It's a new year, and businesses are already gearing to dominate in their various niches. The Nigerian online business niche has matured in the past few years, with Internet shopping becoming more prominent in 2012. If you are a business person in 2012, you are lucky! There are more resources for promoting your business more than ever.

Given the recent business trends in Nigeria and relevant countries, we have forecasted the business environment and have come with a couple of events that would take place this year. Businesses that want to stay afloat and remain on top of their business niches should take care to make the necessary adjustments:

1. More Businesses Will Emerge
It seems like everyone want sot be the next Mark Zuckerberg in 2013. More and more online businesses are emerging that attempt to bring new ideas to the internet. Some big players will have little pieces of their market shares divided by these new startups, and the competition will get pretty keen this year. I was reading recent Tech Crunch news and discovered that someone is already working hard and fast on the idea for bringing Farmville (you know farmville on facebook) into reality as a social network. It is called Grow the Planet, and there are predictions that it will be a personal favorite of investors this year. Someone has already created a social media network for cats alone (I forget the link now), where household pets can go and update their status and stuff like that. What am I saying? Everyone is trying to make an impression these days. New ideas will emerge from these and will define market trend for the next ten years. By the way, the Grow the Planet site is out on beta via www.growtheplanet.com

2. Entrepreneurs are getting younger by the minute
Gone are the days when a 25 year old entrepreneur is 'successful and daring”. Entrepreneurs are literally starting from the womb these days! Nowadays, fifteen year old are being groomed by parents and put in training schools to make the next best business idea. Have you invested in yourself or in your business recently? It would be pretty embarrassing for a secondary school student to be the reason you went out of business.

3. Online/Internet Shopping is Growing
Of course, I don't need to emphasize this too much. You can literally see it everywhere. Even when you log on to Facebook, you will find ads by [url]Jumia.com[/url], [url]Konga.com[/url], [email]Mocality[/email], [url]QuickSell.com.ng[/url] and [url]DealDey[/url]. You cannot ignore this: internet business is marching on. As Nigeria is about to go cashless, it is time for you to consider how this will affect your business and join the bandwagon. Consider selling using internet shopping.

4. Your Customers are Now Getting Virtual
What does this mean? Facebook boasts of about a billion users, and it is the number 2 site in Nigeria (right after Google). Nairaland is the number one Nigerian site in Nigeria, and thousands of visitors throng in and out of it everyday. If you want your business to get visible, you have to target your customers from where they gather. Disabuse your mind of the notion that your business is not online. Even if you sell goods physically (like having a shoe boutique in Surulere), believe me, and advertising campaign can literally EXPLODE your sales. Change tactics this year, and see best results!

5. Be Ready to Pander to Consumer Interests
I noticed that it is a Nigerian business custom to sacrifice discounts for quality. What I mean is, we'd rather say “my market dey sell quality”, that say “we sell the cheapest anywhere in Nigeria”. Believe me, people are 'wisening' up. You need to know that the average Nigerian these days would check online for price comparisons before he decides to buy a new clothing item, an iPhone or a Blackberry. Of course, if you sell all your products at lower rates, you will lose, right? Wrong! You just need to 'sacrifice' a few juicy products, put great discount prices on them, then advertise them on discount sites like [url]quicksell.com.ng[/url], and watch people throng into your site. It always works: people who buy the disounted products would have become familiar with your business and would be willing to buy more from you in the future.

Be sharp this new year; don't lose your business' ground because you do not want to change with the times. Embrace change, and adopt the right business strategies!