Nigerian businesses have been urged to rethink their marketing strategies as rising customer acquisition costs and weakening brand loyalty make it increasingly difficult to achieve sustainable growth through conventional advertising and promotional campaigns.

Marketing experts at the fifth yearly public lecture of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), Ikeja Chapter, in Lagos, said businesses must embrace artificial intelligence (AI), customer experience, integrated data systems and purpose-driven branding to improve profitability, retain customers and deliver measurable returns on marketing investments.

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nitro121, Lampe Omoyele; Professor Lere Baale, a fellow of NIMN; President and Chairman of Council of NIMN, Dr Bolajoko Bayo-Ajayi; and Chairman of the institute’s Ikeja Chapter, Onome Odili, said marketing must become a strategic business function linked directly to revenue, profitability and customer retention.

Speaking on the theme: “The New Marketing Blueprint: Driving Growth Through AI, Customer Experience, Data Ecosystems and Purpose-Driven Brands,” the speakers said large advertising budgets, celebrity endorsements and promotional campaigns could no longer guarantee business growth.

Omoyele said customer acquisition costs in key sectors had risen by more than 40 per cent in two years, while brand loyalty had declined by nearly a third, forcing businesses to find more effective ways to attract and retain customers.

He said increased marketing expenditure did not necessarily translate into stronger customer relationships, adding that businesses must combine AI for efficiency, customer experience for retention, data systems for precision and purpose-driven branding for loyalty.

According to him, AI could improve advertising efficiency, personalise customer engagement, analyse consumer feedback and support faster business decisions. AI-driven programmatic advertising, he added, was helping early adopters in Nigeria reduce cost per effective reach by between 38 and 45 per cent.

He urged marketing professionals to develop AI literacy and use the technology to anticipate customer needs and improve marketing decisions.

Baale said marketing professionals must measure success through revenue, profit margins, customer retention and trust rather than campaign activities alone.

He said marketing should influence strategic decisions on market selection, pricing, product differentiation and revenue generation, adding that AI’s competitive advantage depended on combining quality data, customer knowledge, creativity and human judgement.

He stressed the need for businesses to integrate customer information across sales, finance, customer service and operations, warning that collecting data without converting it into actionable insights would not improve business performance.

According to him, customers’ willingness to share information depended on trust, transparency, security and clear benefits.

On data management, Omoyele said many Nigerian organisations had sufficient customer information but lacked systems to connect data collected across departments.

Integrating such information, he explained, could help businesses identify weak-performing markets, target campaigns more precisely and respond proactively to changing customer needs.

He also called for ethical handling of customer information, describing the Nigeria Data Protection Act as both an obligation and an opportunity for businesses to develop responsible first-party data systems.

Baale urged marketers to consider Nigeria’s economic realities, including affordability, purchasing power, infrastructure constraints, distribution challenges and changing consumer behaviour.

He outlined a 90-day transformation framework under which businesses would assess customer journeys, data quality and AI readiness in the first month, redesign solutions around three priority customer problems in the second, and test, measure and improve the interventions in the final month.

In her welcome address, Bayo-Ajayi said the future of marketing required professionals to look beyond technology adoption and focus on understanding consumers, building trust and delivering sustainable growth.