How to Start A Profitable Digital Marketing Business in Ghana

Have you ever thought of setting up a digital marketing business in Ghana? In this guide, we’ll teach you all that you need to set up a profitable digital marketing business in Ghana even as a beginner.

If you are in the know, you’ll discover that companies spend a lot of money on running an advertisement. A lot of companies are drifting away from the traditional advertisement method. Online presence drives a lot of sales and as such big organizations, even startups will cough out a huge amount of money to have their business online.

But before we start, we need to have a basic knowledge of what digital marketing really entails. Why is digital marketing taking over every other means of marketing? Not only that, but we’ll also teach you how to set up your own digital business in Ghana and make money from it.

What is Digital Marketing

Digital marketing simply means the marketing of products and services using digital media. The internet is a major tool for digital marketing. It also encompasses other means, including mobile SMS, social media, and digital advertising.

Digital marketing is a broad term that embraces activities covering search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM), content marketing, and e-commerce marketing among others. All these are channels of digital marketing. So, as a digital marketer, you should be conversant with these channels and how to use them to attract customers to your business.

As a digital marketer, your job is to drive sales to the business being advertised. As earlier mentioned, the digital marketing business is in high demand because of the potential of driving sales from a large market.

Things to Know Before Starting a Digital Marketing Business in Ghana

Before you get started with digital marketing, you need to consider a few things, including:

1. Digital marketing doesn’t yield an immediate profit. Once you have started, it will take time before you start seeing a significant result. With new websites and businesses coming up, the online marketplace is getting saturated, with companies spending millions to rank highly in Google’s search engine results.
2. Apart from the early challenge of getting your presence known, you can still be a successful digital marketer. You should have foresight if you are going into this business. All the emerging competitions need internet marketers and you surely have a role to play.
3. Just like every other business, you need to continuously learn, unlearn and relearn to stay on top. Search engines are always changing their algorithms to improve search patterns, which means you need to stay updated.
4. Build your brand and reputation. You need to build your business brand that can attract big customers. However, building a brand needs some level of consistency.
5. Don’t quit too early. You may not make a reasonable amount of money at first, but as you improve your brand, you’ll be wowed by what you earn from your business.

As you start your own digital marketing business in Ghana, keep the above points in mind. This will help you understand the underlying challenges and possible solutions to digital business problems in Ghana.

How to Start A Digital Marketing Business in Ghana

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to become a successful digital and internet marketer in Ghana. All you have to do is to read this post to the end to grab the whole information.

1. Learn the Basic Tools of Online Marketing

The first thing that you need to become a successful online marketer is to learn the basic tools of digital marketing. You need to have a good knowledge of the web environment. This is just a basic requirement. Also, you should also learn to use digital marketing tools for social media, content creation, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing campaigns, video marketing, email marketing, etc.

You need to learn how to access, analyze and interpret data from marketing channels. There are thousands of resources online to help you learn a thing or two about digital marketing.

1. Videos
2. Articles, blog posts
3. Infographics
4. Digital Marketing Courses
5. Podcasts
6. Books and so on.

If you still can’t get all you need about digital marketing online, we recommend you attend digital marketing training in Ghana. Attending digital marketing training also gives up an advantage over your competitors who are relying on the internet to sort out their problems.

2. Get Hands-On Experience

Having theoretical knowledge about digital marketing isn’t enough you need to get hands-on experience. You can get this experience either through a personal project or by working with a digital marketing firm.

Working for a digital marketing firm exposes you to the real world of digital business, which presents you with challenges to which you will apply your skills, and test your efficiency. What this means is that you won’t be starting your digital marketing business as a novice, but as one who knows what it takes to run a digital marketing business.

3. Define Your Niche

Now that you know all there is about digital marketing, you need to define your niche. A niche refers to your target audience, the people you want to work with. It is best you choose a niche that you are very familiar with. I know it’s quite tempting to try your hands on almost all the niches, but you need to be unique in your own special way.

To narrow down your search for a niche attempt to answer these questions. This will give you more clarity on what is it that you’re trying to build and for who.

• What is your niche? Who is your target audience and why? how large is your audience? Are you building a small independent business or a big brand? Having a clue about this will help you narrow down your search.
• Who do you want to appeal to? Are you targeting students, entrepreneurs, kids, or hardened professionals? This will help you find the people you’ll associate with, and how you’ll begin to build a reputable brand.
• What makes you unique? There are thousands of digital marketers out there, so how are you different from them? What do you do that is different from others?

4. Register Your Business

In Ghana, the authorized agency for business registration is the Registrar General. According to the Registrar General Department’s website, fees for limited liability companies attract a charge of GH$175, a company limited by guarantee is GH$155, while commencement of operations attracts 0.5% of stated capital.

On the other hand, a business name registered by a sole proprietorship attracts a charge of GH$35, partnerships are expected to pay GH$75, subsidiaries GH$35, and external companies are expected to pay $1000 or its cedi equivalent. Look at our comprehensive guide on how to register a business in Ghana for more information.

5. Set up Your Website

You should have a functional website for your digital marketing business. This will serve as an online reference point for those who want to advertise with you. Register your domain name and host your domain with a hosting company (we recommend Bluehost for this). Your site structure should contain among others, information about the services your company offers. It’s also important that you get a corporate email, to add to the professional image you want to build for your business. Bluehost provides you with a free email service something like this “[email protected]“.

You can build your website on different platforms depending on what you are targeting. We recommend the Self-Hosted WordPress provided by Bluehost. Using the WordPress site is easy, and you don’t need to be a tech guru to use it. Check out the tutorial on how to start a website.

Also, the kind of theme you use in building your WordPress website also accounts. We recommend you go with any of these themes.

• Template Monster
• Themeforest

6. Connect to Social Media

After setting up your website, you need to connect it to social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ etc. You have to create a business page across social media platforms. Why do you need social media for your business?

1. Marketing: You can use your social media pages to share offers, blog post and any other materials that might drive people your way.
2. Customer Engagement: You can use this platform to engage with your customers. Get complaints, suggestions and the rest.
3. Generate Lead: You can also use your social media account to find new clients. Having a strong social media presence improves your chances of finding them.

7. Start Marketing

Since you are just starting it is wise to do some digital marketing jobs at a fraction of the standard cost. This will help you build a portfolio that can open more business doors to you. If your service delivery is excellent, your customers could become your biggest advertisers.

We believe that with this information, you can conveniently get started with your digital marketing business in Ghana. For suggestions and inquiries please use the comment section below.