Today with us is Olayinka Olayokun, co-founder of Giga Lagos – a Nigerian marketing and branding agency. We are talking about digital marketing.
Introduction
Giga Lagos is a full-service digital marketing agency that uses tools online to help business achieve and make returns on investments.
Before Giga Lagos, I spent quite an amount of my career with BHM – Black House Media – a PR agency. Then three guys from a department in BHM started off a digital marketing agency known as Naija Afrique where I worked for about a year, then left to work on the brand side of things.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is using tools available on the internet to help sell products or services. Facebook, Twitter, etc. are not only used for the fun of it, they can be used strategically to sell a brand or product.
How to do digital marketing
Every business should have a landing page. This could be an Instagram account, a Facebook page, a blogspot.com page, wordpress.com page or any other page where people could be gathered for information. Jumia’s landing page, for instance, is their website. They have supporting landing pages, but the primary one is that website, where people go to buy products.
Challenge of using social media as a landing page
A social media page can also be the landing page for someone or a business. It doesn’t have to be a website. However, building a landing page on social media can have challenges. One challenge is an account getting deleted and the number of social media followers/customers is lost. It is great to have another landing page where followers are directed to; that page should be a website. A website doesn’t cost much to set up. A website is more under the control of the owner.
Search Engine Optimization
The next thing of note about a landing page is for it to be available. This has to do with search engine optimization (SEO). This means that if you sell a particular product, customers googling that product would be directed to your landing page (which has been optimised to be easily seen). Same thing applies if a person’s name is googled. The social media accounts and website of the person is brought up in the search results.
A store can be listed on Google+ so people staying around that geographical area can easily find the business and contact details. This is done by typing “business.google.com” to understand how to list your business. For websites, some plugins are free. They can be set up easily to help optimise that website using keywords.
Keywords
Keywords are simply questions you ask Google. They are the words searched for on Google. Tools used to know the relevant keywords for your business include Google Keyword Planner. Typing in what your business is about throws up keywords to use and how much likely is to be spent on marketing with those keywords. If you can’t afford a particular keyword then it is wise to buy one close to it.
Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster is also another free tool that helps a business not be seen as something else other than what it is optimised for. The tool analyses the keywords that bring people to your website. So if it is a wrong keyword, it will give an information on how to change it for the audience to better see you.
It is key to optimises constantly. Google Analytics is also a powerful tool. It gives the demographics and other information (time of day they visit, their interests, what website brings them to you, etc.) about your website visitors. If they come more through Facebook, then it will inform you so you can do more of what you do on Facebook.
Link building
Link building (or relationship building) can be used to liase with platforms that normally you cannot afford to market on. With this method, one can write an article or information that is beneficial to the platform and its audience with links to one’s own platform. This way one’s platform can increase its audience. This helps one’s platform to rank higher. Platforms like CNN, BBC, Vanguard, Bella Naija, etc. are big platforms that can be beneficial to one’s own platform.
Content on the same platform should also link to themselves. It is called internal link building. If a particular content had been put out in the past, it can be linked to a newer related content. It shows people that you are giving realtime and updated information to your audience. With WordPress, things like tagging can be done. If you upload a picture of a Chanel bag, for example, then Chanel can be a keyword used as a tag.
How to use Facebook, for example
A lot of people have personal Facebook accounts where they put up content about their daily activities. One cannot build a brand on this type of account. A page is better. If you are a consultant or a technology business or even artiste, create a page. This gives an opportunity to carve a niche for the business activities separate from the personal page.
The business Facebook page should have a bio, missions and goals and value proposition statements. Then consider how the audience is to perceive you – as catchy, serious or a thought leader, for instance. Create content then that feeds to this perception. This audience might be businesses or individuals. You can even make a calendar of when each type of content is put out for the audience. If the audience gets a particular information every, say, Tuesday, then the audience anticipation is heightened every Tuesday. Platforms like GidiTraffic and EFCC on Twitter have pulled a lot of followership because of the frequency and style of engagement.
Consistency is needed in digital marketing because people might not look for you immediately, but because Google crawls websites every 90 days and can give preferential treatment if they see your content is always up to date and interesting. Therefore a platform’s engagement can increase this way.
With Instagram these days, products can be put up with their prices tagged. How to do this can easily be found on YouTube.
Limitations of online marketing
There are disadvantages of online marketing. But every one of these disadvantages is a potential business. One of them is lack of internet in some parts. About 50% of the world is still without internet connection. So they can’t be reached with this style of marketing. However, wifi.com.ng and others are trying to solve these problems. It is also possible to create content for these unconnected people in anticipation of when they will get connected.
The next limitation is cyber security. It is pertinent to have a site lock – SSL. There are different types of this; each presenting a different level of security. It is important to secure websites; Google tell people if your website is secure or not, especially if you need to input a password on the website.
Join Us Next Week
This was live from Wary Pen at ReDahlia Workspaces, 43B Emina Crescent, Off Toyin Street, Ikeja.
Wary Pen is our co-workspaces training facility and lounge.
If you run a successful business and want us to feature you on our platform, then send us an email on contact@redahlia.com or give us a call on 08188122223.
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