Eldoret town is among, if not, the fastest growing town in Kenya. This growth is anchored on the entrepreneurial spirit of many small-scale entrepreneurs involved in a variety of small businesses including barbershops and salons, beauty shops, fast-food joints, laptop and mobile phone shops, clothing stalls, photography & videography studios, and events décor providers among others. The competition between these businesses is undoubtedly high but their target market within Eldoret and its environs is wide enough to allow each of these entrepreneurs to earn a comfortable living provided they adapt their marketing to the digital age that we are currently living in.   

Digital marketing is a modern way of marketing that relies on all forms of digital media to create communication and exchanges between businesses and customers and to market products and services. Generally, digital marketing leverages what are known as the 5Ds of digital marketing namely; (i) digital devices, such as smartphones; (ii) digital platforms, such as Facebook; (iii) digital media, such as search engines like Google; (iv) digital data; and (v) digital technology, such as websites.

Digital marketing is experiencing a rapid growth in Eldoret where several digital marketing agencies have emerged in the last few years. Large organizations, such as the County Government of Uasin Gishu, the Eldoret Water and Sewerage Company (ELDOWAS), the Eldoret City Marathon, Rupa’s Mall, the Eldoret Sports Club, and the Eldoret Club among others are increasing investing heavily in digital marketing. The budget that was traditionally reserved for salespersons that move around in the streets with products in hand is now being directed to marketing on digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and websites.

For small businesses, however, digital marketing does not have to be expensive. Indeed, utilizing free social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, wisely can make a lot of difference on the financial bottom line of small businesses. Practically every entrepreneur has a personal social media account. Many have both personal accounts and business accounts. Majority, however, do not know how to properly utilize these accounts to target potential customers and grow their business. Most people make random, un-strategic, and misaligned posts on Facebook and Twitter, which amount to nothing more than just noise.

In digital marketing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media accounts serve as outposts for your website or blog, which are the hub of your business. Your goal should be to use the outposts to drive potential clients back to the hub to learn more about your business. If you do not have a website or blog, you can use a Facebook Page as your hub and use Facebook groups, Instagram, and Twitter to generate leads back to your page.

One of the easiest ways of pushing prospects to your hub is writing engaging content that your target market will deem useful. For example, if you are a mechanic, writing an article on “the five most common causes of engine power loss” might attract readers who have experienced such problems with their vehicles. Writing such articles regularly is likely to grow your stature as an authority on automobiles and some of your regular readers are likely to ultimately become your customers. The digital marketing jargons for these is lead generation and lead conversion.

An important tip is to make sure you generate regular useful content on your business’ social media platforms. Regular content at predictable intervals or specific times ‘warms up’ the Facebook algorithm allowing it to expect posts on your Facebook page or timeline at specific times every day thereby increasing the overall reach of your posts. Another useful tip is to avoid only producing content that seeks to market or sell a product or service to your social media followers. This is because customers are quick to identify content that is meant to convince them to buy something and, if such ‘selling’ is done to them early in the process of familiarization with a new product or service, then the customers are likely to resist the product. The key is to subtly sell to the customer by first winning their trust through activities that do not require much commitment, such as subscribing to a newsletter or reading a blog article, like I am doing to you right now.

Avoid pushing your prospective customers too hard and, instead, draw them in subtly by sharing useful content with them freely. If they find your content useful, your prospective customers will share the content with their own contacts on social media and, in this way, your brand will have gained additional reach. Finally, remember to brand yourself consistently and, if possible, uniquely and avoid discrediting your competitors directly as customers are turned off by that. Instead, highlight your product’s or services’ strengths and how they will give your customers better value than anything else in the market.  

Of course, if you are having trouble with formulating and implementing a digital marketing strategy for your business, visit our website www.agetakekreatives.co.ke or get in touch with us via info@agetakekreatives.co.ke or via our social media pages. We eat, drink, and breath digital marketing and we shall surely come up with an ideal digital marketing strategy to push your brand to the top.