Every Company Can Benefit from Effective Digital Marketing- Susan Ikegwu

With widespread experience running digital marketing campaigns for one of Nigeria’s major hotel booking company (Hotels.ng) and now at Fibre.com, Susan Ikegwu comes with a ready knack to help businesses leverage digital platforms for better sales/ brand awareness. She shares her thoughts on this interview:

 

Why digital Marketing for you?

The reason for this enthusiasm for digital marketing is simple: Digital Marketing is perhaps the only cost-effective and most viable method to get your message out and build a solid consumer base. It is not only great value for your money but also, the barrier to enter and scale up are minuscule compared to traditional media.

In other words, you can have a great impact on a limited budget which has levelled the playing field between big and small companies, thereby giving a great fighting chance to new talent to compete with the biggies, without fear of being trampled.

Digital marketing is a career that has plenty of room for techs, creatives, and business people. I found it exciting, always progressive and moving with time.

How much more do you think Nigerian Companies/ Brands can benefit from effective digital marketing?

Every company can benefit from effective digital marketing a lot more for increased sales, cost savings, and better customers who have more loyalty.

From your experience working in the space, what are the major challenges you have encountered?

Staying updated with trends and closing the Sales Loop. Also, putting in the effort without seeing results can be one of the most discouraging things a marketing team can experience. You could have laid out a strategy that seems to be working well, and your traffic and the lead count going up, but your customer/client still not budging.

We have noticed increased sales from Instagram stores in recent years, what do you think is the secret?

Instagram Stories, Instagram live to notify users about real-time content and the swipe up feature.

Instagram ads: Advertising on Instagram has helped to reach a new and targeted audience that converts.

It is amazing because you can plan out your Instagram ads in such a way that you reach the customers who are most likely to be interested in your products. This has increased sales from Instagram stores.

Can you share a few insights into how we can sell better online?

-Forget a pretty theme.

-Forget a catchy company name.

-Forget which shipping options you offer.

They’re all important, but the most important thing you must get right from the very beginning is exactly what you sell and how you price those products.

-Identify or create products that solve a problem. We’ve all heard the saying: necessity is the mother of invention.

-Find products you and other people are passionate about.

-Find products with branding potential.

-Hop on trends early.

-Find products that fulfil guilty pleasures.

-Identify and serve niche segments.

-Spot business opportunities absolutely everywhere.

 

Any other thought you would love to share?

This, in my opinion, is the biggest testament to the democratization that digital media has brought into our jobs market: that you don’t need a specific set of qualifications to be able to pursue digital marketing. Your passion, not qualification, matter. The best part is you don’t have to begin your career from scratch if you want to make it big in the business. All you need is passion.