Before I proceed , I will like to use myself as an example of the challenges faced during the early days of going into private business. The first challenge is not knowing the business to do but knowing how to market it despite the fact that I have worked as a Sales & Marketing person all through my career serving other people’s dream.
I also want you to know this that you will need these four major factors to start your business :
- IDEA CAPITAL
- CASH CAPITAL
- CAPACITY CAPITAL
- PROJECTION CAPITAL
What I am teaching today to me is the most important factor out of all the four which the Projection Capital also known as Marketing. Let me give you an instance, if you know how to produce liquid soap and your next door neighbor still buys morning fresh or mama gold, even your product can even be better than those ones, but simply because the projection/ marketing capital is missing you might end up using the products yourself at home thereby incurring loses.
Let me quickly drop some marketing ideas you can consider. Marketing is the key to success in just about all businesses. The right marketing ideas can make a mediocre product outperform a good product that is poorly marketed.
- Review your marketing goals and plans: I want to advise us that if we don’t have any of the above we should create one. Trying to market without specific goals and plan wastes time and money. Weither you are just starting or you have been in business for years , you need to understand who you need to market to today and how to reach them.
- Consider your business from customers point of view: Consider what’s good, what’s not, what the customer wish you change, where else can they buy what you sell also what do you or can you offer that competitors don’t.
- Be different: You can take your cue from big advitisers and brands and find something that distingushes you from your competitors , the promote the difference. The difference could be your slogan, like in my company as a marketing company our slogan is ” Conquering Territories, Breaking Barriers and Bringing Results” and recently this slogan gave us a business in the core north where no other company will like to operate.. The difference can also be in your product.
- Be an active networker: join and get actively involved with organizations your customers might belong to. Well this will depend on what you sell, it can be a local business association, cooperative societies, sporting organization or parent group of the school of their wards. Remember your that your goal is to build name recognition and trust and not to be constantly promoting what you sell.
- Segment your market: Segment your market and create products or develop specialities that appeal specifically to the needs of each segment. No one size fits all kind of marketing
- Expand into new markets: let’s use bakery products , you can sell your bakery products to restaurants and catering facilities as well as directly to customers who come to the bakery to pick them. Expand your marketing horizon creatively, we call it CREATIVE SELLING ( this is a topic for another day)
- Talk to your Customers: ask them for feedbacks. Ask them what you can do to better serve their needs. If you see a trend in what is been asked for , then act fast on it.
I wish to stop here today, I will still continue with this topic in a later time.
For now let’s act on these and I wish all our businesses a successful time in the face of this pandemic.
