How Gbenga Ogunbiyi is digitalising marketing

Gbenga Ogunbiyi is the senior partner at PPC Digitals, a start-up agency that renders services in digital marketing.

Gbenga and his co-founder – Tosin Adefimilola- were inspired to establish PPC Digitals in 2015 after completing a course on digital marketing. While undertaking the course, both entrepreneurs saw a business opportunity and decided to leverage on it.

“We wanted to learn digital marketing, which was the new cool then, and, after the training, we saw an opportunity to create a business. We got our first clients before we launched in 2015,” he says.

“This positive line spurred us to register our domain PPC.ng (meaning: Pay Per Click marketing). You pay only when there is an engagement on your ads in September 2015.

“While we were developing the platform, we got a gig from a popular FinTech firm in Victoria Island through a colleague we formerly worked together at a top e-commerce firm. We launched a search and display advert for their end of the year marketing campaign in 2015 tagged ‘Everything Goes Mobile’ and ever since, we have not looked back,” he adds.

Gbenga started PPC digitals with N70, 000, an amount that was obtained from his first client. He states that the initial capital was used in registering the business domain, purchasing the hosting for web and acquiring a business name from the Corporate Affairs Commission.

“The initial start-up capital was the fund we realised from our first set of clients. The first person paid N70,000 while the other one did not pay up till now. However, he connected us to a paying real estate client and that is life,” he says.

He notes that the firm has grown tremendously owing to its ability to assist a lot of MSMEs scale up their businesses and advertise their products using various digital tools.

“We have helped a lot of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) scale and increase the awareness of going digital to improve their businesses and help move people away from the street through training, equipping them with the needed skills set,” the young entrepreneur says.

“Recently we got nominated for the ‘.NG Awards’ by Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) for the ‘Startup Company of the Year 2018’. Even though we did not win, it gave us the needed impetus to keep doing what we are doing, as the world is watching us. It can only get better,” he states.

The young entrepreneur notes that most start-ups fail after five years of survival owing to too much emphasis on profitability at the early stage of the business.

“If the founder’s motivation is strictly on the profit and not on the passion, it might have a ripple effect on the business if money fails to come in,” Gbenga says.

“You can only have a business when you solve a problem and your customer feels satisfied. Because we are in the business of solving people’s problems, which might change from time due to human dynamism, the business needs to evolve to stay relevant and afloat,” he explains.

He identifies that knowledge gap in digital marketing is the major challenge confronting the business, adding that it is very difficult for most business to patronise digital marketers because they lack the understanding of what it is.

“The biggest challenge confronting us is the dearth of knowledge in digital marketing. If clients don’t understand what we do, they find it difficult to do business with us.”

He notes that the business is now educating people for free to address the issue.

“As a remedy to the above problem, we educate people on digital marketing for free during our anniversary and the end of the year,” he says.

He also says that the huge infrastructural gap and lack of skilled employees, among others, are challenges facing the business, while calling on the government to invest in infrastructure and upgrade the country’s curriculum to meet industrial standards.

On his advice to other entrepreneurs, he says, “Believe in yourself. Nobody believes in you if you don’t believe in yourself. Start small, think big. Think, grow, pursue excellence and evolve.”

Bunmi Bailey