Hey There, PITCH ME

Dr Thaddeaus Thompson is the chairman of T&T Web Designing and Marketing Services. In this interview with JOSEPH CHIBUEZE, he speaks on the opportunities open to Nigerian businesses with effective information and communication technology infrastructure.

 

Businesses Will Be More Competitive If They Embrace ICT–Thompson. 

 

Can you tell us why you are interested in Nigerian businesses?

 

T&T Web Designing sees the strength of the Nigerian market (Almost 300 million consumers), the educational standard of Nigerians, and the human capital strength of the country. In the late 90s, when e-commerce began to substitute brick-and-mortar business operations world-wide, our company moved from Switzerland to the Silicon Valley, California, USA, the heart of the tech industry worldwide and began servicing companies, particularly in the areas of sale and marketing, as well as studying customer needs. During our 20-year service in the US, we learned from the business environment how to exchange services for knowledge; in this case studying marketing trends and consumer behavior. Nigerian businesses will be much more competitive when given access to advanced agile marketing systems and web designing technology. This will also connect them to prospective customers and showcase their products and services in a more elaborative way.

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Obviously, you believe Nigeria still have a lot to do in the area of the penetration of web-based business activities?

 

Nigerians are quite informed about marketing trends and are aware of the power of websites in a business set up. To understand the dynamics of running a business for profit is in the Nigerian blood; however, what good does it present when the resources such as a website and web designing company are in short supply? We established T&T Web Designing & Marketing Services in Nigeria to make it easier for Nigerian businesses to benefit and maximise profit from transacting through Cloud-based websites. Customer service policies were designed to demonstrate how polite representatives were until new research and innovations proved that actual results in Return of Investment (ROI) and Return of Sales (ROS) were higher when consumers and businesses develop closer relationships through online platforms. The goal of our company is to help businesses in Nigeria develop a transactional customer relationship system with their customers using artificial intelligence (AI) and visual communication technology to better understand the needs of their target market. Over the past 25 years, Customer Service has evolved from what used to be the conventional customer service of handshakes to a more effective Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM), which is a transformation of a company’s entire marketing strategy into an electronic content management system called Web Designing. Today, websites should not just be photo-fronts where products and services are displayed, but rather the entire operations of a company and how its services or products benefit customers. Our main aim as a web designing company is to help businesses realise the importance of CRM that empowers customers, create a user-friendly environment, and helps customers in their buying decisions-making processes. Web designing and marketing cannot be separated; they work conjunctively. The resulting conceptual mixture of marketing and web designing became Cloud Marketing, a powerful concept that allows consumers and businesses interact on a virtual platform (Cloud), such as online store and meeting environment popularly known as the web without seeing each other.

Consumers have become more sophisticated prompting businesses to move from just being nice (handshakes) to a more customer-focused marketing strategy, in which the benefits and interest of the customer is the central focus.

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What do you think about the challenges Nigerian businesses face in terms of website and benefits from it?

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Nigerian businesses face several challenges ranging from limited incentives from both the private sector, especially the banks and insurance companies and the government. Both the government, lenders, and insurers must offer a degree of security to businesses. For example, businesses must learn to take risk and rest assured that when something goes wrong their insurers, government, and bankers will not deject them. Online business exposes companies to hidden fortunes as well as hidden dangers, especially when flaws exist in the website designing. There must be a fool-proof system in place to detect and minimise identity theft and hackers. Websites must be encrypted to prevent cyber-crime.

 

Secondly, Nigerian businesses, like most businesses in the world do not understand the full capacity and benefit of a website. Many still consider a website as an image presentation platform rather than the heart and soul of a business. We are working with our clients to defuse the holdbacks and emphasise the benefits.

 

Now that we are in Nigeria as a registered company what value are we going to add in promoting businesses to ensure growth and profitability?

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We are very confident in the ability and business acumen of Nigerians. Nigerians were named by CNN in 2019 as the most business-oriented population in the world. With this foundational truth, advancing courageously into today’s web-based business environment will facilitate growth at least 500 per cent, expansion at least 50 percent, patronage at least 500 percent, and profitability at least 200 per cent. Our web designing technology helps businesses and consumers find each other. Most of Nigerian businesses are operating under 30 per cent of their actual potential, which can be attributed to the lack of marketing incentives, such as Agile Cloud Marketing systems and Web-based technology.

 

Do you envisage challenges in Nigeria as you have commenced your operations amid COVID-19 issues currently affecting businesses?

As an international business entity, we are indirectly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic world- wide, because buying power has declined substantively since the outbreak. However, we have adapted to the new norms and are encouraging businesses to see the challenges as opportunities that have thought us all new things that we would never have known if the pandemic did not occur. businesses, who initial were hesitant to explore the benefits of reaching out to customers afar off, have now realised that a huge resource was left untapped for many years. Our business has expanded, not declined, because more customers are using our services now than before.

 

As a marketing company do you think businesses in Nigeria really need that?

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As water is to survival of a human being, so is marketing to a business. Most of our clients needed marketing services to help them reconnect with their customers. business need advanced marketing tools to remain competitive and maintain sustainability. Thank you.

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Suggested by Becky Mono Wambebe Snr. Marketing Director