It is no longer a question of if companies in Nigeria should execute a digital marketing strategy.
The question for most companies is how to best execute a meaningful and engaging approach that generates results. With so many social media marketing options available, marketers must also decide best practices and what tactics to avoid.
We all make mistakes as marketers and it’s important that we not only learn from those mistakes but share with others, so they too can use them to grow their Business.
I hope that the digital marketing Do’s and Don’ts that I’ve provided within this article not only entertain you but make you think about your current digital marketing strategy.
Which tactics are you happy to say you’ve implemented and which mistakes will you admit to?
First, let’s get clear on what is Digital Marketing. Simply put, it’s getting your business in front of new and existing clients through various means of delivery: Desktop, Laptop, Tablet and Smart Phone. With all the avenues we can reach our audience, it’s important to keep all the little nuances and specifics for each medium in mind.
Below are my recommended suggestions for getting the biggest bang out of your Digital Marketing efforts. It’s a little bit more than firing out a few posts on Facebook or Twitter once or twice a week. But don’t let this overwhelm you- the items below will benefit your business and help it grow on many levels.
#1: DO’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Know Your Brand
Branding is the most important aspect of every business. It is how you communicate with your audience what your company represents. Branding is a great way to give your business a personality and voice.
It is your promise to your customers, and it can be difficult for your target audience to connect and engage with your business without it. Having an active and efficient branding strategy is what differentiates your business from your competitors.
Before spending money on digital marketing, be sure to build a strong brand. Here are a few points to consider when defining your business:
- What is your business’s mission statement?
- What benefits and features do you want your products or services to offer your customers?
- What qualities do you want your customers to associate with your business?
Take, for example, someone going into business as a lawyer. It’s pretty easy to define that brand — a person who practices law, right? But to build a brand around his practice, a lawyer needs to determine specifically what kind of law he focuses on and what kind of client he is targeting before any marketing can begin.
That means thinking through what regions of the world, categories of law, style of service and other offerings he brings to the table.
#2: DON’T’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
For your digital marketing strategy to be successful, you need to take advantage of all the different elements that entail digital marketing.
The goal is to use different mediums to reach the most people because everyone consumes content in different ways. As such, it will be a crime to only focus on one element of digital marketing.? Digital marketing success can be achieved through diversity.
With the constant developments in marketing technologies, it is best practice to be knowledgeable about different elements of digital marketing. Be sure to try out different marketing techniques to find out what the best way to market your business is. Here are some of the digital marketing techniques to consider for your business:
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
- Blogging
- PPC
All these different mediums have their advantages. Having social accounts on Facebook and Twitter is necessary for direct communication with your customers. Having a blog is essential for search engine optimization. Email marketing is great for advertising to a targeted consumer base and so on.
Instead of putting all your eggs in one digital marketing basket, take advantage of the various elements of marketing listed above to help your business grow and stay ahead of the competition.
#3: DO’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Know Your Competitors
Knowing what you are up against is the best way to stay ahead of your competition. Knowing what your competitors offer and how their products are better or worse than yours can help make your business stand out. I have already written a detailed article about conducting a competitive analysis, you can read that here.
You can use your competitor’s weaknesses and strengths to improve your business model for the better. When evaluating how your competitors do business, be sure to pay attention to the following:
- The methods they use to market their product or services
- The actions they take to enhance customer loyalty
- The digital marketing tools they employ for their business
Competitive research should be an integral part of your marketing strategy to keep you one step ahead. Having a good digital marketing strategy can boost your blog traffic by as much as 232%.
Doing a competitive analysis will give you a better understanding of the marketplace conditions and standards in your business’s industry. Taking advantage of your competitors marketing weaknesses and strengths can help take your business to the next level.
#4: DON’T’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Produce Content For The Sake Of Having Content
Cue the quantity vs quality debate. In our past blogs, we have talked about the importance about creating? quality content a lot. Not just any kind of content but the type that provides value to the reader. Producing a lot of content is great for your SEO strategy, but it can be a waste of time and energy when done wrong.
Creating content that people engage with is notoriously a difficult thing to do. 41% of content marketers seem to think so too.
Instead of writing long content and stuffing it with keywords for the sake of getting a high rank on Google search; why not write your content for people. You should not forget that at the end of the day, the bottom line of any digital marketing strategy you use is to get your customers to convert.
To get the best outcome out of your content strategy, be sure to gear all content on your website, blog and social media for your customers. Try not to fill your content with too m any keywords just so you can do well in search engines. Your content will look like it was written by a robot and you will turn people away.
Instead, create your content with your readers in mind first. That way, your content becomes more personalized and your readers will relate with it better. Everyone loves a good story so be sure to tell one every time you write.
Valuable and relevant content is what will get your business ranked high on the first page of Google search. Make sure the content you produce answers a question, solves a problem or provides valuable insight.
#5: DO’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Use The Right Social Media Network For Your Business
There are over 200 social media channels worldwide? With the broad range of social media networks available today, how do you determine which one is best for marketing your business?
While the ultimate goal of all social networks is to connect people, they all serve different purposes. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube though all social networks, all have different functions. It is now your job to leverage these social networks to your business goals to get the most out of your digital marketing strategy.
There are two essential things you need here. The first being to know your brand. The second of course being to know your audience. When you have these two things, choosing the right social network becomes easy. For example, if you are in the clothing business, using lots of pictures to advertise your products will be a good idea. In that regard, you can use Instagram.
Maybe you are not in the clothing business and provide services instead like insurance. Obviously you would need to target your content to the specific people who would buy insurance. That would probably be men and women aged between 18 – 60 years.
What social network is likely to have people in that age group present? This cart can help
As you can tell, That specific demographic fall comfortably under Facebook so you should probably focus more of your social media efforts there.
While it is unwise to be on every social network, you shouldn’t limit yourself to only one. A combination of several networks that you can manage will be good for your business. It is important, however, to get your business present on the right social networks where you have the best chance of connecting with your target audience.
Be sure to give marketing team time to evaluate different social platforms carefully. Doing this will allow you to maximize your efforts and prevent you from wasting time.
#6 Do’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Pay Attention to Analytics
The results count when it comes to the long term vision of your digital marketing strategy. Your analytics will tell you whether all your digital marketing efforts have paid off or not. It also allows you to see all the metrics that work in your favor and the ones that do more harm than good.
Analytics are the data gathered from users who are interacting with you and your brand online and usually include essential information such as: Who visits your site, where they came from, how long they stayed, what they did while on your site, where they left.
You absolutely have to pay attention to analytics because they? help you understand your visitors, where they are coming from and why they stay. Analytics also help you track leads and prospects and also tell you if customers click away when they get to certain pages on your site, or which pages they read for the longest time.
THis information is invaluable to your business and as such, you need to pay attention to them.
There are a lot of outlets for digital marketing, and some of them will suit you and your business better than others as I have mentioned before.
Some people prefer to create monthly newsletters via email marketing or writing articles on the company blog, while others prefer the smaller but more regular activity of Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. It is important to keep trying new things, but be ready to move on if the results aren’t coming and the effort is becoming a chore.
However, if your company naturally takes to a type of digital marketing, it may well be worth continuing even if the results aren’t what you’d like.
#7 Don’t’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Spam
The best type of digital advertising reaches its audience by consent. When you start clogging up inboxes and hitting social media feeds every few minutes, you quickly lose that. The line between consistent effort and spamming shouldn’t be hard to draw, although some companies still struggle with it.
For most firms, the digital marketing should be targeted to ramp up for specific events and sales promotion for example and slowed down to a consistent but mostly unobtrusive pace the rest of the time.
#8 Do’s to Grow your Business with Digital Marketing in Nigeria – Optimize for Mobile
Not so long ago, I recently published an article about the rise of mobile devices.Mobile is and will continue to grow as people depend on their devices to inform shopping, dining, renting and most of their life decisions.
The ability to hit customers with the right message at the right time is still far from an exact science, but it is progressing. More people already browse the internet on their mobile devices than desktop computers.It is absolutely essential that you include a mobile optimization strategy in your marketing plan. ensuring that your Internet assets are mobile-friendly as this will be standard going forward.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is not as scary or as complex as it is often made out to be. There are now a multitude of tools and software that allow for a do-it-yourself approach and lets you leverage content across different platforms like Hootsuite, for example. The analytics and data on the other hand have never been better and more precise than it is today.
Paying attention to the mentioned do’s and don’ts will keep you focused and help you get the most out of your digital marketing strategy.
Do you now any other digital marketing do’s and don’ts that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know in the comments below!
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