Why digital marketing strategy in Nigeria: Digital marketing strategy for small scale and medium businesses

Some people usually ask, if there is any need for their businesses to go digital here in Nigeria. They are curious to know if digital marketing would be of value to their businesses. However, I have outlined the significance of embracing digital marketing strategies, especially for smaller businesses which I think would address that question.

The following are the significance of digital marketing for small scale and medium businesses:

• You connect with more customers online – Digital marketing basically is an internet based form of buying and selling of goods ad services. It is not the usual traditional form of Gone are the days when people scan through volumes of phone directories or browse through pages upon pages of broadsheets to look for information about a product or service. Now, a huge percentage of consumers use the Internet to make their search for information a whole lot easier and convenient.
• Digital marketing saves time and money – There are some online free tools that will help boost your business performance. You do not need to spend money or whirl away your time looking for analysts for instance. With some of the tools, you are relieved of much stress. For instance, if you are using Hootsuite, you would be able to get a complete summary of your social media posts. The same thing applies to Google analytics.  Small business owners are already getting such benefits from digital marketing.

• You don’t need to waste money and time. Even if you do have sufficient resource it may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.
• Digital marketing enables gives room for customer service – There are various analytical tools that you can use as a small business owner to track the performance and even the data of your customers. You analyze the data and figure out if you This real-time response mechanism offered by digital marketing can give a big impact on the success of your business.
• Digital marketing allows to reach out to both mobile and smartphone users– Most of the people that surf the internet in search of information mostly do that with their smartphones and that paves way for a digital marketing strategy to come into play. Digital marketing can help you tap this huge market, now that mobile marketing generates up huge traffic, as well as also influencing the buying behavior of these consumers.
• Digital marketing delivers higher ROI – Through good channels, targeted audiences, generate leads and increase in conversion rates, the return on investment is positively affected.  For the fact that digital marketing has proven to generate better Cost-Per-Lead compared to traditional marketing or even telemarketing, higher  revenue will be generated and that’s really good for business.
• Digital Marketing gives you platform to compete – Many brands and businesses are ramping up on their digital marketing campaigns, using various channels available, including display, PPC, mobile and social media. And digital marketing does not only keeps you at equality with your competitors, it can also enable you to compete head to head with big brands and large corporations.

 Why you need a digital marketing strategy

• You need to be focused-When you are focused on organizational goals, you would be able to achieve them, as far measures are put in place to achieve it. the There are companies without a digital strategy or clear strategic goals for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones.
• You need to be integrated –Most big organization get this part wrong. Getting your digital marketing components will yield more powerful results if they are integrated. It’s easier that way to package digital marketing into a convenient chunk. But of course it’s less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media work best when integrated with traditional media and response channels.
• You need to have digital budget –Setting out a specific budget targeted at digital marketing campaign will go a long way in driving results.Insufficient resource will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.
• Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share-If you’re not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you’re using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!
• You don’t have a powerful online value proposition-Value proposition is not a slogan, rather a comprehensive, clear statement that shows what a customer or prospect tends to gain during or after purchase. A clearly defined online customer value proposition will help you differentiate your online service, encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.
• You need website optimization– There are various website optimization, you can apply in auditing and optimizing your website, but it’s your duty to have figures reviewed. Once a strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can progress to continuous improvement of the key aspects of digital marketing strategy.
• You need to know your customers-There is usually set o tools that could be used to track the information of your customers. For instance, Google Analytics will only tell you volumes not sentiment. You need to use other forms of website user feedback tools to identify your weak points and then address them.

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