Leading through a pandemic: Oladipo empowers business leaders with marketing skills

With less than five years in the Marketing and Communications industry, Abdulkareem Oladipo, is doing for local business owners what industry veterans have ignored. Nigeria reported its first case of the virus on February 27 and has since instituted a total lockdown leading to substantial economic, business, and commercial impacts.

Oladipo, who is a Brands, Marketing and Communications Specialist with Workforce Group, has previous experience working in Financial Technology, Investment, Professional Services and eCommerce.

With Certifications from Google, HubSpot and several leading bodies, he has developed to become a ‘T-Shaped Marketer’. He also holds a Masters degree from the University of Lagos.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there are 41,543,028 enterprises designated as Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) accounting for 96 per cent of businesses, 84 pee cent of employment and 48 per cent of national GDP. These businesses have been the hardest hit during the lockdown.

Digital transformation strategies implemented by larger organisations to cushion the effects of the economic slowdown are foreign to MSMEs. So he decided to empower business owners with the skills and tools to keep their businesses running and generating revenue through the lockdown.

What is your opinion on marketing and advertising in Nigeria?
Honestly, we have arguably the best practitioners of the trade here. We have seen really impressive marketing and advertising initiatives from companies like MTN. The “I don port” campaign is one of such ingenuity.

What then happens with great success is that the industry begins to attract individuals that are not willing to put in the level of work greatness demands. The digital space has dropped the entry barrier that anybody with a few thousand followers can claim to be a marketing Expert. These people haven’t gone through any structured learning path, neither do they understand the principles and fundamentals of marketing. Unfortunately, business owners fall prey to them.

Is there a way out?
Yes. Like every profession, there will always be quacks. We have bricklayers parading as engineers, draftsmen parading as architects and so on. What is more important is to educate business owners on how to detect these frauds and what necessary skills and certifications their intended marketing professional must possess.

Questions like making sure your marketing professional understands basic terms like Customer Acquisition Cost, Bounce Rate, Landing Page and so on. These are so basic that it will first eliminate “influencers” that parade as marketing experts.

On the certification side, it’s important that marketing professionals have gone through a structured learning path. HubSpot has several different aspects of marketing, the same as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other organisations operating in the digital space.

Is this what led to you creating your course to train business owners on digital skills?
Not exactly. I have worked in companies where I had first-hand interaction with business owners. During our conversations, they kept on asking that I either consulted for their business or I joined them full-time. They were interesting proposals.

Once the lockdown was implemented, the number of these requests increased. I had more time on my hands and decided to put together a basic introduction to the profession and how they could implement some of these strategies in their businesses.

I was even more compelled because it was just business owners, undergraduates and NYSC members who were also affected. Some professionals had been retrenched and needed to pivot.

Was it free?
Yes. People were struggling enough. I decided to democratise my knowledge and experience as some sort of CSR initiative. People that still needed a deeper understanding, one-on-one sessions and consultations were the only paying customers.