SME’s (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) have different marketing requirements; either they do it online or offline, or they do both. It is very clear what their specific goals are as well as short and long-term goals – Customer acquisition.
Digital marketing strategy, an integrated approach to online marketing, is a key component of every business’s overall marketing strategy in Nigeria. As a business owner whatever method of advertisement you choose, it needs to include a healthy portion of digital marketing strategies to be successful and optimize sales in today’s economy.
Whether you own a consignment store, run a coffee shop, or have just started a consulting business, you are always looking for ways to bring in more customers without breaking the bank. As a small business that is doing most or all of its business online, you need to embrace a digital marketing strategy that helps it be seen by online users.
Benefits of Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses (SMEs) in Nigeria
1. Connect with Customers
Through digital marketing, it’s much easier for you to connect with customers as it provides online businesses with automatic, real-time, and highly efficient ways to connect with the people most likely to become customers. This means it is easier to connect with people online than when at your local store or office. With digital marketing, you can also promote your business to a large audience. You’re in control of the image you portray. Maintain a continuous flow of content that is in line with your business. Prospects can come to your website or social media, read reviews from your previous customers, and be convinced to purchase your goods or service. Good customer engagement would also make your customers trust your business, and that is called brand loyalty.
2. Save Time
Many online advertising platforms enable you to collect data regarding your campaign, such as Google Analytics, to measure performance and make it more effective. Unlike the aspect of your offline business (traditional form) where you would need to begin getting data and imputing such before analyzing which is time-consuming. But with digital marketing platforms, it’s a different case, all data are readily available to you. You can then spend time on what’s working for your business and spare yourself from what’s not which helps save time and money and result in a high return on investment.
3. Scale Up
Numbers don’t lie. After you have gotten your data and you know what works, you can build and expand on your most successful marketing strategies, increasing your success which results in growth in sales and having a strong online presence. Which sometimes takes time to do when offline i.e. in traditional marketing. Digital marketing will upscale your business to a new level.
4. Efficiently Organized
Digital marketing (online marketing) consists of many different channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, etc. Because they’re all online, they can be combined to form a system for your business that helps in Branding & Online Reputation.
5. Market all the Time
With online channels, your business can be promoting itself even while you’re sleeping. And that’s a fact because at times you can wake up to see missed calls from last night from businesses needing your services or products. Hence with mobile marketing, customers can find and interact with your business wherever they are and whenever they want. Whereas with your traditional marketing (Offline), you won’t be able to market your products or services all the time.
With the evolvement of technology and the increase in the number of internet users in Nigeria it only makes sense for you to take advantage of the audience to promote your business. Business brands in Nigeria that still rely on traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers, billboards) to promote their businesses complement them by engaging in good online marketing. This is due to the large audience and brand engagement on online platforms.
Here are the essential digital marketing strategies to market your business while ultimately saving you a lot of money on gaining new customers.
Digital Marketing Strategies for SMEs In Nigeria
1. Build A Great Brand.
Branding is an important strategy for small businesses in Nigeria. Branding is a means of defining your business to yourself, your team, and your external audiences. A good brand can benefit everyone, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Particularly in this digital age, there’s plenty you can do to make your business memorable for your clients and customers.
Branding and identity are vital in helping convey your business’ strategic positioning to your customers, so it is vital to have a memorable business name, stylish logo, eye-catching color scheme, and a beautiful and professional website. All of these pieces should complement one another to evoke a very specific tone and feeling.
Let your consumers be able to recognize you and distinguish you from other brands in your industry. Branding helps you to position yourself as a top brand in the eyes of customers and creates better recognition.
2. Content Marketing
The goal of this strategy is to provide prospective customers with information about your product or service, as well as general information. Everybody wants to sell, but those who effectively inform are more likely to succeed. As a result, consumers will give a company a level of confidence that they are dealing with an expert firm.
You should create important content displaying your business values and the care you take to resolve people’s problems with your products or services. Then, distribute the content through the different social media channels online. This way of content marketing is a proven method to drive traffic towards your business from varied sources.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is another effective digital marketing strategy for small businesses in Nigeria. Using it is easy, gives you full control, and lets you establish direct contact with your customers. Whether it’s an online store or a physical store, email marketing will help you stay in touch with your customers and improve brand loyalty. You can include a pop-up on your website requesting visitors to subscribe to your weekly newsletter.
You can even compile a mailing list and send automated messages to your audience. They can include sales offers, new info about your store or business, and personalized birthday messages. Although growing an email list may take time but the results are remarkable for every small business in Nigeria. To avoid having your emails flagged as spam or having your audience unsubscribe, try not to send emails too frequently.
4. Social Media Marketing
Using social media marketing in the right way can be a great way to reach out to prospects and customers. It can also drastically improve small business sales. There have been several entrepreneurs who have built their entire businesses upon social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The purpose of social media as a digital marketing strategy for businesses is to attract new customers, engage them and convert them to paying customers. All in all, it will help you to increase your customer relationships and it will help you expand your reach to a relevant audience.
Every small business needs customers. Without customers, it would be hard for any type of business (big or small) to survive in the long run. While there are many reasons as to why you should use social media marketing for your small business to enhance and grow your company, the most obvious will be, to help you win more customers. And help your company gain more prominence.
You have to be regular and active on your social media platform to engage your audience. Hence social media marketing will increase brand awareness, increase the visibility of your website page (if you have any for your small business), blog posts, and generate more sales for your business.
5. Use Google My Business
Your small business can benefit from Google My Business as a powerful marketing tool. This platform is an effective marketing tool for businesses targeting local markets. On the search page, the listing appears in the top half ahead of the search results.
Therefore, work on getting your business to the top of the listings. If your marketing team is successful in getting your business listed in the top 3 listings, you are likely to get a considerable amount of traffic, which solely can bring you huge business without spending a lot of money on advertising.
6. Research Keywords For SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a series of strategies used by businesses to obtain higher placements on the search results pages of Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines in order to increase visits to their website. In other words, when a prospect makes an inquiry that relates to your industry, your website will appear high on the page. SEO would drive more traffic to your page and make your customers trust your page.
Good news? You can use it for free! Unfortunately, it is also very tricky.
It might take a while before you start seeing results from your SEO strategies, but it pays off in the long run. Keyword research is one of the easiest things you can do now to increase search engine traffic over time. To find out what keywords and phrases your target audience is using to search for information or products that your business can provide, you must use keyword research tools.
If you run a business with a website but you have not optimized your website for search engines, then you are losing money every day your website is not optimized in the search engines. Why do we say so?
- SEO attracts quality traffic
- SEO traffic is more likely to convert visitors into customers
- SEO increases leads and sales
- It does not involve any paid advertising
- Builds trust and credibility
- It is a long term strategy
7. Blogging
Blogging began as a personal platform or digital diary – the likes of Linda Ikeji. Even today, individuals and influencers continue to use blogs this way, but most businesses also use them for promoting their products and services online. A blog serves as a home for all of the information and expertise you have to offer your audience. Some of the other ways your small business benefits from blogging as a digital marketing strategy includes:
- Demonstrates expertise in your field
- Builds trust with your audience and customers
- Helps your website to get found by internet users searching for information related to your business.
You can even combine this particular digital marketing strategy with others stated earlier to improve your brand visibility. You can
- Promote your blog posts through your social media posts and marketing emails.
- Insert calls to action or even contact forms in your top-performing blog posts.
- Start a blog subscriber list so readers can receive new posts in their inbox
8. Set up a referral program
Today, one of the best and easiest ways to grow your business is by implementing referral programs. It is not easy to grow a business to the level of a successful corporation, especially when it is in its infancy. But in order to succeed it’s simply a matter of knowing the best and most appropriate strategies for your business and niche.
It’s only through continuous tracking that referral programs can succeed and remain successful. That is why you need to consider the tracking tools you will use during the planning process. As you track your campaign progress, you will be able to see where most of your referrals come from, what kinds of incentives bring the most actions, and so on.
Final Thought
As a small business owner in Nigeria, you need these digital marketing strategies to upscale your business to a new level. Odigital is the best digital marketing agency in Nigeria that sets to take care of all your online marketing needs at a reasonable price. Odigital is a digital marketing agency with professionals in Search engine optimization (SEO), Social media management, Website optimization, content marketing, and other digital marketing strategies to boost your business
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