Business and marketing experts have tasked budding entrepreneurs in Nigeria to adopt modern and technological tools and techniques to build their businesses that would ensure business survival with or without them in charge.
The charge was given at the inaugural Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Business Summit in conjunction with The SME Mall in Lagos, as part of the activities to the ADVAN Africa Excellence Awards scheduled for November 20th, 2022 in Lagos.
Addressing the entrepreneurs, Osamede Uwubanmwen, President of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), who spoke on the theme: Marketing as a tool for sustainable business development’ recently in Lagos said, “Most entrepreneurs build a business around their own skills, abilities, and vision. They don’t consider their business to be a separate entity.”
He said as an entrepreneur, you have to pay yourself and make sure your business is separate and distinct, adding that it’s dangerous to deep your hand into your business funds to run other things outside your business.
While speaking on business structuring, the marketing expert disclosed that, taking into considerations the types of business structure’ which includes; capital structure, business structure, functional and organizational structures as key to success in business.
According to him, “Every entrepreneur must inculcate the habit of record keeping so also have functional organizational structure through which activities of the business will be monitored and evaluated for the sake of performance assessment.
Further speaking, the Marketing guru pointed out that, “you need to find out what’s obtainable in your industry, determine where your strength is and where you need help, constantly review your structure, and always ensure you are ready to adapt to change.”
On his part, Samuel Akinrimisi, a Marketing professional who spoke on Building sustainable SME Brand said; “every entrepreneur whether big or small should consider his or her business as a brand and work toward building the brand.”
According to him, what makes your brand different from another person’s brand is the name, logo, symbol, design among others, noting that, brand promise and the kind of message the brand owner sends out to the target audience is very important.
He pointed out that, in relating your message to your target audience, you have to be intentional and also factor in emotion simply because the story that surrounds a brand will take the brand to the next level.
Earlier in her remarks, Chief Executive Officer of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria ADVAN, Ediri Ose-Ediale, welcomed participants to the event and added that the event is the initiative of ADVAN.
According to her, the Advertisers Association of Nigeria is an umbrella of business people that showcase their goods and services to their target audiences through the media, adding that ADVAN controls about 90% of marketing spend in Nigeria.
“Before now, ADVAN members have been multinationals but we have decided that we need to also support SME to become global brands. We will be providing entrepreneurs with insight on how to build a global brand and a sustainable business.” She added.
