The President of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), Osamede Uwubanmwen, alongside other business and marketing experts have tasked budding entrepreneurs in Nigeria to adopt modern, technological tools and techniques to build businesses that would ensure business survival with or without them in charge.
This task 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 held on November 16, 2022.
According to the ADVAN President, the summit was part of the activities lined up towards the ADVAN African Awards for Marketing Excellence scheduled for November 20th, 2022 in Lagos.
Addressing the entrepreneurs, the President 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.”
While speaking on business structuring, the marketing expert disclosed that, taking into consideration 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.
In furtherance, he said, “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 brands 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, and design among others, noting that, brand promise and the kind of message the brand owner sends out to the target audience are 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.
In her remarks, the 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 SMEs to become global brands. We will be providing entrepreneurs with insight on how to build a global brand and a sustainable business.” She added.