Importance of Digital Marketing to Nigerian Businesses

Digital marketing is no longer an option but a ‘Must’ for any Nigerian business looking to grow.

According to Bill Gates, as far back as 2013, ‘The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.’

The world in general and Nigeria, in particular, has lived up to this quote faster than anyone can imagine. 

With the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and its effects on Nigerian businesses, the importance of going digital has become more evident.

Before now, digital marketing was just another way to market – an alternative to traditional marketing. But now, it’s as important, if not more important, than conventional marketing.

If you don’t have digital marketing structures in place for your enterprise, organization or small business, you’re missing out on lots of benefits.

Want to know why?

The more the world becomes a global digital village, the more evident the importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses becomes.

Suppose at this stage, you don’t have integrated digital marketing strategies working for your Nigerian business, or at least understand the importance of digital marketing strategies. In that case, you’re in a race against time, money and competition.

In this article, we discuss why your Nigerian business needs digital marketing to grow and thrive – the importance of digital marketing for business today.

Continue reading.

Importance of Digital Marketing in Nigeria

There are several reasons why you should adopt digital marketing for your Nigerian business – not tomorrow, but today.

For starters;

1) With Digital Marketing, You can Target your Customers where they spend their Money and Time.

According to Data Reportal 2021 report, there are about 4.33 billion social media users globally – 55% of the total global population. Statista supports this by stating that as of the 3rd quarter of 2020, the number of social media users alone in Nigeria reached approximately 28 million.

These persons spend a considerable amount of time on these platforms and the internet daily.

With a strategic digital marketing plan, your business can target these potential customers while they’re actively browsing the internet.

A well-structured digital Ad or social media marketing strategy can have you both attracting customers and increasing your brand awareness in a competitive market.

Some businesses that have adopted digital marketing complain of no significant ROI. However, the truth remains that winning big and maximizing ROI starts when you understand how to develop and implement a robust digital marketing strategy.

Hopefully, with an understanding of the importance of organic digital marketing for Nigerian businesses, you can hire an expert digital marketer or learn digital marketing.

2) Digital Marketing Helps You Boost Productivity and Achieve Sustainable Growth Even During the Post-Covid-19 Economy.

If there’s one lesson the Covid-19 lockdown taught us, it is that we should operate a business that runs even while we’re sleeping (or on lockdown).

According to Yelp Data, over 100,000 establishments closed in the US alone because of covid-19. This represents a massive 60% of businesses in the United States of America.

A similar thing is happening in Nigeria.

Despite all these business closedowns, businesses implementing digital marketing weren’t affected as much as their competitors with zero digital marketing footprints. They were able to stay in touch with customers despite the lockdown.

Lessons have been learned, and to move on, smart businesses have hired digital marketing strategists and consultants to build a digital infrastructure for their business.

Some others have opened up a digital marketing department and/or trained their staff on the basics of digital marketing.

No one wants to be left out.

Things can never remain the same in this post covid era.

To adapt, state governments and NGOs are also organizing digital marketing training for businesses in their states and target audiences, respectively.

This shows the importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses, especially in the post covid era.

In 2021, we at Haelsoft facilitated the training of 400 MSMEs in Edo State in digital marketing skills. The training was geared towards equipping them to boost productivity and achieve sustainable growth, even in the post-covid-19 economy.

According to Haelsoft Founder, Ezeadichie Michael, the digital marketing courses would assist businesses to align with the new normal, retain and expand their client base and deliver tailor-made services to new and existing customers.

3) Digital Marketing Levels the Playing Ground

In digital marketing, there’s no big, medium or small scale business. Instead, what matters is your digital marketing strategy and your marketing budget.

This is the importance of digital media marketing over traditional.

A big company with a poor marketing strategy can perform poorly, while a small company with a well-structured and implemented digital strategy can enjoy a significant conversion increase.

This highlights the importance of digital marketing for small businesses. It is 100% unlike your traditional everyday TV, radio and print Ads.

4) Digital Marketing Helps you Match and/or Overthrow your Competition

As a Nigerian business owner, you should pay attention to what your competitors are doing well, learn from it and build on it.

That way, you can match them and stay ahead of them in the market.

Understanding digital marketing will help you know what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, where they’re doing it, tools and channels they’re using and more.

This information will help you develop strategies that’ll supersede theirs.

Let your business be the one your prospects see when they’re searching online for the product/service you sell.

Achieving all these might not be as easy as it sounds – it’s understandable. That is why we always recommend that businesses hire the services of a digital marketing consultant.

A digital marketing expert understands the importance of digital marketing planning and will help you with a competitor analysis and digital strategy development and implementation targeted at keeping you ahead.

Alternatively, you can enroll your marketing team in our digital marketing training courses for corporate businesses. That way, you’re investing in the human capital of your organization. This can serve as a great way to give your employees incentives without going above your budget.

Visit the Haelsoft E-Learning Portal Now to Apply for Haelsoft Digital Marketing Training

5) Digital Marketing Makes your Business Easily Accessible

In today’s digital global village, the internet is the first place buyers visit before making a purchasing decision.

Want to buy a car? Check it on Google

Want to order food? Visit their website.

Want to enroll in a digital marketing training center? Check your options online.

You certainly checked online because you want to know the importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses.

That same way, your prospects go online when they want to purchase a product you sell or the service you offer.

If you have zero digital presence, you won’t be found, and you can’t compete.

If you’re online but not active, your competitors are easier to find, and you may not even be found at all.

This shows that digital marketing is not a one-time thing. You need to stay active either by working with a professional digital marketer in Nigeria or by learning the basics of digital marketing.

Digital marketing makes your business easily accessible, but if you don’t show up, your competitors will.

This is why you should have digital marketing in your marketing mix.

Read: Benefits of Career in Digital Marketing

6) Digital Marketing Offers your Business Limitless Reach

With digital marketing, your business can reach any customer, anywhere and on any device they’re using – right from your shop.

With digital marketing, you can be in your shop in Lagos, and Mr. Tony from Abuja will order your product/service and have you ship it down to him in Abuja.

Admittedly, you know someone that has purchased a product/service online, or probably you have.

Flight ticket, consulting service, medical services, food, fashion items, the list is endless. You can purchase anything from anywhere.

Many real estate businesses that understand the importance of digital marketing in real estate leverage it to increase sales.

It can be applied in every industry.

It can be like that for your business if you understand the basics and how digital marketing works for Nigeria businesses.

7) It Helps You Interact Better with your Customers and Target Audience

Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to engage your customers and prospects. Whether via social media platforms or your website, it offers you a chance to get to know them better and understand what they want and how they want it.

You can start a conversation, conduct a survey, ask for feedback etc.

An understanding of how your customers and potential customers think helps you discover what to offer them.

With digital marketing, you can remove guess and know precisely how to handle your customers.

Besides, you give an improved customer service experience than you would if you don’t interact directly with them. 

With time, you’ll build trust and a cordial relationship and become more of a trusted friend and partner than a business.

According to Zig Ziglar, ‘If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll buy what you’re selling.’

8) Digital Marketing is Cost-Effective

Digital marketing is cost-effective. With digital marketing, any business can get as much as possible done on a small budget. 

Some forms of digital marketing are more cost-effective and yield results that last for an extended period. So even when your budget is tight, you can communicate your brand and reach a wider audience at an affordable rate.

Compared to conventional TV, radio and print ads, digital marketing is very affordable.

9) Digital Marketing Gives You Analytics and Insights for Decision Making

With traditional marketing, you don’t get to know how your TV or radio Ad performed. Even when you know, you only get a vague insight relating to the best time to air your Ad and the best radio/TV stations to work with.

It’s different with digital marketing.

This is one of the top importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses.

With digital marketing, there are lots of analytics and data insights at your disposal that will help you run a data-driven business.

You’ll know;

• Whether your target saw your content
• If they interacted with it.
• If they liked it or shared it with their friends and family
• How much time they spent on your platform
• If they’re likely to contact you for a purchase.
• Where they’re viewing your content from
• What terms do prospects find you online with
• Who’s likely to purchase amongst your prospects
• Their gender and other demography
• And many others

All this information helps you make informed decisions and further optimize your digital marketing strategy for improved conversions.

10) Digital Marketing is Easier to Adapt

Like every other type of marketing, there is always an initial investment needed to get things going.

With digital marketing, once you discover what works for you, it’s very easy for you to scale and adapt to suit your budget.

You know what marketing will cost you, the number of persons you’ll reach and the possible outcome.

If something isn’t working well, you just have to scale down and fix the possible issue. You won’t have to wait until the end of the Ad contract, and you don’t have to start the entire campaign from scratch.

With digital marketing, you can make instant results, and you can make long-term results – anyhow you want it.

This shows the effectiveness and importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses.

11) High Return on Investment (ROI)

Gone are the days when you do marketing without knowing the expected return on investment on your budget.

Digital marketing gives you a preview of what your ROI is likely to be, all things being equal.

The good thing is that the ROI is always high and worth it despite the digital marketing channel you choose to use for your marketing.

12) Easily Integrates with Mobile Technology

In Nigeria today, the average person has a smartphone. 

This is good news for your business because digital marketing easily integrates with mobile technology. 

This way, it’s easy for you to engage in mobile marketing and other forms of digital marketing that target your audience directly on their phone.

People want things easy for them, and which better way to make things easy for your customers than by making the products and services they love available on their phone.

That way, your business is at their beck and call.

Easy experience for the customer and more sales for your business.

This is one of the sweetest importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses.

13) Digital Marketing Aligns with How the Average Person Shops Today

According to Search Engine Land, 88% of people consider online reviews a critical part of making a purchase decision.

With everything going digital, people spending more time online than watching TV and reading newspapers; everything will be online in the nearest future.

Over 1 trillion online searches are performed each year, and a significant number of these searchers are looking for products and services to buy. 

To get a share in this crowd of online buyers, you need to have a digital marketing strategy that fits into the buyers’ decision-making process.

An essential aspect of this purchase decision-making process is reading reviews.

When you work with a robust digital marketing strategy, you don’t only get to show up when buyers are searching, you also have reviews from existing buyers that support your business.

These reviews can be gotten and managed online, and the wrong step might mean negative reviews, which negatively impact your business.

Take our brand Haelsoft for instance; we have over 100 positive reviews on Google. These reviews are from businesses we’ve worked with both as a digital marketing consultancy brand and a digital marketing training provider.

The reviews highlight how good we are in what we do and keep bringing in more clients.

Wrapping Up on the Importance of Digital Marketing to Nigerian Businesses

In conclusion, if you’ve ever asked yourself, ‘what is the importance of digital marketing for corporate organizations or MSMEs,’ we believe you understand how important it is now.

If you have any questions or want to know more about the importance of digital marketing in today’s scenario, do well to contact us.

At Haelsoft, we offer both digital marketing consultancy services and digital marketing training in Lagos, Abuja or any city in Nigeria.

We hope this article on the importance of digital marketing to Nigerian businesses serves as a guide to helping you understand the benefits and take the proper steps towards going digital.