#CreatorStories showcases the honest personal experiences of digital creators who monetize their knowledge of a skill and sell it on Selar. We share these stories every week to inspire you to create and sell a product out of your wealth of knowledge and be a part of the digital creator economy.

This week, we turn the lights on Oyekunle Damola. Damola works as a Digital Marketing consultant, helping brands and businesses increase their leads and sales using digital marketing channels 

Let’s get to know him, shall we?

Can we meet Oyekunle Damola?

Hi, I am Oyekunle Damola and I’m a digital marketing consultant. I have been doing digital marketing for the past seven years. Currently, I do digital marketing coaching, consultations, and training for clients to help them get more leads, sales, and revenue in their businesses. Oh, I love cats so much and have a cute little one called Buttons(lol).

What was your career journey like before becoming a digital marketing consultant and ads expert?

It all started in school. I studied computer engineering in school and have always loved technology, coding, and all of that. C++ was my first programming language. Along the line, my friend introduced me to website design, which basically implies using codes to create websites and I learned how to create websites. 

However, I hit a stumbling block. I realized that knowing how to build websites was not enough. I needed to learn how to market my new skill to attract clients. 

I started researching and stumbled on digital marketing, to be specific – inbound marketing. In simple terms, Inbound marketing is where you attract your prospective clients with different types of content while outbound is where you proactively reach out through cold emailing, cold calling, etc.

As an introvert, inbound marketing fits me perfectly. I learned Search Engine Optimization, found Facebook Ads, learned it, and continued to pick up different digital skills. A few months before I finished school, I got headhunted by Kaymu as an SEO strategist, and less than a year later, I was headhunted by Jobberman as the Head of Digital Marketing. 

That was my career path. I found out in school by discussing with my seniors that my “pali” (BSc) was not enough to get a job and as such, I took my time to acquire skills that would make me indispensable because I don’t come from a rich background and did not intend being a burden to my folks.

How did you get started with digital marketing and ads especially?

Digital marketing cv samples guided my digital marketing path. While researching ways to promote my website design skill, I stumbled on digital marketing, googled “digital marketing cv samples”, probably downloaded at least 10, collated the skills mentioned in all of them, and took my time to learn them all. Coursera, Udemy, Youtube, and a ton of blog posts were my best friends. After that, I practiced a lot.

Do you have any digital products on sale? 

Sure I do. You can find them here on Selar.

What made you decide to create a digital product? 

Growing up, I loved the idea of 9 – 5 or remote working, but 9 – 5. I have never really been the entrepreneur kind of person. My goal when I started out was to eventually become the CMO of a company. 

But, I had a spine-related issue in 2017 that changed my life. After multiple surgeries, my movement was restricted. Since I could no longer do a 9-5, I started applying for jobs but it was a bit hard because working remotely was not popular back then.

I ended up putting the exact skills I had used for growing other people’s businesses to grow my personal brand and was able to start landing great projects.

From there, I started teaching the students of Digital Marketing Institute Search Engine Optimization and Conversion Rate Optimization (physical training).

Fast forward to 2020, COVID happened and everybody got stuck at home. 

Somebody suggested I create a Facebook Ad course because I had a lot of people constantly reaching out to me to run ads for them and because of my health, there’s a limit to the number of people I could help. 

After a lot of convincing, I decided to go ahead and create Facebook Ads Accelerator 

I decided to create digital products to help people I could not directly help by teaching them how to do it themselves. It really helped me to scale. I have over three thousand students and a lot of them have gotten amazing results which makes me happy.

When did you earn your first money (commission) from creating and selling digital products?

That would be back in 2017, before my health issues. 

The first digital product I “created” was actually a WordPress website design course I set up in 2017. I don’t particularly talk about it because it was a PLR (Private Label Rights) which means I paid someone to create the actual course and just added a few videos. 

I was working in Jobberman then and needed additional income streams + I was practicing digital product sales back then. I tested different price ranges like N1,000, N2,000, and N5,000. I even set up a WhatsApp funnel back then and filled up 2 WhatsApp groups in less than a week. 

I also experimented with cold email blasts and lead-gen funnels. I remember I was literally just watching credit alerts pour in. It was incredible. 

Unfortunately, that ended because my health challenge got really bad and I had to go to the hospital for a while. I was knocked out for almost a year. When I came back in 2018, I had completely forgotten about the website design course. 

I mean, if you are teaching how to use WordPress, you have to be updating the course regularly. What I had in 2017 was already outdated in 2018, there was no way I could sell it anymore. 

So when I got the offer to start teaching SEO and CRO, I jumped on it because I loved doing them.

If you did not ask this question, I would have forgotten the course even existed 😄

What’s the average amount you make from selling digital products now?

I have personally crossed the 40 million mark in the last 2 years from my own digital products. Some of my clients have done more than double that. 

What is your sales strategy that other digital creators can employ for their digital products?

I use a mix of organic and paid traffic to drive traffic to my products and services.

Let’s quickly cover my mindset behind organic traffic.

The first thing I keep in mind is that I am selling to human beings, people like myself, and people who are scrolling through Instagram as a means of distraction. Not people that are waiting with their phone for me to just put up something so they buy. 

This empathy helps direct the way I teach and sell organically, I give a lot of value. I am always teaching. People are able to not only get value from me but also trust me. So when I pitch my products, I get sales.

The second part is the paid ads where I am marketing the product directly. They see the ads, they go to the sales page, they read about the product, and they buy the product. 

For those that don’t buy, I retarget them. 

That is a very short version of my sales strategy.

Would you say you leveraged the power of community to make sales as a digital creator?

Yes obviously. That is why I post a lot of valuable posts. It is why I am present in my comment section.

There is something I started doing recently which is to engage with my followers – going to their pages and commenting. 

It has been amazing because it’s helped foster new relationships. I am right there and among them “in the trenches”, understanding and appreciating their hustle in showing up every day, creating posts, etc.

What’s one thing you’ve learned from teaching people about digital marketing?

I’ve got to share two things.

The first is – If you are selling a product or service, you have to genuinely want to help people. It shows because it becomes obvious from your passion and the amount of value your product or service gives. 

You should really develop an interest in wanting to help people.

On the selling part, you have to keep at it. 

It looks easy when people like me who seem to be doing so well are talking about it, but here’s the thing… We did not start by making that amount of money, it did not just drop from heaven, it’s hard work. 

You have to do the 20% of hard work that would give you 80% of the results. Scrolling through Instagram will not bring money into your account, actual work will bring money to your account. These are the two things I have learned so far.

Aside from showing us what being a badass ads expert and digital marketing consultant looks like, what else do you do? 

I play a lot of games and watch anime (Not to be confused with animations or cartoons..lol). I use it to destress because when you work from home, you tend to forget that you are exchanging your 9 – 5 with 24 hours of work.

I used to work for at least 12 hours a day but this has changed in recent times. I do roughly half of that or less when I’m not in launch mode. 

What advice would you give to digital creators and others who are inspired by you?

My first advice is simple – Don’t give up. It gets really hard and it also gets lonely. Don’t give up…

Second advice – Have a support system. A support system is important for things like brainstorming, bouncing ideas off, and even something simple like ranting. Some of my staff rant to me depending on the kind of things some people ask them. We laugh about it and I help them with a response. 

Last advice – Prioritize your work-life balance and mental health. Don’t be afraid to take breaks. You don’t owe anybody anything. You can decide to log off Instagram for the next two weeks, it is fine. Find a balance that works for you and keep at it. I can’t count the number of times I would just take a week or 2 weeks off and just slide right back as if nothing happened..lol.

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