Melanie Hapisu is the Founder & CEO of a Digital Marketing Agency called DigiPath Africa. The agency helps businesses and individuals navigate their way online with an aim of helping them market their brands in the least frustrating way online.
- Describe the business – What do you do and where are you based?
DigiPath Africa is a digital marketing agency that helps individuals and businesses market their brands online in the least frustrating way. We do this through: Developing digital marketing strategies for the businesses, social media content creation and management, analyzing their digital marketing reports and developing insights that can be used for decision making, training them on all matters digital marketing and running digital ads for brands on Google Ads, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
2. How did the business get started?
What led me to start DigiPath Africa is the fact that I realised how difficult it was for people to market themselves or their businesses online because they either did not know where to start from or had tried it before and didn’t know if it worked or not. This pushed me to want to help them.
3. Is there a set of skills you need to run a business like this? Which ones do you have?
The beauty about running a business is that if you don’t have the skills, you can always hire people who do. However, in this type of business, it’s better if you have some of the skills so that you can understand a client’s needs better and also know what your team is doing.
Some of the important skills you need to have are: How to create digital marketing strategies, how to create content for a digital marketing campaign and how to implement it, how to analyze reports and come up with meaningful insights that can be used to make decisions just but to name a few.
However the usual entrepreneurial skills are required as well such as how to manage a team and all.
4. What would you like to see more of, especially in Kenya, when it comes to digital marketing businesses?
I would like to see more specialised agencies. (My agency included.) Why? Because there are so many digital marketing agencies offering all the services under the digital marketing umbrella, however, I feel like niching down will help us all serve clients better. For instance, we need more agencies that focus on services like Search Engine Optimization, Google Ads and Influencer Management. We really can’t be great at everything.
5. Where did you find inspiration for this business?
Before I started the company, I had worked at an agency, consulted and also done a bit of freelancing and at some point it became overwhelming to work on my own, but also it became necessary to operate as a company for some of the different types of clients I was working with.
However, despite it all, my parents were really pushing me to go in the business direction, and I really thank God that they did.
6. What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced? Lessons learned?
Challenges faced include initially, getting clients, working with a young team where some people needed me to hold their hands more than others and figuring out how to make my business stand out.
Lessons learned include nothing comes easy so you have to work hard and smart and it takes time to refine your business and that is okay. Never rush it.
7. What has been your proudest moment/achievement so far?
We have managed to serve over 20 brands since we began about 11/2 years ago. I was nominated as the most promising founder this year for the Founder of the Year Awards (FOYA).
My business also made it to the top 10 businesses selected for the Standard Chartered Women In Technology program this year.
8. Where would you like to see the business go over the next 3 years?
I would love to see our business impacting as many brands as possible. Both individual and business brands. I see us doing training all over the world both face to face and online. At the moment we are majorly training in East Africa and a few other African countries for instance Zimbabwe, South Africa. I see us also launching tools and technologies that will make marketing brands less frustrating online.
9. What advice would you give women looking to take the leap into running their own business?
There’s never a right time to start. Do it now. It won’t be easy, but get a community of business owners that will support you through it as well as friends and family members.
Bonus Question
10. What are some of your favourite businesses/brands in the digital marketing space that are women owned/led in Africa?
My all time favourite have to be people I personally know.
You can contact Melanie and DigiPath through the contact details below.
Phone number: 0770915715
Instagram: DigiPath
Twitter : DigiPath Africa
LinkedIn : DigiPath Africa
Website : https://www.digipathafrica.com/
