One skill I don’t give myself enough credit for is COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT. I can modestly say I influence A LOT of people via VIRTUAL TRIBES and also OFFLINE. In fact, my OFFLINE TRIBE is almost 100x my ONLINE TRIBE LEADERSHIP.
If you have ever attempted to send BULK EMAILS to your leads or prospects, it is most likely you have used MAIL CHIMP.
[Long Post … The Last Paragraph is Key.]
If there is anything you must learn as a business owner, it is BRANDING. This subject is VERY VAST AND VERSATILE. It is DYNAMIC AND COMPLEX because every single ACTION and INACTION counts.
As a passionate student of advertising, marketing and branding, I try to analyze any materials I see from brands in public. When I saw the MUNCH-IT advert with #Davido, sincerely, I criticized the way it was done. I felt it was tacky and not tidy.
Recently, I have been having these mental intercourses, asking myself if advertising is really as potent as it is perceived. A Lagos Food brand approached me to be their brand ambassador and I requested that they should give me a few weeks to clear my desk from some pending projects so I can give a proper response. While I was deliberating my response, I asked myself ‘does brand ambassadorship and advertising really work?’
You have invested a great deal of resources to get a very good brand narration: great logo, aesthetic colours, powerful brand name, and world class effizy.
Even your website is like the White House, resplendent with finesse and class… it looks like WHAT GOD CANNOT DO DOES NOT EXIST… you have arrived.. but then someone reaches out to your business and there is trouble.
Some years ago, I was a facilitator on Coca-Cola’s Youth Empowered programme. It was a programme of the Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) that ran in several cities for many years. On one of the days, a participant came into the hall with a product of Pepsi. You only need to see how the entire NBC reacted to that. It was like a TABOO had entered the room. I was stunned. That was my first lesson in Branding and Brand Loyalty. WoW!!!
From 2015, I have hosted 4 grand events so far. My first ever large event was BCP Conference that held at Unilag (University of Lagos) in November 2015. BCP stands for Behavioural Change Practitioners. The intention was to hold forte for professionals who practice any form of behavioural change work; from social workers to counsellors to therapists to psychologists, etc. The event was free. We spent around 3Million Naira to host the event and had a deficit of more than a million Naira afterwards. After that event, several speakers who attended BCP Conference created their own platforms and that broke the momentum I had for the conference. I threw in the towel immediately.
It has been 5 years of consistent value and growth. We have invested in people and people have invested in us.
This August, join us as we host a series of events commemorating our brand at 5. More details will come out after the BSG Summit 2021.
The cost of hiring and replacing persons who do your work from outside is so enormous and inconvenient. Have you ever considered this at all?
Your service providers include:
- Consultants
- Artisans
- Printers
