‘We are closing skill gap in digital marketing in Nigeria’

The digital marketing in Nigeria is growing, now accounting for about 7 percent of the N120 billion marketing spend in Nigeria. Abasiama Idaresit, CEO/founding partner of Wild Fusion Digital Centre, who is deepening digital marketing with a training centre in this interview, assesses digital marketing and explains why he set up the training centre. Excerpts:

Would you say digital marketing has been growing in Nigeria and what accounts for the growth?

Social media marketing or the digital space has been growing at phenomenal rate, especially in Nigeria. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest market in terms of GDP and we are Africa’s largest technological market with over 120 million active phones and largest internet market in the continent with over 54 million connected users. That is a huge number. Brands and advertisers are beginning to tap into this concept of digital marketing and social media marketing. Over the few years, it has been growing at phenomenal rate and I have no doubt that it will continue.

What gives you the confidence that it will continue to grow?

When you look at the trend technology is bringing to marketing, the concept and the principle still remain the same, but technology is delivering a whole lot of value to advertisers and marketers. So, you are looking at targeting, reporting in terms of cost effectiveness and being able to reach users at a particular time of the day and most importantly, the return on advertising spend technology has helped to drive that.

How then will you convince me that the digital space will grow when there is challenge of skill set in the industry?

Yes, I do agree with you that skill set is a big problem in the market and that is why we are trying to address it because people are not well trained and do not understand concepts, they end up making a lot of mistakes and people feel that the market is over rated. There are a few digital agencies that know what they are doing and not all understand how to deliver value to their clients using technology platforms. That is why we have gone ahead to partner Digital Marketing Institute of Ireland, a global training institution that delivers digital marketing training across the world. We have joined the network to set up a Wild Fusion Digital Centre, which will be a one-stop centre that delivers international rated training for Nigerians. DMI is an international training organisation with a huge network of training centres around the world. By partnering DMI, we are bringing an opportunity for Nigerians to come down to Lagos as opposed to going abroad for similar training.

What motivated you into this project of setting up a training centre?

We have a country that is the biggest economy in Africa, we have the biggest digital market in Africa, we are the eight largest country in the world in terms of internet users, yet there are no infrastructure to train people and understand the concept of digital. We need to train people to use the principle and concept and tools out there to deliver value to themselves and their clients. With this we are building the local market and develop people. So many Nigerians are travelling outside the country to learn this concept. We strongly believe in this country and what we are doing. What drives us at Wild Fusion is delivering value to customers, and secondly is building the local eco-system. We want to empower Nigerians with tools to succeed and empower people with concept of technology as technology is driving business all over the world.

How much are you investing in this training centre and what modules are you running?

We have invested significantly in this training centre, and we are confident that the market is ready for it and we are ready to contribute along side other stakeholders to develop the digital market. If we don’t develop this market, we will have a situation where everybody is learning on the job and nobody has proper training to be able to maximise this opportunity for themselves or their clients.

People from other African countries are also coming in for training in our centre. This buttresses the point that if you create an opportunity to develop the market, you will also get interest not just from local market but international people. We believe that for Africa to succeed and emerge as an economic powerhouse it needs to rely on tools and skill population and it needs to start investing in not just physical infrastructure but human. Some of the modules we are running include search marketing, display advertising, strategy and planning , mobile marketing, social media marketing, introduction to digital and most importantly business ethics which is a compulsory module. We feel that every professional should understand how to make ethical decisions when running business.

What are the other benefits to the economy of having the institute here?

First, we have an international centre that is world-class in terms of content and the standard is international and students can get certification that is recognised anywhere in the world. Also, it reduces cost for students, instead of travelling out they could acquire the knowledge here. Sitting in a class – interacting with other students and listening to local case studies is an advantage. Wild Fusion DMI Centre is the second centre in Africa. The faculties are drawn from both local and international market. Some courses are five weekends. There are also intense 10 working days.

In market segmentation, do you have the technology to reach certain audience?

That is the foundation of online marketing, the ability to have precise targeting. Platforms like Facebook and Google networks have already segmented users.