L-R: Clare Omatseye of JNC International; Ose Osundeko, Trainer, Wild Fusion Digital Centre; Adesuwa Onyenokwe, Publisher, TW Magazine; and Sanyade Okoli, Managing Director, Travant Capital at the Empowering Women with Technology Capacity Building series organised by Access Bank Plc

FUNKE OSAE-BROWN

“Good morning and welcome, Funke,” says Ose Osundeko as I walked into the head office of Wild Fusion Digital Centre that bright Wednesday morning in April. She is the center’s manager. I was among the pioneer set of women selected by Access Bank for training on empowering women in technology. It comes under the bank’s special product created for women called W community.

The training was a follow up to a session on empowering women in technology held at the bank’s head office on Victoria Island last month. The session had in attendance Omobola Johnson, minister of communication technology who was guest speaker and Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education who spoke about her personal encounter with technology.

It was, therefore, interesting to share the classroom that Wednesday morning at Wild Fusion’s Dolphin Estate office, with women like Iquo Ukoh, marketing and sales director, Nestle, Adesua Oyenukwe, publisher Today’s Woman magazine, Clare Omatseye, managing director, JNC International Limited, Sanyade Okoli, managing director, Travant Capital Partners, Yetty Williams, founder, LagosMums, an online parenting site, amongst other women. The course named Digital Skills Acquisition programme was the first in many others that will run through the year.

Osundeko who facilitated the first session titled ‘Fundamentals of Digital Marketing’ spoke extensively about the benefits of digital marketing and the positive impact on businesses.

“Digital marketing has brought a new dimension to how businesses can be done,” she explained. “It is using digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers and businesses.”

According to her, when you think of your target market, think of on the influencers. “If your primary target is not online, the influencer who is the secondary market will be. For instance, if you are selling a fruit drink for children or diaper, the baby is not online but the mother is, who is the influencer,” she explained.

She further said that every market, every segment and every demographic is online which makes digital marketing necessary and important. However, she argued that when it comes to technology, women are very hesitant which explains the disparity in the number of women and men online.

In addition, she talked extensively about the digital marketing opportunities in Nigeria. Based on 2015 statistics she sourced from CPAfrica, there are over 11 million social media users in Nigeria and over 83 percent of these are active. There are almost 5.6 million Facebook users with the largest age group between 15 to 24 years. Gender distribution on Facebook is 69 and 31 percent male and female respectively. Nigeria’s 129, 391, 392 mobile subscription makes digital marketing critical.

“If your visibility is not strong enough, you can get lost. Facebook is not about how recent you post is but how many people are engaged by it. There should always be a data behind everything you do especially when placing adverts,” said Osundeko.

While taking the second session titled, Digital Marketing Strategy, Tayo Ige, head, digital strategy, Wild Fusion emphasised the importance of a digital marketing plan. “Always remember you cannot go online without a strategy. A good strategy requires who, what, when, where and how and it must have a structure. The structure includes audience definition, activities and analysis. Your consumer is very important. You must identify them, define and know them very well,” she said.

No doubt was an eye opener for the women who attended. And as Adesua said in course of the training, what she learnt will enable her understand better how her online content manager will develop better content for the online edition of the TW magazine. Also Okoli who manages Travant Capital Partners discovered she can start a financial blog as there is currently no popular blog that offer financial advisory services.

With this experience, the remarks of Victor Etuokwu, executive director, personal banking, who spoke on behalf of Herbert Wigwe, Access Bank’s managing director, at the plenary session held last month, comes to mind:

“In Access Bank, we believe women are the glue that keeps the society together,” said Etuokwu. Hence we celebrate women in Access Bank to commemorate the International Women’s Day. Today is focused on empowering women with technology which is the currency for engagement, interaction and doing business. As we drive and follow our passion in empowering women nothing could be more impactful than using technology to drive business. We hope to train 400 women in the next 12 months and we are collaborating with Wild Fusion Digital Centre.”