Welcome to class! Today. I am going to be teaching on radical marketing. How to break your business into the limelight. But, before I do that, someone commented my yesterday’s post. His moment made lot of sense and I decided to address it before I go on today.
He said that, in Nigeria, one can still run a business without having to know all these stuff I’m writing.
Now, here’s my reply.
Trust me, its true. That’s why I said in the episode IV of this seried article that most of the businesses we do in Nigeria do not evey Business Principles. We just run business by the grace of God. This is the unique situation oof our country.
Don’t forget that you must always customize your business principles to the unique intricacies of the environment you find yourself in. You can’t use the style of doing business in the US to succeed in Nigeria.
For example. When Jumia started off here, they told us that to buy thier product, we would have to pay first, then, they’ll bring it to us after like five days. Come on. And you think Nigerians will accept that crap. We don’t even trust our brothers and sisters, talk less of trust a company we know nothing about. Jumia must have realized that this is not US and the way Amazon does it might not work in Nigeria. Hence, the Pay On Delivery concept was birthed.
Listen. There’s one tool that sha works in the Nigerian Business environment, and that tool is called Stakeholder Management. Errrmmm… Some people might call this wetting the ground. It works like magic in this part of the world. Do you know the far reaching impact of giving hampers during Christmas? Massive. Give people things in Nigeria and your business will move. But, please. I am completely against bribes. If we must make a mark, we must learn to do clean business.
Finally on this issue. Yes, you can go ahead and start a business without adequate knowledge. I will pray for you. Trust me, the grace of God is sufficient for you. But, I can assure you, in this 21st century, you will burn your finger. This is not a curse. Its just the truth. You’ll so much get burnt.
Businesses of today is not like how it was before. There are too many factors to consider. Just too many. You can’t just force customers to like you and buy from you. There’s also massive competition. Crazy one.
Since I can’t talk about Marketing again today, let’s meet tomorrow again. No vex ehn. Don’t worry tomorrow, I’ll make it up to you. I’m starting off with Branding. Don’t even think of missing it.