Due to my tradeline, I work daily with smart Nigerian business owners to scale up their visibility and patronage via various online mediums like SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Creation and lots more.
But all those don’t matter as much as the business owner’s attitude.
For the success of your business, no matter how small, there are some essential marketing habits you need to imbibe.
Highly successful people in Nigeria and around the globe follow some daily ritual that produces a specific result; Success.
What are the best habits for business success?
Experience is said as the most fantastic teacher, but not necessarily a personal experience. One excellent life hack is learning from the experiences of others and making sure you don’t make similar mistakes from now on.
1. Don’t just do it. Plan
Many youths today are taking up a career in entrepreneurship, and many of us prefer to be business owners rather than workers.
Many young people are thus jumping on the ‘just do it’ bandwagon, believing they surely would get it right in the nearest future. I beg to differ.
Startup marketing is hard; this you will discover soon. Even your friends are not likely to convert into clients.
You need to plan and view how you want things to go for a successful business, especially if you’re working on a shoestring budget.
I know the idea of writing a business plan only pops up when applying for loans or grants. But have you asked yourself why it is even required?
Empathy and understanding your target audience (potential clients/users) were crucial takeaways I got after taking the Google UX Design Course.
As a business owner, you need to understand that it is not about you.
Clients, customers, users, visitors come first, and they are always right.
According to Mayo Clinic, being antisocial is a personality disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.
Imbibing a marketing habit that sees you placing the feelings of others at the forefront will ensure your success.
Late 2020, I published a post on LailasNews titled; “What doors can you open?” – Kiddwaya brags about his connections (https://lailasnews.com/what-doors-can-you-open-kiddwaya-brags-about-his-connections/), and I can assure you that writing that news was one of the eye-opening experiences of my youth.
I don’t know if you were among the many social media users who rebuked the young man for his comments. If you were, you would have been wrong.
Kiddwaya, who is the son of a Nigerian billionaire, stated at that time that money is temporary, but connection stays. He said that one needs to be focused and build their network to succeed.
Where is the lie in that?
4. Do you see problems as problems?
Problems will always stay with us as long as we remain on mother earth. But what differentiates successful business owners from the general public is their ability to solve problems in real-time.
When problems arise, which they surely would in your business, you have two choices: stay and face the music or run like the wind.
Problem-solving should be a daily habit spread across various life activities. Identification and instant resolution should always be the goal.
Whether it’s a problem with a product or service, customer, or another business issue, they should be resolved immediately, cause if you fail to, they surely will rear their ugly heads shortly.
Trust me, they must have grown into something bigger by then, and it won’t be fun dealing with them.
5. Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes
In the short poem “We Are Water”, Wally Lamb defined humans as fluid and flexible, but not everyone operates that way.
A lot of us like the easy and comfortable way of doing things. We learn one skill, then start up a business in that line, without growing with time.
Suppose you fall in that category. I can assure you of one thing. You will be left behind.
When I was a kid, I picked up a science textbook and learnt that scientists are curious discoverers. As an art student, I found this fascinating.
I wondered why this trait was fixed to scientists, not everyone else. It should have instead been a life philosophy.
Our world keeps changing, so it won’t be wrong for everyone to be curious about these changes and learn the patterns.
To be successful in business, one must constantly learn and evolve, becoming better at our various crafts. Don’t be afraid to continue learning, whether it’s in your line of work or a completely different line of work. It will be largely beneficial.
