The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Thursday,  22nd of August published a new electricity tariff on its website, increasing the cost by an additional sum between NGN8 and NGN16 for every kilowatt-hour energy provided by their respective distribution companies. Until now, the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI)  has been marred with non-cost reflective tariffs and high aggregate technical commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses. The challenges which have created a liquidity crisis in the fragile sector is gradually pushing it towards bankruptcy despite the interventions from  the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The argument to fixing the problem was whether to first deal with the  abysmally low collection efficiency component of the ATC&C losses  which on the average for 2019 is at 20%, or to implement a cost-reflective tariff. Increasing tariff without first addressing the problems of commercial and collection losses would simply create a  vicious cycle as the action can result in deviant consumer behavior and increase the level of theft.

To solve the puzzle, NERC in her wisdom first introduced the Meter  Asset Provider (MAP) scheme where consumers can advance payment for  metering and get it installed within 10 working days. This, the Commission hopes will Fast-Track Closure of Metering Gap, and then the  expectation that it will facilitate improvement in revenue collection.  

Secondly, NERC embarked on the tariff review process for presumably,  cost reflectiveness which will become effective on 1st January 2020. We examine how this new tariff increase will affect businesses in Nigeria.

The business climate in Nigeria has never had it better in terms of  electricity supply, with most businesses generating up to 50% of their  electricity. The energy losses associated with the self-generation model is significantly high that it erodes business operating profits.  

The trade-off would have been to optimize the use of cheaper grid  electricity as much as possible when available. But the frequent number of outages from the grid diminish this value. Currently, the  industry is trying to recuperate and consequently, the increasing electricity tariff. This could mean two things for your business profitability;

• (1)   increase the price of your product and services; or
• (2)   reduce energy cost by implementing energy efficiency measures

To put these scenarios into perspective, if your annual electricity  consumption is 2,000,000 KWh in Abuja and you generate about 40% of your own electricity at NGN90 per unit (KWh) using a diesel generator,  your current annual energy cost would be NGN128.5million. If you do nothing and continue with business as usual with the increased tariff, your energy bill will increase by 12.8%, eroding your pre tax profit by  NGN16.4million per annum.

If you choose option one above by increasing the cost of your product  and services, most likely, you would see a drop in demand, especially if you are in a sector with high elastic demand. And if your business  is already struggling with the current economic downturn, it might as well mean the end of the road for your business.

If you choose option two by implementing energy efficiency measures,  through which 20% cost savings can easily be achieved, you would completely avoid the impact of the increased tariff, plus a further  9.8% reduction in your annual energy cost leading to NGN12.5 million increase in your pretax profit.

Let’s imagine that instead of going for cost reduction, you try to  increase sales instead. If your pre-tax earnings margin is 15%, then  you would have to increase sales by NGN193.3 million per year to get the same impact as option 2. And how would you do it?  Most of the time you can’t be certain that the actions you would take to boost sales will deliver the expected results. You might be left with  expensive advertising campaigns and new product development, and insufficient payback.

Prof. John Momoh (pictured), Chairman of NERC, didn’t miss his words during the  assumption of office of the new Minister of Power, Mr. Sale Mamman when he said: “You are going to be paying for those wasted energy, so  we have to minimize loss at the customer end.”[ In the current  globalized and competitive economy, the efficiency of materials,  energy, and processes determines who wins the market and Nigeria is  not an exception.

When trying to build an online reputation, Brands usually merely slap together a website, set up social media pages, and publish content. Many do not understand that there are deeper layers to online reputation management than merely just having those pages out there on the Internet. It goes beyond setting up profiles and getting (negative and positive) reviews from clients.

A Scenario

I am a lawyer, though I have a deep interest in marketing and online assets building for professional services firms. And I also do work in that area. Recently, a law firm in Lagos named [REDACTED] hired me to critically assess their online assets. For 2 day, I set down to work, accessing and assessing their online trail; then I noticed something: another “law firm” supposedly based in Benin Republic named [REDACTED] had a website that was a carbon copy of the website of this law firm I was auditing their online portfolio. They copied EVERYTHING in the website, down to the partners and associates working with the firm, merely changing their names and educational qualifications.

I pointed this out to the law firm managing partner, and it turned out that he was not even aware of what was going on. I initially takedown proceedings and got the website taken down.

Analysis

Online reputation management is an issue professional services firms and consultancies should be more deeply invested in. obviously, the law firm was being impersonated and had been for a while before I noticed this anomaly and pointed it out to them. What it also pointed out was the fact that they had neglected their online reputation, such that someone out there took them for easy game and worked to utilize their details, infringe on their intellectual property, and pass off unknown services as theirs.

There is a possibility that this issue would have gone undiscovered for years unless someone had pointed it out. There is also the high possibility that their images were being used to commit fraud, until they were stopped.

Monitoring and Prevention

If you have an online reputation, or your firm has an online reputation, then it is pertinent to actively monitor and prevent intellectual property infringement and defamatory cyber attacks that are aimed at destroying your firm’s reputation. For a firm that cannot employ an in-house team to actively handle their online reputation management, it would be instructive for them to use the services of online marketing experts who in turn will use dedicated deep online search tools to monitor the conversations on the Web about them and discover any infringement of their intellectual property, unfair practises, and defamation of their Brand name.

Damage Recovery

If a Brand’s online reputation is affected negatively whether in the form of the publication of infringing content, defamatory statements made, or real profiles are passed off under fake names and credentials, then identifying, yanking and ultimately halting that unlawful behaviour becomes the paramount consideration for any firm. In some cases—and depending on the wishes of the firm involved—yanking these infringing content and stopping the unlawful behaviour may not be altogether enough. Some wronged firms may want to go a step further by obtaining court judgments and monetary compensation against the persons involved.

If a firm chooses the latter option for its online reputation management, the wide geographical spread of the Internet may make it difficult and time-consuming to obtain the necessary Court relief(s) because of the fact that these crimes may cross more than one jurisdiction when they were originally being executed. This will ultimately make legal action in that circumstance an expensive undertaking.

The Best Class of Experts to use for Online Reputation Management

Online Marketing Experts: You will agree with me that an online marketing professional with experience in Search Monitoring and online portfolio management will make a better online reputation management resource person than a professional without these experiences.

Lawyers: There are thousands of blogs and websites out there, and the number of online defamation and infringement online continues to rise over time. There is a distinct flavour using an actual lawyer who is highly skilled in online brand management and has actual Domain Name expertise will bring. In addition to monitoring, identifying and having solutions for infringements that can (and do) occur to Brands, a lawyer skilled in Digital Domain will also have a battery of advice under his belt pertaining to legal measures that can be taken against infringers.

Conclusion

In today’s world, perception is everything. What you put out there to the world to read and view is what they will view you as and what they will believe you are. Or, what others put out there about you and your Brand is what people will read and then believe. Investing the time and resources to monitoring what is put out there on you and your Brand, or how your Brand is being used, will help you prevent horrible reputation dives that will give your Brand a negative perception. And remember, perception is everything nowadays.

You will hit a deep low if your Brand has a negative perception out there, or there is infringing or defamatory content out there which you don’t know how to handle or take down. Take active charge of your Brand—if you have one. Even if you don’t—which is a Branding decision on its own, albeit a passively negative one—you might want to start Googling. What you find out there in the Deep Web may surprise you.

You may have not paid attention to this so far in your business model or probably in your marketing strategy as a company. I have discovered that a lot of businesses, even big companies do not pay attention to metrics so they spend so much on marketing and get turnouts which if proper metrics are taken, such companies will realize that they ran at a loss. However, since there are no proper metrics taken, such a company automatically assumes that they are making progress so far.

Influencer marketing is one area where this fallacy is common, and I will analyze why it is so and what you can do to get the best result on marketing. Firstly, influencer marketing is simply the use of influencers to help promote your business, product or service. Banks and telecom networks use a lot of artistes to help brand their products and make them visible to the public.

This approach is very good in helping a business idea get publicity. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to every business or company and as a matter of fact, some things should be known before you venture into trying out the influencer marketing approach when setting up your marketing strategy. I’d give an example; I once watched an Instagram celebrity or influencer in Nigeria market a product and I unfollowed him immediately. Prior to this time, I check his Instagram account daily because I do get value from it but this particular product annoys me. So I got offended that he was marketing such product to me.

The first mistakes companies make is that they just hand out their products to any type of influencer not considering the niche such an influencer belongs. For example, an Instagram celebrity or artiste may have been well known for talking about Hip Hop, well known in such a niche. It is just common sense to automatically assume that most of the fans of such influencer will be Hip Hop lovers. You cannot approach such an influencer if you have a product that is for R n B lovers because they will most likely not be followers of such influencer unless you have plans to convert them.

Most times, it’s better to focus your marketing strategy on those who are already almost interested or likely to be interested in your products or services than on people whom it will cost you more stress to convert. This is because it will save you more time, energy and also save more money. The point is that you need to also pay attention to the audience of the influencer you want to use. What does their audience trust them for. Are their audiences all Christians or just Muslims alone. Do they even believe in God’s existence. This is very important! I’m explaining this so you’d get the output you invested your money into.

Another important thing about influencer marketing is to understand the influence such influencer has over their followers. There are three categories of people following any account whatsoever.

• Followers: an influencer might have 10 million persons following their Instagram account or any social media account. The followers are just people who either intentionally or unintentionally follow such account. They are people who consciously or unconsciously like their post. At this stage, these people are not deeply connected to such influencer. It will be wrong to go for an influencer because of numbers because you have a 50/50 chance of missing it completely. What if all the audiences are not even connected to such account. What if they followed such account because of hype, a bonus offer or some sort. The followers are just followers. They don’t give a good ROI on marketing expenses.
• Fans: This is the next stage of following. Fans are loyal to the brand, to the influencer. They can also be called advocates. They stay true to the influencer and can defend their image any day and anytime. They regularly visit such page and love to fraternize with the idea of knowing such influencer. They can be a good consideration if your strategy is targeted at bringing awareness to your product or service. Most times, they are not a good metric when talking about conversion except it takes some time.
• Customers: The customers happen to be a fraction of the whole followers and even a smaller fraction precisely. If you want to get sales, then focusing on customers is the best bet. You look for influencers who have higher control over the decision of their audience whose audiences are also capable of purchasing such product. It is one thing to wish to purchase something, it is another to be capable of purchasing.

I have literally helped you analyzed how best to use influencers and also how you should portray your brand to be customer-focused and not just follower-focused. A brand having much influence over a small niche is better than a brand having very low influence yet no specific niche.