How Nigeria companies market online
Banner Ads
To most Nigerian companies, digital marketing starts and ends with banner ads. Well, to start with, banner ads are the least effective marketing channel . See some statistics about banner ads:
- An estimated 31 percent of ad impressions can’t be viewed by users. (Comscore).
- Of those banners that are in view, a Nielsen eye-tracking study shows that 92 percent are simply not noticed.
- A recent study by OnScroll in the U.K. estimates that a whopping $11.7 billion was wasted on display ads in 2012 alone.
- 8 percent of Internet users account for 85 percent of clicks. (ComScore)
- About 50% of clicks on mobile ads are accidental. (Source: GoldSpot Media)
- You are more likely to survive a plane crash than click on a banner ad. (Source: Solve Media)
Now, when you juxtapose the stats above with the ever worsening case of banner ads fatigue, you will begin to understand what I am talking about.
While it is true that the quoted stats are not Nigeria centric, the true stats for Nigeria will probably be worse(You don’t believe me? just head to lindaikeji.blogspot.com, stelladimokokorkus.com, ynaija.com, naij.com and other popular Nigeria sites and you will see how inundated you are with banner ads)
So, for a brand to build its whole online marketing strategy on banner ads is preposterous to say the least
Social Media
Another big online marketing lie that Nigeria companies have bought into is that social media is the marketing panacea. So many “marketing experts” have touted social media as a magic bullet, promising it will change the very fabric of how we market online. And it seems Nigeria companies have bought this hype hook, line and sinker.
And to make matter worse, social media is now largely pay-to-play. It’s getting harder to achieve the same results posting for free on social networks.
- “Organic reach” of content from brands and small businesses has fallen to less than 2 percent of all fans. (Inc.)
- In December of 2013, Facebook changed the algorithm that determines who sees what content, resulting in business pages losing 40-80% viewership of their posts. (Modern Connection)
- Company Facebook pages reach as little as 2.6% of their followers. (Adweek)
- Of the 2.6% of users pages reached with their posts, 11.8% engaged with those posts, on average. (Adweek)
- Pages with more than 1 million Likes saw link posts perform the best, at 3.78% reach. For those with fewer than 1,000 Likes, video posts perform best with reach up to 30.0%. (Adweek)
- Average organic likes growth was 0.53%, and pages with fewer than 1,000 Likes saw that figure rise to 1.62%.(Adweek)
Sorry sir, the truth is, social media is not the marketing panacea it has been sold to you as (at least organically).
THE SOLUTION
Does the above mean companies should not utilize banner ads and social media marketing channels? Not exactly. The point I am trying to make is that:
Banner ads or social media are only a small part of digital marketing – if used well they can perform equally as well as other channels for both branding and direct response- sales. The real insight comes when a company looks beyond each silo and start to measure the cross-channel value of a campaign, optimizing based on what works and equally what does not.
In other words you need to take a strategic approach to digital marketing. This means asking questions like “where is the company today and where does it want to get to?” then applying those answers to the selection of digital marketing opportunities. And of course, employing the best practices for the selected channels to get the best from them
