Softcom exists to answer the daily problems faced by people and businesses in three areas: money, selling and knowing. Our goal is to, through our products, provide the best solutions to these problems, and our problem-solving philosophy - the Softcom Way - is how we bring this goal to life.

In this article, our Marketing and Growth Manager, Nimide Fala, discusses how we apply this philosophy to the storytelling that drives growth for our products.

At Softcom, it is important to us to tell stories that are consistent with the realities of our work, in ways that resonate with people and allow them to reach their full potential. Thus, our storytelling is guided by our marketing values - boldness, connectedness and deliberateness - and The Softcom Way (Understand, Solve and Deliver). I’ll paint a picture of our general approach to storytelling by using Eyowo as an example:

In Eyowo, it is customary for us to proclaim that we are ‘human-centric’; that the bank is driven by our understanding of the customer. We put people front and centre and explored what was meaningful to them, and how they experience their individuated realities of money. Through our understanding of our target audience, we identified unmet needs, developed Eyowo, devised a successful marketing strategy, uncovered emerging trends and are breaking into new markets.

To do this, we drew upon data to help us uncover and understand the motivations, practices, and sociocultural contexts that Nigerians operate within, and which inform their consumer behaviour. This is what ultimately led to launching our slogan: The Better Bank.

Co-creating for Better

Our message is simple and speaks directly to people’s present realities. Underpinning the goals of earning more, saving more, and investing more, is everyone’s desire to be better with their money. Better Bank is a solution to critical things our customers wanted: a better relationship with their money; where everything they needed to do with money was collated in one place resulting in a unified view of their financial behaviour. You can only do something about things in your control. The Better Bank is also a primary response to the righteous demand for better financial services and support that our customers and Nigerians deserve.

Once the team understands it, communicating to the customer through storytelling becomes fundamentally easier. After all, Eyowo staff are Eyowo's first customers. We are only co-creators within a world that is constantly ‘changing’, shaped by a common thread of wanting better, and communicating what we designed to our fellow humans and the world at large.

So we understood. We also solved by making a promise we could now deliver. And in delivering, we connected to human relatabilities. When we say that you can now save for a dream car at the best interest rates, what we are telling you is to look at how you can now achieve your dream of having that automobile you fancy, and with better interests than anyone could get you. When we say take a look at your spend insights - know what to stop, start or continue - we really mean let Eyowo make you a Better You.

Having a strong team that connects to the intention is quite key. From the social and digital team who do stellar work creating relatable content that embeds our values and delivers on return of engagement to the target audience to the traction managers that draw out of our playbooks to achieve their acquisition goals.

The most fascinating thing for me is how this isn’t only connected to making better happen for customers through payments but also how other Softcom’s products along with Eyowo work better together.

Better Together - The Ecosystem

Softcom’s products - Eyowo, Kwiksell, Useforms and Usepass - function together as an ecosystem and this presents unique opportunities for our customers. I’ll use a food festival we powered to explain:

Better with Access Control

What do you need when you attend a food festival? You need to buy tickets online through a storefront and we used the Kwiksell storefront to accomplish this. Then you need an access pass to validate that you truly paid for the event. Our access control product, Usepass, helped make this happen by granting access to people with individuated QR codes.

Better with Commerce and Payment

At the festival grounds, vendors received payments that were instantly settled through Kwiksell into their account just as we designed. No T+2 delays. Festival enthusiasts with Eyowo accounts were able to buy tickets and make purchases at the festival at discounted rates when they paid through direct transfers, QR codes or payment links generated by the vendors.

Better with Data

Businesses are optimizing for growth and this wasn’t different at this event. One key driver of growth is derived from the insights you can glean from your customer. Useforms was used in conducting surveys that helped achieve key insights from attendees.

As a business owner who comes in contact with this ecosystem, it’s an end-to-end solution for your business needs, from finances to operations. So this is the picture we paint when we’re telling our product stories as a collective to dreamers and doers who own businesses. The idea is, with Softcom products, they can have dominion over other things; over information, over selling, that they might somehow attain growth.

Growth For Everyone

We launched our products in October 2021 and everyone who came on board at that time and experienced our products as we have designed has and will have experienced growth in both personal financial life and business - a clear difference from where they were. That [clear difference] is our goal, especially when it is told by our customers.

Marketing does not end at speaking about products, its impact is felt when customers embed it in their lifestyle and become our raving fans and organic sales agents. As Marketing creators who communicate and help storify possibilities, when this happens, then we would know we have arrived.

Our goal at Softcom is to provide the best solutions to problems, and our problem-solving philosophy - to understand, solve and deliver - is how we bring them to life. This series focuses on how our people use this philosophy to guide their everyday work at Softcom.