Digital Marketing in Nigeria, Do You Need to Improve Results?

Digital marketing in Nigeria is catching on. If you haven’t yet adopted digital marketing for your business, you may want to consider doing so.

Benefits and Making a Case for Digital Marketing

Online marketing offers the following benefits for your business and your marketing:

1. Potential for increasing revenues
2. Cutting cost
3. Getting direct response
4. Engaging customers and building your brand
5. Being largely measurable
6. Rapid testing, immediate analysis, and quick optimizations

These benefits make a good case for the adoption of digital marketing in Nigeria. They also help inform goals that can be set for digital marketing.

I will briefly touch on digital marketing being largely measurable. I hope it makes a case for why you should consider investing more in digital marketing.

According to Sir Martin Sorrell, measurability of marketing will become more important.

Sir Martin Sorrell is the chief executive and architect of WPP. WPP is one of the world’s largest communications services group.

Decision makers do not want to decide without statistical justifications. It is unrealistic to believe they will keep deciding media budgets without statistical justification.

Research shows that 73% of CEOs think marketers lack business credibility. Many CEOs think that marketers can’t prove they generate business growth.

You can expect marketing budgets to keep moving to quantitative, measurable areas. Digital marketing mostly fits right into that space.

You should consider investing more in internet marketing. But, first analyze your peculiar situation and make sure it’s the right thing to do.

Analyzing your situation involves assessing the reasons that drive others to adopt digital marketing. This is important so you don’t fall behind leaving room for the competition to gain an advantage.

The reasons that drive others to adopt online marketing include:

• Customers demanding for the adoption of digital media
• Adding value by improving the range of services and experiences offered
• Avoiding loss of market share to competitors that use digital marketing more effectively

These outlined reasons make up the competitive drivers for adopting digital marketing.

Using Digital Marketing More Effectively: How Do You Improve Results?

You use digital marketing more effectively when you use it as part of an integrated multichannel marketing strategy.

Multichannel marketing refers to marketing through multiple channels. It refers to marketing communications delivered  on multiple media at the same time. Hopefully in a coordinated manner.

Examples of multichannel marketing at work include:

• Having adverts on TV, radio, print, internet and billboards all at the same time
• Banks offering in-hall banking, online banking, and mobile banking facilities
• Businesses offering online self-service websites, call centers, and customer support centers for customer support

The term also implies the responses to marketing initiatives are accepted from multiple channels.

Multichannel marketing is crucial because:

1. Customers are multichannel beings. They don’t think in terms of channels. They just sought the most convenient way of accomplishing their goals
2. Customers want to be in charge and want to make good buying decisions. Although they choose not to listen when you talk, consumers are more information hungry in their buying decision. This provides a great opportunity for marketers who know how to be ready with the right information at the right time

Customers Are Multichannel Beings

Your customers don’t think in terms of channels and I am sure neither do you.

We all just sought the most convenient way of accomplishing our goals.

When we want to buy, we might start product research online and then buy offline.

Or, we might see an advert offline and go online to research the product. We might then buy it in a store or online.

Again, we sought the most convenient way of accomplishing our goal.

We cross channels when it’s convenient.

Studies show certain channels are better suited for certain stages of the customer life-cycle. The studies were by the Unica Corporation (bought by IBM).

Find the research findings and additions laid out as the Harvey Ball chart below.

A full Harvey Ball shows that a channel is typically used in a particular stage of the relationship. A half Harvey Ball means that a channel can be used with certain limitations. An empty Harvey Ball suggests that a channel is ill-suited for a particular stage in the buying cycle.

You could argue whether some of the Harvey Balls should be more or less full. But for most of the channels, it makes gut sense they are better suited for specific goal than others.

TV and radio can raise awareness for a product. But, it is still necessary to go to another channel for learning more and purchasing.

E-mail and mobile SMS are great for retention and extension of customers. But are not all that for creating awareness. They work best when the customer has opted-in to receive communications.

To improve results from digital marketing, it should be an integral part of a multichannel marketing strategy.

Examples of brands in Nigeria that seem to have a thought out multichannel strategy include DSTV and Spectranet.

DSTV creates awareness with TV, radio, print and web ads. They enhance retention with E-mail, mobile SMS, and their call center.

Spectranet also creates awareness with out-of-home, print, and web ads. They enhance retention with e-mail and mobile SMS.

What Makes a Good Multichannel Strategy?

A good multichannel strategy, at least, must deliver greater value to the customer. And enhance the customer’s experience.

At its best, it can improve customer loyalty and engage customers to deliver stronger brand preferences.

Your customer experience must be interactive, seamless and customized.

Research indicates that a seamless experience is a more important driver of customer satisfaction, repeat purchase, and advocacy than any other aspect of channel marketing. The research was by the Canfield School of Management, UK.

Integration is king if your organization wishes to satisfy and retain customers. And, if you wish to improve results from digital marketing in Nigeria.