I have read many stories of fantastic business idea,great software program or projects developed by folks here on nairaland but never made it to the limelight simply because the relevant skill-set to engage the right consumer is missing.

So,How do i showcase my brand/product/event/service to the right consumer,sponsor or investor?

A good product offering in itself is not enough knowing well that a good product without awareness amount to failure.
Whether you are a blogger,developer or an entrepreneur seeking to attract traffic,build or convert leads,sales or return on
investment you are in the right place at the right time....

Marketing be it digital or traditional is 90% about communication.To market your service,product,event or brand effectively you have to identify and be familiar with the right audience for your offering.

Digital marketing is the act of putting (matching) the right product,goods,service or event in front or its consumer through digital medium like social media,blogs,mobile devices,desktop or anything that uses internet.

One of the first and most important thing to know about marketing is that consumers have changed their buying behavior
since the turn of the technological age, preferring to go (the easy way) online for their needs rather than buy from the sales rep.As consumers spend more time using the internet and less time with other channels – advertisers are also forced to follow this trend.The ads have to be there where the eyeballs are.Unfortunately,digital marketing is not as simple and straight forward as traditional marketing which involves marketing of goods,services,brands through TV,radio,outdoor media,cold-calling,email spam,mobile-buses and sign-posts etc.

You engage in some form of digital marketing unawares daily,for instance when you post new information or picture or respond to post on facebook,twitter,nairaland or instagram then you are doing digital social marketing.

The best way to become a digital marketing expert is to start practicing digital marketing from today. The best thing about digital marketing is that you can start doing it at a very small scale. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and a small amount of money to play with. You can learn digital marketing by applying the concepts in your own mini-project.Here are the things you can do right now:

Applying Digital Marketing on a Small Scale

Choose a topic you are passionate about and start a blog about it...(Content Marketing). Cost: Approx $50 per year for domain and hosting.
Research on digital marketing,be more informed on best practices(Avoid copy pasting other peoples articles instead reference it, by link..this also improves your Google ranking),join a forum.
Learn a little about SEO and write SEO optimized articles in your blog.(SEO means Search engine optimization its a means of using keywords relevant to your product to boost your blogs ranking on the Google search engine)
Install Google Analytics tracking code and see if you are getting some traffic to your blog.Google Analytics this measures the activities of consumers to know what they click and how long they stay how they interacts with your blog.
Open an Adwords account and do some keyword research to see what people are searching for in Google to find information on the topic you are blogging about.
Write more articles and publish on your blog.
Open a Facebook page dedicated to your blog (apart from your personal page) and share the articles on your Facebook page.
Promote your page with Facebook advertising. Budget for promotion can be as low as $10.
Implement Facebook like box in your blog.
Embed social sharing buttons in your blog articles. You can do this using WordPress plugins and it is free.
Sign up for an email marketing service such as Aweber. Costs $20 per month. Also try MailChimp.
Embed email signup forms in your blog and collect subscribers. Email subscribers whenever you publish something in your blog.
Promote your Facebook page through email marketing and in turn also get more email subscribers from your Facebook page.
Promote your blog via Adwords. Get started with very low CPC (cost-per-click)bids. Most new Adwords accounts get a free $100 credit for promotion. If you don’t get it, call Adwords support and they will give you free credits to get you started.
Sign up for Google Adsense and deploy advertising codes in your blog.
Convert your blog into a mobile friendly blog and create mobile ads in Adwords.

All the above steps can be done in 30 days by investing one hour per day. After you do all the steps above your would have gained a bit of hands-on experience in the following areas which pretty much sums up to the following major components of Digital Marketing:

Components of Digital Marketing(we shall be discussing these component in details in the next article)

Content marketing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paid Search (PPC)
Email marketing
Social Media Marketing
Digital Display Marketing (Ad Ops)
Web Analytics and Reporting
Mobile Marketing

In conclusion,30 hours of experience does not make you an expert in Digital Marketing but you will be a much better qualified digital marketing professional than most of the people out there on the market. After this you can continue scaling up your mini-project and add even more things to it. For example, Google webmaster tools integration is something I have not mentioned in the above list but it is important for digital marketing. Your expertise will increase to the level you are ready to scale up your project........

Get more direct update and tips as you join me on (twitter:@yib336)

Gurus in the house your contribution is invited.
Want more info feel free to join this discussion or you have a project that needs marketing?send your queries directly to me via (yib336@gmail.com)

CONTENT MARKETING.
Simply defined Content marketing is the act of giving out information to educate your audience
without selling.It’s what you’re trying to deliver to your visitors, leads, customers, and
promoters. There are lots of different ways you can deliver that message: blogs, emails, landing
pages, social media, and beyond. But without content, there’s nothing to deliver.
In fact, without content, the internet would be empty. Think about how you use the internet. You
go to a search engine, type in a question, and what you find is content.

Content has the very important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to
another. It plays an integral part in each and every stage.
Your content attracts the right visitors to your site, converts them into leads, nurtures them
and helps close them into customers. It’s also a big part of what delights them into promoters.

Content is the fuel that that powers a successful digital marketing.
Content is what your website forms lead people to, and what your calls-to-action entice visitors
to download. Content is what drives those visitors to convert into leads in the first place,
because it’s what they receive in exchange for their email addresses.

HOW DO YOU CREATE REMARKABLE CONTENT?
Content is a critical part to a successful marketing strategy, but how do you create remarkable
content? Remarkable content is content that makes people want to read, share, and come back for
more. So, what makes a piece of content remarkable?
In those pre-internet days, the main factor that limited marketers was physical space. How big is
my magazine ad? How big is my billboard? There was a limited amount of space. But now, thanks to
the internet, space is basically unlimited. You can have an infinite number of pages, blog posts,
and content offers.But you might find that, even with all this content, it's much harder to capture the ATTENTION of
your prospect. There’s already a ton of content out there, whose will get the most attention?
Which websites will people visit, and which offers will they download?
Now, instead of fighting for space, you're fighting for attention.

CONTENT Part 2

CREATING CONTENT WITH A PURPOSE

Focus on creating good content that will capture your prospects’ attention.
A lot of people are creating content, but few feel like they’re doing it right. If you want to do it right, you’ll need to start with a plan.
To easily come up with the best topics for every piece of content you create, there are just 2 things you need to know. These two things are the keys to creating remarkable content. They are - your buyer personas (who you’re trying to reach) and the buyer’s journey (what content will be most interesting or helpful for them).

Knowing who your personas are and where they are in the buyer’s journey are the keys to developing a killer content strategy. In order to create remarkable content, you have to tailor it both to your personas and where they are in the buyer’s journey.
The best content is the kind that your buyer personas want to read, share, and come back for.
If you do these 2 things, you’ll be perfectly poised to create remarkable content that will transform your inbound efforts from passable to outstanding.

Buyer personas are who you’re trying to attract, convert, close, and delight—this is your ideal customer. Your persona is who you’re creating content for.
Great content is educational. Your ultimate content goal is to solve your persona’s problems, and you can do this through education.

Create stellar content that’s “comment enabled” and listen to the community. You’ll know if the content is resonating based on sharing and time on your site.

Mastering content takes time patience and hard work – it’s an iterative process for any business.
Images are interest builders that help to drive visitors into your content – be creative with these.
Remember cheap content is just that, nothing more.
Expect to spend 6-12 months sourcing, creating and sharing great content.
There are no shortcuts to creating great content – it’s going to take blood, sweat and tears and don’t listen to anyone that tells you something different!
You can identify topics that matter through keyword research - what you want to rank for, internet forums, popular industry news, sales and support frequently asked questions, your personas’ goals and your personas’ challenges. The first step to creating content that resonates with readers is gaining a better understanding of who your readers are, especially the ones you want to convert into leads and customers. When you know who they are, you can create the right content that perfectly suits their needs.
And what about the buyer’s journey? How does that play into remarkable content?
Well, how you should define remarkable content is that remarkable content is solution-based, not product-based. Remarkable content isn’t about YOUR business or YOUR product, it’s about your potential customers; the problems they’re having, and the answers they’re searching for.
In order to provide a solution, you have to understand the problem. The buyer’s journey will help you do this.


The buyer’s journey is the active research process that people go through leading up to making a purchase. It’s like the buying process or marketing funnel you may be familiar with, but it’s from the buyer’s perspective.
The buyer’s journey is made up of 3 stages – awareness, consideration and decision – and they depict the buying research process. First they identify a problem or opportunity, then they investigate solutions, and finally, they decide on a way to solve their problem.


Join the discussion or make a contribution

for personal tips yib336@gmail.com

I can see alot of effort has been done to put this piece in order. I really love this, because you crafted it from the nigerian perspective.

thanks @abdulakeem

Thanks OP.

Very helpful.

very instructive post

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i work with This digital marketing consultant victorukim.com anyways

In order to become a digital marketing expert you need to learn many thing with regards to digital marketing such as SEO, PPC, Conversion and Google Analytics etc.


Regards,
Maryann Farrugia on Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/maryannfarrugia/

Great post. I think you can also add that email marketing is one of the most important tools for attracting new leads. Moreover, many marketing companies are expanding the departments involved in this type of activity. I just study this type of activity and try to understand the Atompark. Who works through this program?

As digital technologies accelerate the pace of business change, organizations are placing more emphasis on agility, speed, and innovation rather than the usual efficiency and cost savings to remain competitive.

Digital leaders are aggressively investing in agile and disruptive technologies including agile methodologies, cloud, digital labor, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Agile Rising customer expectations and the consumerization of IT has raised the competitive bar and requires companies to provide a steady stream of new capabilities and improved customer experience. But frequent releases of software into production is incompatible with traditional software development methods where updates can take months and major changes can take a year or more.

Digital Marketing leaders in Africa such as Wild Fusion Digital Marketing Agency (https://www.wildfusions.com/)are adopting agile methodologies and DevOps to support continuous delivery of incremental enhancements at a higher rate than non-leaders.

However, getting the most value from digital investments isn’t just about how fast you can develop and deliver them. It is also dependent upon integrating new customer-facing solutions with existing middle and back office systems.

Digital leaders report that they are very effective at integrating core business systems with newer digital technologies, at three times the rate of non-leaders.

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