How agencies win work in Nigeria
The pipeline is social before it is commercial
Nigerian brands discover agencies in public: a campaign that trended, a rebrand that got quoted, a founder whose commentary keeps appearing on their timeline. The enquiry then arrives as a DM or a WhatsApp message, informal and easy to lose. Between that first message and a signed scope lie weeks of decks, calls, and negotiations that today live nowhere in particular. The agencies growing fastest in Lagos are not the loudest; they are the ones that treat those weeks as a managed pipeline.
Margin is made in collections
Every Nigerian agency has financed a client involuntarily. Payment terms stretch, transfers arrive in parts, and the follow-up falls to whoever can bear the awkwardness. Collection discipline, automated and polite, is worth more to a Lagos agency's bottom line than a new client, because it converts work already done into cash actually held.