---

Home | Small business | ( 2 ) | Subscribe

Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday April 23, 2012 10:24:3:

There is a growing number of young Nigerians who are growing their small business using the internet. The fact is, at the rate at which businesses are being run in Nigeria, with increasing competition. you just have to make use of the internet to help you advance further and cover your losses.
More and more people are using the internet to search for a lot of things. Nowadays, more Nigerians who are potential shoppers tend to Google for a product or service before actually going out to shop. They google for things in a specific location, and for businesses that offer such services or products. The thing is, if you have no online presence such as a website or classified listing of your business, you would be missing a lot.

A Potential shopper's Scenario
Assuming I'm a potential shopper and want to buy maybe Plasma Tv screen in Alaba and I google for it using the search term "Plasma tv alaba lagos", I would get some search results related to businesses or small companies or even shops that have been recorded by Google or other search engine. Why thos businesses are listed in search results is because they have an internet presence. What happens next is that is makes it easier for me to decide which shop or office I should go to do the actual purchase. I could even give them a call first to find out their prices and specification of product available.

Assuming again, I am interested in buying original Nokia phones in Lagos Nigeria and I Google for "Nokia phones Ikeja" and it gives me a whole lot of results. I would click on the relevant results I need and see if they have a website, office, contact address or even phone number to continue the purchase If I finally decide to.

Nigerians are constantly searching for products
So there are a whole lot of queries going on at Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing and other search engines about Nigerian products and services and it is only businesses that already have a presence on the internet that are getting the best. There is a story of a Nigerian lady who grew her business just because she launched a simple website marketing her products. She was able to grow from N100,000 per month to N1m in sales per month and I'm not just talking. That is the power of the internet.

Online presence and why you need it
Online or internet presence in simply being visible on the internet. If you want your business to have an online presence, then you just need to do certain things that will make it be. You can decide to either setup a website, have a facebook page, post a classified listing or pay a blogger to do a review of your business. I think the best method is to simply have your own website and this really comes cheap from as low as N2000 per year if using Google's free initiative for small businesses in Nigeria - See gnbo.com.ng.

For a start all you really need is to pay for your your domain name and then get web hosting from any site and there are a lot of sites offering free web hosting. You can however just sign up with GNBO.comn.g and they will aid you in setting up your small business website in no time.

All you basically need for your cheap website is the write up such as business name, domain name, contact address, phone and some pictures.

Once you have something like a website, classified listing, facebook page or other internet marketing campaign that promotes your business, then you will be able to dramatically get more customers for your small business. It works like magic. People can't come to you if you are not visible but with the power of the internet, you can be really visible and this will improve your sales.

---

Comments:
Re: Grow your small business with the internet Reply by flaky on Sunday May 6, 2012 at 3:16:42:

I am interested,this is really nice to help pple grow their business.

---