Nigerian Startups Need Digital Marketing: Here’s Why

Digital marketing evolves daily. New updates are released and trends evolve over time. You can say that the best thing to ever happen to human beings in this time and era is the power of digital marketing and you won’t be wrong.

Wikipedia defines digital marketing as the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.

As a Nigerian startup founder, identifying a demand in the market requires extensive research. And the onus is on you to prove that your product or service is feasible enough to meet market demands and solve the problem(s) of your target market.

You’ve raised funding from investors and offered equity in return. Now the stakes are high and you are ready to do everything possible to succeed in this venture you’ve started. Or you’re bootstrapping in the early stages with your personal finances and you need to make the best of your capital—whichever the case may be—you plan to succeed and scale rapidly.

Hiring competent professionals to work with you in developing your product or service into a formidable brand that can compete favourably in the market is one end of the bargain. What you can also do—what you should do in fact—is to leverage the power of digital marketing at once in order to grow your business or company with the right measure of brand awareness.

Seun Odegbami, Growth Marketer and founder of Twentyonelights in his conversation with Joan Aimuengheuwa for TechEconomy said, “You don’t want to build everything all fantastic and nice before you start thinking of your marketing, it has to be from the onset.”

What Leverage Does Digital Marketing Offer Your Startup Business?

It’s one thing to go on and on about how digital marketing is the backbone of every startup and then it’s another to know and understand exactly how your business benefits from it.

What are the unique benefits of digital marketing for your startup? We explain them further below.

You can conveniently choose who can see your ads through targeting

Unlike traditional marketing through billboards and lamp posts where you can’t control who gets to see your ads, you can decide to reach people whom you believe your product or service is specifically for through a social media marketing trend known as targeting.

How does targeting work?

You’ve most likely come across an ad while scrolling your social media feed or timeline that came with the option for you to choose if it is relevant to you or not. That is an example of targeting. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok have tools that enable marketers and business owners to create targeted ads based on interests, age, location, educational background, occupation etc.

You can update your messaging quickly if you need to

You’d agree that there are times when you or your social media team will need to update your marketing copy by removing an error or adding more information in order to boost your conversion rate. In this case, all you have to do is edit your post and go back to what you were doing. You can’t get this kind of ease with traditional marketing.

You spend relatively less money on digital marketing than on traditional marketing

You are bootstrapping in the early stages of running your startup and have a tight marketing budget. While traditional marketing (billboards, lamp posts etc) will have you spending more money than you can afford, you can stick to your budget and still run a decent ad campaign on social media that will fetch you great returns on investment.

You get real-time customer feedback

Running a startup means that you want to do things differently and implement some of your fresh ideas. However, you can’t be sure of the feedback you’d get from your target audience until you use digital marketing to interact with them. Running Twitter polls and asking social media users to share their thoughts on a particular subject or trend can get you real-time feedback that you need to either adjust your messaging or go ahead to put out what you’ve already created.

As a startup entrepreneur, it cannot be overstated that you need digital marketing to scale your business and make great returns on investment. Successful and notable brands have leveraged digital marketing to remain competitive in their industries. You should do the same too.