7 TOP ONLINE BUSINESS STRATEGIES IN NIGERIA
7 TOP ONLINE BUSINESS STRATEGIES IN NIGERIA
As of June 2017, about 51% of the entire world population was on the internet. It was found that 18.6% of the female population in Africa had online access. In the America, this share was 66.7%.
An internet user is an individual who has access to the internet at home, via a computer or a mobile device.
So according to “internet live stats” there are about 3, 801, 524, 409 internet users in the world. Accordingly to this statistics, as at 2016, Nigeria ranked number 7 at 86,219, 965 among 100 countries with most internet users, Nigeria has the highest internet usage and penetration in the whole of Africa.
These findings have exciting implications for businesses, government and the society in general. Here’s this year’s Global Digital report.
- More than half the world now uses a Smartphone
- Almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone
- More than half of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones.
- More than half of all mobile connections around the world are now “broadband”
- More than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days.
- There are 2.80 billion global social media users in 2017 equally 37% penetration.
- 56 billion global mobile social media users in 2017, equaling 34% penetration
- 61billion global e-commerce users in 2017, equally 22% penetration.
- 7 of the 10 fastest growing internet populations are in Africa.
What all these data points to, is the fact that the entire world as we see it now is virtually online, therefore, it is imperative that as a business or organization you need to be able to reach the world, and what better way to do it than going online? I have carefully prepared here what I call the online business strategy.
- Create an online presence. Most entrepreneurs out there seem to neglect the potential of the internet. The internet has radically transformed how we build, promote and market our business over the years.
It is technically impossible for any business to thrive in this age without having an internet or online presence. This is the very first phase for getting your business online. You need to build a strong online presence.
The following are the steps to follow to create a strong online presence for your business.
– create a web site. Your web site is the nucleus of your business’ online hub, and the center of all your digital marketing. It has to be clean, easily navigable and also mobile friendly. There are so many e-commerce servicing companies that offer these services. All you need to do is contract the job to them and ensure they create a website that is up-to-date, attention grabbing, most of all mobile friendly.
– Online listing. Get your business listed in an online business directory, there are lots of online companies that run business directives, an example is the Google My Business.
– Social media. To open up your business even further to potential customers and investors, social media is your best bet. Simply get your business registered and sign up for social media accounts, such as face book, twitter, instagram, linked in etc. take advantage of every social media platforms available online.
- Create your brand. Building on online presence is a continuous activity. You need to create a brand, and also make it relevant. Note that relevance is key. When creating your brand, you have to do so in line with the benefits a customer would derive from doing business with you asking yourself the right questions is crucial to creating a relevant brand. Questions like
- What needs of the customer does your brand project to meet?
- Do we have a strong online reach?
- How can we make our brand appeal more to the customers?
To maintain an active and interactive web site in Nigeria you will need to incorporate proper content marketing into the mix. This can come in different forms, depending on your online business strategy.
Your content marketing strategy should center on giving prospective customers a well prepared and rich information about your product or service. Basically it involves giving information in general. Product and service description appeals more to customer. This is where content marketing comes in, people are more likely going to instill a certain degree of expertise to a company with good content marketing and this builds consumer confidence in your brand. Every information concerning your products, services, offers, sales etc and other forms of information should be posted on your business web site. Creating a blog is a very exciting form of content marketing. Your content must be useful and relevant to your customers/clients instead of pitching your products or services; you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their problems.
Your content marketing goal should be to attract, inform and engage an audience while also promoting your brand.
- Social media marketing. Social networking on social media is an extraordinary way to get before groups of prospects who are already talking about and searching for your products, services or expertise. Social media marketing is just about the most intense approach to get in front of your potential customers on the internet. Social media marketing in Nigeria is very cheap and cost effective. The idea behind social media marketing is gaining traffic or attention through available social media platforms.
There are two basic social media marketing strategies to use in Nigeria:
– Passive approach: this can be used to share information about your products/services in a two way communication system. Meaning that you also get to hear customer perspectives about your products.
– Active approach: you can use this approach to target specific customers with social media influencers and social media personalities. Social media web sites can target niche markets even more precisely. Using customer influencers, (for example popular bloggers in Nigeria) can be a very efficient and cost effective method to launch a business’s products or services.
You need to be able to be engaging on social media with the aim to build customer participation and also your brand reputation.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing. (SEM) search engine optimization is the process of making your site more visible in search engines so you get more traffic from people searching for the products or services you offer on the internet.
You will need to research on how to create a good SEO plan. Otherwise you are likely going to lose a significant number of prospective customers.
SEO lets your name and site to show up on a list of search engine result pages (SERPS). With a solid SEO technique, your site will get to be related with the keywords used to find out your kinds of products and services. Roughly 90% of the clicks are on the top 3 positioned sites. You need to business build web pages with keywords in the Meta tags, page, titles, headlines, URLs and content.
Search engine marketing involves getting more visibility in search engines either by getting more free traffic (SEO) or paid traffic. Through paid search advertising you essentially buy advertising space in the search engine results. So instead of buying to rank higher through the use of free traffic, you can pay to appear in front of the searches.
The most well Known advertising agency for PSA (paid search advertising is Google Ad-words. Using Google Ad-words you can get your ads to appear in the Google search results and you get to pay only for the clicks on your ads, known as pay-per-check (PPC).
The SEM traffic is undoubtedly the most relevant source of internet traffic because it is targeted. It increases your chances of getting “conversions”.
- Conversion optimization: all these strategies I have listed only aims to get more people on your site, but what do these people do once they are there? Good question.
But first let’s settle what conversion really is: Marketingshepa handbooks defines conversion as, “the point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action”. In other words conversion is simply when someone responds to your call-to-action on your web site.
For example, getting someone to open an e-mail is a conversion, making orders by checking on a call-to-action is a conversion, going to the landing people and filling out a registration form to read your content is a conversion.
You have to determine clearly what your conversion optimizations objectively are by first asking yourself these questions
- Who am I trying to covert?
- What am I trying to convert them to?
You must also determine and clearly define what your ultimate conversion should be. Conversion optimization helps you ensure you get more value out of each and every visitor by maximizing your rate of conversion.
- Email marketing. This basically involves sending a commercial message to your customers/conversions via use of email. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales from potential or current customers. Email marketing is a very basic online business strategy that you can use to build loyalty, trust or brand awareness for your business. Note that it is not enough to just send out emails. You may also need to consider various email lists that cater to the “specific” needs of each individual, and also present a “personalized “approach to your campaign. Study the habits of your customers and use that information to develop your strategy.
A strong online business strategy will help you to boost your business in Nigeria. By following the above tips you’ll be on your way to creating a strong internet marketing strategy that will boost your business tremendously.
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