Facebook is planning to bundle its kid companies into one. Instagram bought in 2012, and WhatsApp bought in 2014, have been operating independently from the parent company Facebook, with each having their own CEOs, making it difficult for many users to know that they belong to Facebook. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg confirms that the independent era is over. The spokeswoman, Bertie Thomson, stated that it’s time to make the products and services of Facebook clearer.

“We want to be clearer about products and services that are part of Facebook.” She said.

The plan is to attach at the bottom of the login page and the setting page this statement – “Instagram from Facebook.” Another way is by merging the WhatsApp and Instagram messengers to encrypted Facebook messenger.

But the timing suggests that there is more to it. Although Zuckerberg says it waited for so long, about 3 years of intense criticism to have operational control over the two companies that have been operating separately from Facebook. The recent hearings between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice and Facebook has been suggesting otherwise.

In fact, Facebook confirmed that it has been under investigation by the agencies for possible anti-trust activities. There have been concerns that Facebook is acquiring too much power and it’s buying up competitor companies in a bid to eliminate competition. A concern that many believe could only be quelled by breaking up Facebook into segments to minimize its influence.

So the plan is likely to fuse the three apps in a bid to convince investigators that there is only one entity – Facebook. But it may likely have consequences. When Microsoft had a similar issue with its operating system and window explorer 20 years ago, government investigators claimed that Microsoft was playing dirty, that the explorer was tied to the windows in a bid to eliminate browser competition. Well, Microsoft won on appeal, but it took 4 years of legal tussle that stalled many innovations that the company would have made. Facebook is treading the same path, especially when it seems that American Regulators are rising to challenge put up by their European counterparts. Who have been constantly confronting the online tech industry on issues of best practices.

Just last month, Facebook was handed a $5 billion fine for the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, and $100 million for not disclosing it to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). it was the highest levy given to a tech company, and Facebook accepted the fine, promising to follow FTC’s recommendation to avoid further problems.

The recent decision by Facebook to integrate the messaging services of Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger has been dividedly received. Although Zuckerberg claims he is taking the step to ensure protected privacy of users, others made us to think otherwise. Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes said the integration will make it harder for the company to break up from a technical standpoint.

A lot of key employees working with WhatsApp and Instagram have disagreed with quite a number of ways that things are going down in the companies. When Zuckerberg proposed that ads be served inside WhatsApp, the founders disagreed, it led to unresolved differences that they couldn’t take, so they left. Last year, Instagram co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the company due to frustrations over how Zuckerberg handles things.

There seems to be more people who are going to find the exit way with this new development. Zuckerberg says that WhatsApp and Instagram have been developed to their standard using resources of Facebook, and it’s payback time. The plan, if implemented will see employees change their emails from @Instagram, @whatsapp to @facebook.com

According to Business Day, a newspaper, the Aba leather industry has about 80,000 players operating in different clusters across the town. These players engage in the production of shoes, bags and trunk boxes, producing 48 million pairs of shoes annually at an average price of 2500 naira which gives it a market value of $333 million (120 billion naira). Its global competitors include China which produces 12.6 billion pairs of leather shoes and exports shoes and leather products worth $9.1 billion, and Vietnam which produces 760 million pairs annually with an export value of $6 billion. Indonesia, in third place, produces 660 million pairs with $2.6 billion in shoes exports while Italy produces 205 million shoes with export value of billions of dollars too.

There are different factors responsible for why the Aba shoe industry is not globally competitive. They include:

• Unavailability of export data on footwear
• Players in the leather industry not utilizing the internet in marketing and distribution of products
• High lending rate by Nigerian banks which has made manufacturing not globally competitive
• Unavailability of the manufacturers to get animal skins locally 
• Utilization of crude machines in production.

In May 2008, The Common Facility Centre was established in Aba as a partnership between the United Nations Industrial Development Organization(UNIDO), and  the Federal Government of Nigeria, to aid workers in the Leather and Garment sector to exploit external economies through collective effort and sharing common facilities for enhanced processing of their products, and to serve as a Centre of Excellence for capacity building and provision of cutting edge technology for competitiveness enhancement.  About eleven years after it was established, the majority of the Aba shoemakers have refused to utilize the facility as they don’t understand the purpose behind its set up.

The following solutions can solve this friction:

– Upgrade of Facilities and Provision of Manpower for the Common Facility Centre: Considering the fact that the centre hasn’t been utilized in a long time, its facilities need to be upgraded in line with modern requirements. Also, efficient manpower that will run it should be recruited.

– Training Aba Manufacturers with Latest Skills and Technologies: Aba shoes and other leather product manufacturers should be trained in skills such as Industrial and Product Design, Additive Manufacturing and usage of modern machines which automate shoe production to enable them produce more faster at the Common Facility Centre.

– Encourage Aba Manufacturers to Utilize its Facility for Manufacturing their Products: Aba manufacturers should use the Common Facility Centre to produce their products at scale for them to be globally competitive.

– Provision of Credit to Aba Manufacturers at Single Digit: The lending rate of 22 percent to 30 percent by banks in Nigeria is an impediment to the competitiveness of the Aba leather industry when its counterparts in China and other countries access funds at less than 10 percent.

– Utilizing E-Commerce Platforms for Marketing and Distribution: The Aba Shoe and other leather industry players need to utilize e-commerce platforms like Jumia and Konga for marketing and sales of their shoes since they are the biggest channels in Nigeria and Africa. Also, Amazon.com should be used for distribution to global consumers.

– Creating of a Blockchain Platform to track the leather product value chain: Blockchain is a secure  ledger shared by all parties in a decentralized network  which records and stores every transaction that occurs in the network.  A Blockchain platform which will track the production, sales and distribution, of all the players in the Aba leather industry will provide data which is tamper-proof and will validate the economic status of the industry.

If we implement these suggestions, we will get Africa’s largest cluster of shoe making working at maximum level besides being globally competitive.

I hate betting. However, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to place a bet on something or you pull the trigger, I would place a bet on digital marketing. This is because, in the marketing arena, I have observed digital marketing delivering outstanding results that are unthinkable in traditional marketing. 

Nevertheless, lots of small business owners still prefer traditional marketing because it is what they are used to – or because they haven’t heard of digital marketing. My aim for writing this post is to share some of the good news of digital marketing and to prove why I believe it is the best bet. 

Marketing budget

For many medium- and large-size companies, the marketing budget is fat. They don’t mind paying one million Naira for a full-page newspaper ad. Small businesses, however, don’t have that luxury – and this is one of the vital reasons to go digital. 

On social media, most especially on Facebook and Instagram, you can run an ad for as low as ?1000. Digital platforms such as Google My Business and local business directories are free to use and can get you lots of customers. 

Audience targeting 

In traditional marketing and advertising, marketing messages are delivered to everybody, whether the person is interested or not interested in the product and service. Advertisers are helpless and can only pray the target audience comes across the advertisement. 

But in the case of digital marketing, as an advertiser, you can target the people that are likely to buy from you. Google and social media ads are delivered by algorithms that allow advertisers to target people based on their demographics, interests, and behaviours on the internet. 

No wasting of money on marketing to people not interested in your offers. 

Return on investment

If a small business is to survive, every kobo spent on marketing must deliver at least double the money spent. By going digital, the chance of getting a return on investment (ROI) is high, as campaigns are cheaper and the conversion rate is higher. 

Campaigns are measurable

How possible is it to know the number of people that read your fliers? What about the number of people that listen to your ad broadcast on radio? It’s impossible.

However, in the case of digital marketing, it is possible for you to know the number of people that come across your marketing messages. In fact, it is possible to know the number of people that consume your marketing messages to the end and those that stop along the way. 

There are lots of digital marketing tools that give insights into your audience. To mention a few, Google Analytics shows you how people interact with your website; social media management software shows you how people interact with your posts; and email marketing platform lets you know if recipients open your email. 

I doubt if you can know if a recipient reads your letter of introduction delivered by NIPOST, Nigeria’s postal service.

Campaigns are adjustable

This point is related to the last. Through digital marketing, you can measure the results of your marketing campaign on-the-go – and make an adjustment or stop the campaign it isn’t working. In the same vein, If a campaign is succeeding, you can double down on it. 

This is possible because almost all digital marketing platforms allow you to edit and adjusting on-going campaigns. 

As for traditional marketing, on the other hand, campaigns are almost cast in stone. You can do little or nothing to adjust an ongoing campaign. Even a small typographic error in a print publication can’t be corrected: the publication has to be reprinted. 

With the points above, you would agree with me that digital marketing is indeed the best bet if you own small business. Note that the above points don’t mean that you should totally ignore traditional marketing. Your overall marketing strategies should be a mix of both digital and traditional. But digital marketing should be at the centre of your marketing strategies, because of its effectiveness.