a demand-led budget with AI-powered bidding: While smart bidding instructs the system on who to find based on targets like ROAS, rigid budgeting limits the scope, preventing the underlying AI from capturing all identified high-potential customers. Demand-led budgeting provides the necessary fuel for smart bidding to operate at its peak.

Growth blocker 2: Over-indexing on conversions while neglecting branding

There has been a historical divorce between brand and performance teams, leading to silos and fragmented strategies. Over-weighting on performance marketing is great for converting customers who want to make a purchase now, but it fails to create new demand from people who are still perusing and contemplating.

Especially in highly contested verticals like flight booking or insurance, a strong branding strategy ensures consumers default to you rather than searching for expensive, generic keywords such as “car insurance" or “flights to [location]”.

Here’s how brands can create their ideal brand-performance mix:

Find your golden ratio: To find your unique blend, CMOs should instruct a testing period with several campaigns using different brand-performance budget splits.

The long-term commitment: As consumers change — and the landscape of your vertical — your branding should continue. Google research shows that investment in brand activity doesn’t just drive long-term growth, it boosts short-term performance. Analysis across categories reveals that a 1% increase in brand awareness typically drives a 0.6% lift in long-term sales, while also boosting short-term sales by 0.4%.

Growth blocker 3: The "broken pipes" of data strength

We often talk about how clean data translates to ROI, but without data strength, which speaks to the maturity of a business’s data ecosystem, this outcome can’t come to fruition. Product adoption from Google’s suite of tools will increase, diversify, and improve your data — but this isn't just about having data; it’s about a comprehensive architectural plan to inform your marketing decision-making.

Think of your data infrastructure as a series of pipes that supply flowing water — or, audience signals — to your taps (campaign goals, in this instance). If you have broken or non-existent pipes, your flow of audience signals may be reduced to a dismal trickle. Ultimately, this erodes the strength of your data application.

For CMOs in sub-Saharan Africa, the conversation needs to move from straightforward product adoption to a structural, forward-thinking data plan:

Centralise your data: Bring all your data together — including offline data, transaction data, and CRM — from its various sources. You can do this with Ads Data Manager, a tool that centralises a brand’s multiple data sources, streamlines conversion measurement and audience targeting.

Enrich and bridge your data: Enrich your data with various signals, such as hashed customer signals (like email addresses), to increase observability and improve attribution from ad interactions to purchases.