Its amazing how big businesses in Nigeria are integrating digital marketing in their overall marketing plan and succeeding at it, yet most small businesses are either ignorant about its potentials and ability to help them grow their customer base and revenue.
Swat, Ofi and Crazy Leggs of Nigeria Info 95.1 FM played host to me and i shared insights about Nativedge and how small businesses can benefit from digital marketing services.
So i decide to share all that we discussed with you. to listen to the audio file click below or keep reading if you prefer text.
Swat: Once again we say thank you for always being out there listening in and participating in all the conversation we hold down right here on your number one top dial.
Well it’s time for us to talk about something a bit ehm different not from the political angle or whatever it is, it’s something that will help you improve on your skills one way or the other.
We are joined this morning by Daniel Obaike, mummy I hope I got it right this time around!
…laughs
Of Nativedge you’re welcome Daniel.
Daniel Obaike: Thank you very much.
Swat: Ok ehm! from what you told us the last time you were here with us, your firm seems to be one of the most knowledgeable digital marketing firms in Nigeria.
Now I would like you to talk more about the services Nativedge provides, starting with the search engine optimization (SEO).
Daniel Obaike: Yea thank you very much swats.
Search engine optimization can be defined as the process of ranking a website on the first page of google search displays, now out of a billion websites that exists on the internet why should google or Bing put a website on the first page when people go there to search for something. you know!
And what we try to do is device strategies that could place websites on the first page not only on the first page, there is what is called above the fold.
Above the fold is the first five result that come up in a search engine display, and that’s because people who go on google to search or other search engines are, I wouldn’t like to say lazy but they don’t seem to go beyond, you don’t want to scroll or go to the next page and all of that.
So it’s always better to get your website on…
Ofi: The first page
Daniel Obaike:That first page and first five
Ofi: Very well we do even myself ever go to the next page
Daniel Obaike: Any of the other pages right
Ofi: And they were like ten pages and then you have next
Daniel Obaike: Yes you have next and all of that
It’s really important because the search engines particularly google are; let’s say the giant and lords of the internet you know, you want your website or you want to invest in building a website because you want people to visit your website.
And the best way to get people to visit your website it’s to be friendly with the search engines, you need to be friendly with google when I say friendly with the search engines it’s just implementing strategies that will make them actually push people who come to them to your website.
Swats: Ok
Daniel Obaike: You know and that’s what we do for businesses that engage us for search engine optimization (SEO)
Ofi: Nativedge you guys are into social media marketing, what is that? And what do you do when you offer it as a service?
Daniel Obaike: Yea! social media marketing is one of the key marketing strategies that is evolving in our world as of today because everybody seems to be on social media, we all go on social media to interact with our friends and all of that.
Swats: Ok
Daniel Obaike:?And businesses are going on social media you know, and at Nativedge we like to take things beyond the ordinary we tell businesses, because it’s very easy for you to post something on Facebook and click boost.
But the thing is that they are strategies which could be implemented right, with the same budget that you can sit and click on boost, with that same budget we can get that post to reach more people and all of that.
For example you want to take up a post for Nigeria info and you say ok Nigerian info is hosting Daniel Obaike from Nativedge right, you click boost right and of course Facebook would project it to the world and all of that.
But with our social media marketing strategies a simple use of the Hashtag (#) can make the difference, a simple use of a targeting or retargeting strategy can make the difference and grant you more return on investments.
Swat: Ok, it seems to me that you see content marketing as very important. Ehm what exactly is it? And how can businesses benefit from that services.
Daniel Obaike: Content marketing! Content marketing like I said the last I was here, content marketing is just a way of sharing the experience of a product, a service or a brand to people through blogs or articles and you know all of that.
People really don’t respond very well to… Ehm maybe when you go on Facebook and they say buy this buy that, you know when you say for example you have a computer and you say the computer can achieve this.
You write about the features of the computer and all of that, people tend to aah OK, it can spur up that interest that can encourage the sale of the product and that’s what basically content marketing achieves.
You write content about the experience that people can get to achieve or benefit from a product, service or brand.
Swat: Ok and now let’s talk about online reputation management and the benefits there.
Daniel Obaike: Well online reputation management, OK, let me go back to a correction swat had made the last time I was here and said there were eight three million people connected to the internet and you said the numbers had gone up.
Yes you are right the number have gone up.
Swat: Definitely
Daniel Obaike: Now you have as of august last year 2015 we have ninety seven million people actually connecting to the internet from Nigeria, now with that huge amount of people connecting to the internet.
That means what could have been a gossip in a gathering of two or three people can reach ninety seven million people, your name can easily be soiled on the internet you know.
And our online reputation management system, we try to make sure that a name or a brand name that has been soiled or spoilt we try to make sure that only positive things about the particular name or brand is visible to people when they search the internet.
It’s not any form of black at or hacking technique it’s just we tie it to search engine optimization. We optimize the positive articles or news about the brand or the person in question and make sure that that is what is on top.
And we try to relegate the other negative things to the, let’s say Ofi you said the other pages that you never get to visit.
…laughs
Ofi: Alright ehm! You have a service that you call Digital Marketing Strategy, What do businesses stand to gain by engaging Nativedge for this service?
Daniel Obaike: Well digital marketing strategy, it’s our integrated mix of all of our offerings, now for certain businesses they have in-house IT people or in-house digital marketers.
Now and they think and say ok, they would like to have a unique marketing strategy that can actually assist them to achieve the purpose of their brand or their campaign, now the reach out to us and we research what they do and research their goals.
And we device strategy that could actually achieve that for them. But we do not implement for them because obviously they have an in-house team that can follow up with their implementation.
Swat: Ok let’s talk about the Per pay Click Service, can you give us an overview of that generally.
Daniel Obaike: Yeah pay per click is one thing that a lot of people in the digital marketing industry in Nigeria may not be happy with me about because I’m a strong advocate of not just clicking pay, clicking boost, I’m a strong advocate of result, I’m result oriented.
Of course, it’s not pay per click for example like I mentioned when we were talking about social media right, it’s not all about you clicking boost, it’s not all about you asking twitter to project your twits.
It’s about looking at the audience right, looking at ways that you can reach more people and also getting results. You set a goal and say OK for example I want this twits to reach twenty thousand people.
I want this twits to reach a hundred thousand people because I want five percent of that population to buy into my service or product. The end goal is the percentage of people who buy into your brand or service.
Swat: OK interesting, let’s talk about Email Marketing and how it can also add value to businesses.
Daniel Obaike: Email marketing, the email is said to be the most powerful tool on the internet because with the email you stand the chance of reaching people directly.
I know myself the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is to go through my mails and respond to them but we have a peculiar situation here in Nigeria.
When we launched our email service, one of my staff came to me and like sir! You know the owner of Barian Systems they are one of the biggest messaging and collaboration companies in Nigeria.
Why don’t you reach out to them let them give us five hundred thousand emails let’s use it to start our email marketing service, and I’m like you get it all wrong email marketing is not about email blast.
Swat: Ok
Daniel Obaike: Email marketing is about reaching out to people. Swat by nine o clock (9pm) this evening if I knock on your door how would you feel.
Swat: hummmmm!
Daniel Obaike: Right
….laughs
Swat: I will like hummmmm
Daniel Obaike: Yea you know that’s invasion of privacy
Swat: Yeah invasion of privacy
Daniel Obaike: You know what people do a lot of digital markers or email marketers do in Nigeria is to blast, blast emails to people.
Swat: Some people end up not even reading it they just put to jump mail to just delete it out.
Daniel Obaike: Yes, you know, I didn’t give you permission, I didn’t give you consent to send emails to me so why are you sending me emails? Right!
And that’s one of the angles or topics I would like to see come up in our national assembly you know.
We need anti privacy laws as regards emails, in the United States all over Europe there is anti-spam laws but that doesn’t exists in Nigeria nobody is talking about legislation to that regard. So our email marketing service we simply device strategies to ask people for their consent first of all.
Ask people for their consent, that’s why when you go on nativedge.com right a pop up comes? requesting that you register to receive our regular updates on our blog, that’s the first stage of email marketing if you sign up that means you have given us consent to send you emails.
Swat: Right let’s quickly move on to ehmm ..let me ask you this question with all the talk about raise of mobile, what does Nativedge mobile app do in assisting business to achieve growth?
Daniel Obaike: Yea! our mobile app services, we help clients build apps that put their service or product directly in the palm of consumers for example you are an online store right, you have products that you retail.
We build apps that people .. You know the internet has made all of us lazy
…laughs
Instead of going to type nativedge.com to look for a product or service you rather have it come as a message on your phone and that’s what we do, we build apps that put services or product of a brand in the palms of consumers.
Swat: Alright ehm what do you offer in your website design services?
Daniel Obaike: Website design services is a service that we’ve relegated to the back of all our service offerings because we have a lot of people who go over to businesses and say hey! Let mi build you a website and all of that you know.
If you look at statistics of websites from Nigeria that have never received any visitor you will be surprised.
Swat: Interesting
Ofi: Not one
Daniel Obaike: Not one. People put up websites and nobody ever goes to visit them, so you see that
…laughs
Daniel Obaike: I wouldn’t want to go there, so you see the money you spent or invested in building that website is money that you rather would have given to the less privileged in the IDP’s because there is no return on investment there.
So our website service is, we try to build website for people who are interested in getting return on investment that means we want to see that you have plans to get people to visit your website after we deploy it.
Swat: Alright so on a final note I know you are like a founder of the leading digital marketing firms in Nigeria. What advice do you have for businesses hoping to grow and to retain market shares in 2016?
Daniel Obaike: Yea we’ve heard from government circles, we’ve heard from so many economists in Nigeria talk about austerity measures for 2016. with the lifting of Iran’s sanctions we are going to see all prices further dropping.
The big question is how can businesses survive in 2016 with shrinking revenue base right. And my own point of view is it’s a time to device strategies that can retain your market share and keep you in the competitive zone, the most cost effective way so far is digital marketing.
Ofi: Someone is asking for how to contact you, do you want to give a number or email or website, how can people reach you?
Daniel Obaike: Yeah people can reach us on our website www.nativedge.com
Ofi: Is that two E’s
Daniel Obaike: One E, n-a-t-i-v-e-d-g-e .com
Ofi: Ok
Daniel Obaike: Or truth is that I offer free consultancy for businesses who want to device preliminary strategies to grow their business, I offer that and for that you can send an email to dobaike@nativedge.com
Swat: And obaike is spelt?
Daniel Obaike: D-O-B-A-I-K-E
Daniel Obaike: Or call our direct line on 09 290 0531
Swat: Alright we’ve been talking to Daniel Obaike of Nativedge, I hope you have all gained one or two things about digital marketing and how you can improve on your marketing and business.
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