081-4797-7173
Meet Mrs. Bola.
She’s a caterer and an event planner. She runs a local bakery shop on Tundé Street where she bakes cake and other confectioneries for sale. As early as 9 a.m, her “show-glass” already lies few metres outside the shop with freshly-prepared cupcakes, cookies, doughnuts, and other pastries, neatly arranged on all rows. Passing by her shop and inhaling the aroma without patronizing her is almost impossible. Asides being a talented baker , she’s in charge of managing and imparting that knowledge on to 4 apprentices, one of whom is Chioma.
Meet Chioma
Chioma is a 2nd year student of Microbiology at the University of Lagos. Presently, she’s on a 3-month holiday which she plans to spend at her boss, Mrs. Bola’s shop to continue her apprenticeship. She had started months earlier but her training was cut short by the previous semester. Being an informed Gen Z’er who spends a lot of time on the internet, she occasionally kickstarts fun conversations with her boss by showing her pictures of cakes and confectioneries she sees on social media. After spending a week of the holiday at Mrs. Bola’s shop, she successfully convinced Mrs. Bola to see the importance of going digital and helped her create a Facebook page for her business. At the end of every subsequent baking and icing practice, Chioma makes sure she takes photos and posts them on the Facebook page.
Meet Tomi
Tomi is a 27-year old lady who recently got engaged. Her wedding will be held in 3 weeks. She’s presently lying on her bed, tired, and scrolling through Facebook. Apparently, spending the bulk of your day checking and trying out wedding dresses can be very exhausting. As she scrolls through her news feed, she comes across a picture of a set of delicious-looking cupcakes from Mrs. Bola’s Facebook page. After salivating for a moment, she taps on the page’s title to view more photos. As she scrolled through images of different pastries and cakes, she came to a halt as she saw this beautiful-looking three-tiered wedding cake. She immediately took a screenshot and scrolled up to get the business’s number.
After a series of negotiations with Mrs. Bola, they both settled on the sum of #300k for the cake and its delivery.
While the story above is fictional, it is indicative of something that happens online multiple times everyday. As of May 2023, there were nearly 41.6 million Nigerians just on Facebook with many more millions scattered across Whatsapp, Instagram, X(formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and other social media. Aside from connecting with friends, family and strangers, many Nigerians use social media for entertainment or “cruise” purposes due to the abundance of content in form of videos and text.
The advent of the internet and social media platforms brought about many opportunities that many small business owners are not taking advantage of. One of the major goals of a business is to make profit while still offering value. Many small business owners spend a lot of time and effort searching for customers, completely unaware of how much the internet can be of help. As a small business owner, If you’ve not taken your business digital, you are missing out on a lot of benefits.
These include:
1. The percentage of people online(Potential reach):
As of June 2022, approximately 109 million Nigerians had access to the internet. If you’re able to read this, you’re one of those people. Just like you, each one of these people have specific needs and wants that your business might be in a position to satisfy. Going digital gives you unfiltered access to these people. From the story earlier, there was a limited number of people that knew about Mrs. Bola’s business. The moment she went digital, she became able to reach many more people. Most of which she hadn’t met before.
2. Budget-friendly, effective targeted advertising:
Targeted advertising refers to a marketing strategy where ads are specifically tailored and directed towards a particular group of people based on their demographics, interests, online behavior, and other data. Most internet platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, X(formerly Twitter), etc., use what is known as a Machine Learning algorithm to track and learn user behavior. If you have ever watched a comedy video on Facebook or YouTube and got more comedy videos recommended, that is a Machine Learning algorithm at work. It learned your interest and used it to recommend more related content to keep you entertained. This feature of internet platforms helps small businesses to run adverts targeted at a specific set of people. For example, in the story above, Mrs. Bola could run a Valentine cake advert and decide to target only people between the ages of 18 – 34 since they’re more likely to buy valentine gifts for their partners. Targeted advertising gives your business the ability to create products or offer services for a specific set of people. More importantly, it is budget-based. These major internet platforms do not charge a fixed rate for ads like it is done with the traditional modes of advertising. Their advertising programs are designed in such a way that your budget determines the amount of people you are able to reach with platforms like Facebook allowing as low as $1.
3. Increased revenue and profits:
As stated earlier, one of the major goals of a business is to make money. A business that doesn’t make money will soon cease to exist. Apart from having a great product or offering quality services, getting people(customers) to patronize you is extremely important. Ensuring your business has an online presence expands your reach and increases the number of potential customers that can patronize you hence leading to increased revenue.In conclusion, the internet has revolutionized how we communicate with people, how we connect, how we have fun, etc. In doing so, it brought about many opportunities that can be taken advantage of by small business owners. Taking your business online is one of the best decisions you can make as a small business owner in today’s world. It puts you ahead of your local competitors that do not have a digital presence and simultaneously opens you up to a new realm of possibilities.
Related Posts
How to Use Pinterest for E-commerce Growth
Pinterest is a powerhouse platform for ecommerce businesses looking to boost visibility, drive traffic, and increase sales. Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest acts as a visual search engine...
[…] Small businesses can now use digital marketing to precisely target their marketing efforts thanks to data-driven insights and sophisticated analytics. This knowledge helps them tailor content and advertisements that resonate authentically with potential customers. […]