How can I grow my small business in Nigeria?
Question
How can I grow my small business in Nigeria? I just set up a business but hoping to get tips that would help me grow this business to a reasonable height.
I learned that most business collapse with just 6 months, what can i do differently?
Answers ( 6 )
Make use of social media. Its a way of publicizing ur business.
The best way to grow your business in Nigeria is to do one on one marketing or door to door marketing. Nigeria is still struggling on the area of internet and network marketing. Secondly make sure your products are sound, original and also affordable.
If you product or service is really great, your first few customers will recommend it to other.
If you think hard and deep you will remember that the last product you bought or the last movie you saw was actually recommended by someone.
It is called word-of-mouth advertising, sometimes it is better bill board advertising.
These are some of the basic business principles that would help you grow your small business in Nigeria.
You grow your small business in Nigeria by
1. Investing in your business
2. Gaining customers trust by providing quality goods and services not fake/inferior.
Fake or inferior product will drive away your customers.
3. Promoting your business either by social media, door to door marketing or any way you feel its better.
4. By having unique and innovative ideas…trying to make them better than other competitors. You must always improve your product and services, otherwise, your competitors will push you out. Imagine buying nokia 3310 today.
5.extend your markets.
6. Penetrate existing markets and know their wrongs so you wont make same mistakes.
6. Focus on the need of the people in the area of your business don’t just do any kind of business, knows the need of the people. It would be wrong to open a gold shop in rural areas, the people may not have the money to patronize your business.
If you apply this principles you can easily grow a small business in Nigeria.
Businesses in Nigeria has always faced a major setback as the result of the ineffective government policies and lack of raw material for manufacturing industries.
Also, no knowledge of business ventures by entrepreneurs, however, with the current improvement of businesses in the world Nigeria has seen a high growth in business ventures.
To grow a small business in Nigeria you must first
1) Ascertain that your business is actually profit worthy.
2) You will need adequate information about the business.
3) Draw up a business plan before you start.
4) Plan for yourself and work out modalities on how you wish to achieve your aim.
5) Locate your target market.
6) Discipline is a vital tool. You must never spend your capital.
This is how you can grow a small business from scratch to the top in Nigeria. When a business gets shut down, it could be anyone among many pitfalls that plague many businesses in Nigeria.
Plan Before you start your business
If you are going to be successful in any business, you must set out time to plan for it. You must know the kind of business to set up. You don’t just start a business because others are doing it. If your brother is succeeding as a cobbler in Ariria market, you can’t just start a shoemaker shop because of that singular reason.
Also, you are not in Ariria.
Different locations for different businesses, the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of your business is simply – choice of business. So before you go looking for a shop or office, plan.
If you have gotten the basics right, then we can talk about how you can grow your business.
Prepare before starting your small business
Before starting a small business in Nigeria, you must prepare for it. You must study the business adequately. Study the competition, especially the successful ones. What are they doing right and what are they doing wrong?
Dicipline is Important
You don’t want to employ people that you can’t pay. You might want to manage your business all by yourself until you start making some profit.
I have seen supermarket owners that know absolutely nothing about their business. it is not possible to start big, except you are big already and just looking to expand your business.
If you are new to the business terrain, start alone and learn everything about it before employing people. I bet you want to sleep more and rest more, you will work it out soon. 😀
Pray and Focus
Most people probably understand how prayer affects the success of your business but I am of the opinion that ‘every successful business has a spiritual angle that is not always known to the general public’.
If you are a Christian, you must pray for the growth of your small business.
Also, you must focus, You don’t want to be seen in a new business every other year. Stick to one and build it.
Establishing and running a business in Nigeria is not an easy task. It can be demanding and very frustrating at the same time. A lot of patience, focus and perseverance is needed here. So, you might want to take it easy on yourself whilst running your business.
Without further ado, I’ll delve right into answering your question, how to grow your small business:
1) Publicity: Every business consists of three components; The Buyer, The Seller, and The Product/good/Service. While the product seems to always be a constant, the buyer and seller are very unpredictable variables.
Every business needs customers. And as with every business that seeks to thrive, you should always seek for customers, always seek for people that would patronize your business and expand your horizon and line of business.
One of the ways you can seek for customers is through publicity. Always endeavour to alert the general public on the kinds of goods you sell or the kind of service you render. A good place to start this is through social media. You are likely to attract potential customers if you have a large social media following or an impactful presence on social media .If you have less visible presence on social media, then you should do well to advertise your products with people that have a large following. This way ,people get to patronize you.
Advertising through word of mouth is also helpful.
2) Good Customer Service : This cannot be overemphasized. When customers return goods or give complaints about your products, you should always be swift and courteous when addressing the issue. You shouldn’t be slow when attending to customers’ needs because this makes your customers draw back a little with their patronage.
Good Employee Team: If you have people working under you, you should make sure that they are focused and goal-driven. This is because, as a good business person, you wouldn’t want to make losses due to your carelessness of employing a wrong team who don’t have your business goals at heart.
3) Availability Of Product: Always make sure that your product is always available to your customers 24/7. This shows seriousness on your part and at the same time, you would have achieved customer satisfaction.