What is SEO

How do you get more potential customers to find out about you and your business? One good way is SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. In today’s digital world, as a business owner, one of the most important ways that the right audience finds out about your business is via a simple mobile search. And by search, we mean the service offered by search engines like Google or Bing. If I wanted to buy new glasses, for instance, I would do a quick search on my phone to see where I can find new fashionable frames around me. Typically, Google would then display a number of links on its search results page. I would inevitably click on the one I think is the right solution to my search query. If that first link works, and I find something I really like, I’ll buy it. 

This simple example explains how search engines help businesses get found by local potential customers who are looking for the services the businesses offer. 

But how does the search engine know which links to display when people search for things? That’s where SEO comes in. Search engine optimization describes the processes involved in helping a search engine (such as Google) to understand what your company website is about and what products or services you offer. When you execute good SEO for your business, the search engines index the content on your website and begin to display links to your website when people search for terms related to your niche. 

This is an oversimplified description but it will do for the purpose of this article. 

Why does your company need it?

You’ve probably figured out by now why SEO is important for your business. SEO, when done right, attracts many more potential customers (with a strong intention to buy) to you. This means more business for you and more money for the business. 

How do you choose the right agency for it?

For most organizations, organizing a decent SEO effort might require too much work or expertise or time from them, and since the resources and expertise to properly do this may not be available, the next best thing to do is to outsource the SEO work to an entity called the SEO agency. An SEO agency is a specialized consultant agency that is able to provide search engine optimization services for a company over time, helping them to be more searchable on the internet, and positioning them as the solution to the problem that searchers are trying to solve. 

There are a number of SEO agencies in Nigeria that provide this specialized service. But choosing the right agency requires a basic understanding of what to expect in terms of deliverables. 

In this post, we will highlight an important checklist that  helps you hire the right partner for SEO:

• Get familiar with SEO

To hire the right team among the many SEO agencies in Nigeria, you need to understand the basics of SEO at least. This makes the process of selecting and meeting agencies easier. When you are familiar with SEO, you are able to ask the right questions and are able to independently measure the activities of the agency you work with, to determine that the value they say they are providing is actually value, and aligns with your SEO objectives for the period. This leads to the next point.

• What are your SEO goals? 

What are your SEO goals? Search engine optimization can do many things for your inbound marketing and your website’s efficiency as a marketing tool. It’s up to you to streamline the activity of your chosen agency and decide which metric is more important to achieve. When you understand your SEO goals, you can pick an agency with a strong capability in that specific area. SEO agencies in Nigeria (and everywhere else) will assure you of their ability to deliver on whatever SEO goal you put forward. But by understanding how SEO works, it’s easy to pick the right goal(s) in relation to your business and communicate those goals with the agency. 

• SEO consultant or SEO agency?

What do you really need, with SEO? Ascertaining your needs helps guide whether you need a whole external SEO team or a single professional. The question of whether you need a consultant or an agency is a question of your company size, and how much SEO work is required. Usually, if you have at least a working knowledge of SEO, and have established your goals, you’ll be able to know whether you require an SEO consultant or an agency. 

• Look at their team

SEO agencies in Nigeria are not all diverse, full-service SEO agencies. This is why it is important to pay attention to their team. Ask to see the team, either physically, virtually or via their website. Executing SEO requires a number of professionals for each of the steps. You need skills in content writing, technical SEO, link building, web development, etc. 

• Ask for a process definition document.

Consider this a roadmap for your engagement with the SEO agency. It tells you about how they operate, and how to work with them. You can also spot parts of their process that may be in violation of search engine rules. You can then call their attention to have it removed from your engagement or decide to work with a different agency altogether.

Understanding how SEO works can help you to establish your immediate and long-term goals, define success metrics and partner with the right consultant or agency out of the many SEO agencies in Nigeria. Pulse, a pan-Africa innovative media company offers SEO services across Africa. Having worked with some of the largest brands on the continent in SEO, social media management, video production and marketing, the agency consistently delivers above-average results. If you’re interested in SEO in Africa, Pulse is a good place to start.

The many advertising agencies in Nigeria cumulatively boast of some of the best advertising talents in Africa and even the world. This industry has taken campaign briefs and transformed them into epic, culture-shaping pieces of media. It has converted thousands of regular audience members into raving, loyal brand ambassadors. It has helped brands find their unique voice. (I could go on). But which one should your company partner with, and (more importantly), what differentiates this one from the rest? 

In this article, we’ll show you (not tell you) why Pulse is your preferred advertising agency in Nigeria.

A pan-African outlook

Pulse started in Africa from Nigeria in 2011. Our mission was to inform and engage Africa’s youth. We saw an opportunity in the burgeoning youth demographic. Over the years, we have launched in some of the continent’s most important markets, in Eastern Africa, Western Africa, Anglophone Africa and in Francophone Africa. Today, we are in 6 markets with skilled marketing, video and social teams in each of those markets, helping our partners to send the right messages and connect with the audiences. This pan-African outlook is especially beneficial for brands that are doing business all over Africa. Pulse is uniquely positioned to coordinate continent-wide campaigns that move the needle and surpass expectations.

A deep connection to local culture

In each of our markets, our owned social media channels help us to insert ourselves into the relevant conversations of the day, earning the audience’s trust and engagement over time. Our social teams are constantly editing and fine-tuning our content strategy and formats to be able to deliver relatable, shareable and engaging content to the audience. This deep connection to the culture serves our corporate partners uniquely. We are able to ideate, create and execute campaigns from an understanding of the audience that most other agencies are not able to access. And it is easy to see the impact of this in our creative collaborations with clients. Other advertising agencies in Nigeria can offer great service and a great story, but over and over again, the brand stories that the Pulse video and social teams tell for clients are not just fancy, they actually get the target audience activated, and involved. 

A strong, engaged and rapidly growing owned audience in 6 countries

Not many advertising agencies in Nigeria have access to a digital community of more than 6 million active members (across all platforms) and a highly engaging website with millions of monthly visitors. By staying in the news and at the centre of public conversations and topics, we are building a unique advertising advantage at Pulse, the capability to deploy marketing material to an already waiting and engaged audience. 

Experienced, expert and talented teams across

As a full-service agency, Pulse sports teams in its sub-brands (Pulse Marketing, Pulse Studio, Pulse TV, Pulse Network, Pulse Products) that are able to deploy their experience and expertise in delivering client work on time.

A focus on storytelling

Stories and storytelling have been proven over the ages to capture human attention and interest. In our advertising campaigns, we heavily rely on and deploy storytelling. Storytelling does not just help to get the message across clearly; it also helps our target audiences remember the message far longer than they would if we didn’t frame it in a compelling story. Our storytelling strategy and our talented storytellers and writers help to take a client’s message and bring it to life.

An influencer network

Advertising is evolving, and advertising agencies must evolve along. Pulse is building an expansive network of influencers across social media platforms and across the continent. These talented creators work with Pulse and Pulse’s corporate partners to distribute the main idea of a campaign to their own audiences. The Pulse Influencer Network matches the right influencer to the right campaign and this helps brands to scale word-of-mouth marketing and keep their message top-of-mind for the niche communities that our influencers serve. It’s a genius way to distribute an idea deliberately and encourage a much higher percentage of conversions.

Pulse is not just another one of the advertising agencies in Nigeria. Its deep roots and unique capabilities help to produce advertising campaigns that actually make a difference; for the brand, for the audience and for the culture. 

What are marketing agencies?

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing agencies in Nigeria have shown strong relevance in being able to raise the bottom line for businesses through their activities. In this post, we will look at marketing agencies themselves, and how their services can help your business achieve its goals this year.

How are marketing agencies different from advertising agencies?

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

How can marketing agencies in Nigeria help your business?

Consultancy

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Direct marketing

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Digital marketing and/or social media management

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing communications

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

Marketing agencies are service providers for businesses and brands that are interested in outsourcing their marketing efforts. They provide support for every part of the marketing mix: from communication to product to price and to sales.

If you run a business anywhere you must already know that traditional and digital media are important prongs in your marketing strategy, because you can leverage them to distribute important company, sales and marketing information about your business, helping you to achieve business goals. This is why you need a media company. 

A media company is involved in creating content with professional editors and writers and periodically publishing its content bundles to the general public. A traditional media company would publish physical newspapers or magazines and distribute them through a network of stores or vendors around a geographic area, while a digital media company would publish digital content (like blog posts) usually to a website, where users can consume the information. 

The media industry also contains other forms of media content like video, audio, graphic, art, etc. 

The context of this article will focus on the digital media company whose activities benefit businesses looking to connect with its audience. 

Media companies in Nigeria, as with everywhere else, have been integral to the establishment and success of businesses of all sizes. They help to distribute announcements and advertisements through traditional means, but also to create and distribute digital content, video advertisements, press releases, etc. Smaller businesses need media companies to help them attract new customers, and as they grow to become larger corporations, they need media companies to build and reiterate the brand image and what they want to be known for, which ultimately drives more customers to the corporation. 

At every point in a business, it is important to maintain a working relationship with the media, usually through media companies. 

In this post, we will highlight various instances where media company capabilities meet the needs of businesses: 

Content creation

Businesses can pay media companies to create and publish content that highlights the businesses or puts them in great light. This could be adding the business to a recommended list article, or publishing a press release about the business. The best way to make the most out of paid content is to do it with a media company whose audience matches your target audience. 

If your business is focused on fashion, then paying for content creation in a media company that is focused on sports for instance will mean that the content is not as relevant for the audience and therefore will likely not return the maximum value. 

Social media distribution

Traditional media companies still have statutory and legacy roles to play in the media space. However, the majority of media companies in Nigeria today are digital, and for good reason. Technology has changed the way people consume information. In Africa, more people have access to a smartphone than do not. The target audience for your business is more likely to consume information on their smartphone and on social media. 

Businesses can improve their social media distribution, outsource their social media management or even get help with curating the right brand image on social media by working with digital media companies. Usually, these media companies have a large digital presence such that information shared on their channels travels faster, reaches more people and is accepted as accurate. 

Film, TVC or video production

Media companies in Nigeria are not all digital publishers. Some media companies specialize in the production of video content for businesses, with the same objective of driving more awareness, loyalty and distribution for the brand. As video content gets more engagement and organic shares, businesses look to professional video producers to develop video content that tells an accurate story about the business. These videos could be in the form of short films, television commercials or brand videos made specifically for social media.

Media companies in Nigeria provide a number of different deliverables for businesses that help the businesses to reach more people and connect more deeply with their already familiar audience. Most of these deliverables can be grouped into the already discussed capabilities above, and are undertaken by specific media companies specialized for each capability. However, there are some media companies that have built a strong track record across the different media capabilities and offer these services to businesses as an all-in-one solution to the business’ needs. 

One of them is Pulse. Pulse helps businesses in 6 different African countries to connect to their desired audience and reach new customers through content creation, social media distribution and video production. It has done this consistently for years and has built experienced teams who are able to interpret audience sentiment and align their content appropriately, helping to achieve maximum value for money. Media companies like Pulse may be able to provide more impactful service to businesses and brands because of their multidisciplinary experience and audience knowledge. They are often a better choice over time.