I’ll be sharing my step process for how to grow a business in Nigeria successfully. Whether it’s an online or brick-and-mortar business, growth is always a huge concern for business owners.
So how do you grow a small business in Nigeria, I’ve compiled this 5-Step blueprint for any business owner who wants to grow a successful business in Nigeria.
Here’s How To Grow A Business In Nigeria
1. Nail and Validate your Niche
For many small business owners and entrepreneurs, the word “Niche” in marketing terms might sound strange so I’ll explain. Your niche is a small segment of a large industry that has your exact clients and customers.
Here’s a quick illustration of a Niche: A fashion designer is in the fashion niche, but this niche is quite broad, so if we narrow things down, we’d be able to have a more profitable Niche such as “Women’s Fashion Designer”.
There are two major reasons why defining your Niche is truly important.
- You’d be a lot appealing to that specific market
I don’t know about you but I’d rather patronize a fashion designer who specializes in women’s clothing, than another who claims to handle both.
- You won’t have to face so much competition
It’s common sense, if you go narrow on a pyramid, sure there’ll be a lot fewer people, but it’ll be a lot easier to become an established business.
So Instead of going against the best fashion unisex boutique in your location, create a Niche boutique instead, maybe a Men’s fashion boutique, trust me with the right strategy and quality products, you’ll have more male customers in the boutique than your competition.
From my years of experience as a Digital Marketing expert, nothing tangible ever comes from trying to sell to everyone, especially in a saturated market. Stick with a Niche and you’ll see the magic.
If you have a niche idea in mind, Watch this video to learn how to analyze your niche to see how viable and profitable it might be.
2. Define your USP
USP is short for Unique Selling Proposition and this simple element when absent can truncate the growth of your small business, you need a unique element in your business.
Unless you’re the next Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, that business idea you have in mind is already in existence and hence you’ll have to deal with the competition in your market. There’s a thing called brand loyalty and it’s a scenario where we consumers are more likely to keep buying from a brand we’ve patronized once.
Humans are averse to making new choices and would rather stick with the norm, in the simplest way put, you’d certainly agree that you won’t leave “Maggi” for the latest seasoning cube in town claiming to do wonders or “Coca-cola” for the next wannabe. iPhone lovers will love this one, you’ll definitely not leave “iPhone” for the next china product even if it has all the features you want in a phone.
Playing on this truth of human psychology, it’s therefore important to have a strategy in place to break into your market and that’s where your unique selling proposition comes to play.
What does your business have that the market needs but barely any of your competitors have provided. There are several ways to develop your unique selling proposition and here are a few of my best picks.
- Brand’s Messaging
- Pricing
- Product Quality
- Product Upgrade
3. Write your Business Plan
This step might sound too professional for the type of business you might be running but trust me, you should never skip it.
As a serial entrepreneur myself, I might not have formally stated all of the elements of a solid business plan but I sure always had my business goals and that was okay for the kind of business I ran back then but listen, if you want to grow your business to 6/7 figures, you need a business plan.
Luckily for us, it’s really easy to create one. Here’s an amazing article to help you craft the perfect business plan for your small business.
4. Brand your Business
List out all the most successful businesses recognized worldwide, they all have one thing in common, a powerful brand. Put up an apple logo anywhere without naming the brand, people would still know the brand in question.
You need a brand in this day and age to grow a really successful business unless perhaps the business idea on your mind is owning a successful “Okrika” business, just kidding but that aside once you have your business idea and plan all set up, building a powerful brand should be the next agenda on your list.
Now listen carefully, a strong brand goes beyond having the perfect logo and colors. No one is disputing the importance of a well-designed brand logo, professional website, and a cohesive color palette but your brand identity is just one aspect of building a personal brand. Market research and USP Development are also other aspects of branding.
Considering how we’ve discussed those already, let’s focus mainly on another aspect and this is your community/Audience. Listen, there’s no Apple without its users, the community is what makes the brand. So once you’re done building your brand identity, you need to start building your community. The best way to do so in this day and age is by using content.
Content marketing is a strategy in which we create content for an ideal audience in order to get them to know, like, and trust us, buy from us and become loyal customers. Since the world has gone digital, you’re going to need to create content online on blogs, social media, or other content marketing platforms to about your brand.
5. Create your Marketing Plan
Your marketing plan is the heart of your business success, up until this point of the 5 step process, in real terms, you’d have a community that loves you but here’s the reality of marketing, your follower count doesn’t equal your sales count.
You need to be making conscious efforts to market to your audience so that know about your product and have an avenue to buy. People like me always need that extra push to make purchases and so you need to constantly but in a subtle manner promote your products to your community.
When I said subtly, I meant it, you don’t want your community to see you as desperate and only put for the money. Treat your community like humans, not ATM machines.
I could sit here and write a day long on the different marketing strategies available to our business owners through the power of the internet but I have an article that does that already. How to market your business online In Nigeria
Conclusion
P.S Let me warn you quickly when it comes to marketing there are so many challenges involved. One of them is how long it takes to find and master a strategy that works specifically for your business. It took me almost 2 years to nail my marketing strategy and I believe you don’t have that luxury of time. You most likely want business growth and you want it now.
Well, the ball is in your court, how about you have our team handle the whole process of marketing your business so you don’t have to.
Sounds great? Contact our team of experts for more information on how we can help market your business online.