The Entrepreneurial Report: Networking Main Event: Establishing a winning brand (19-10-11)

Hello, my name is Donna-Ray Campbell and I write the 'Event Update' column on behalf of Stimulus for the Entrepreneurial Report.

The Stimulus 'Networking Main Event' is a monthly event where we strive to collaborate with corporate's and member businesses to provide solutions that are 'SME friendly' for our members. These solutions are aimed to catalyze the growth of our member businesses by providing services for them that would otherwise be unattainable or just beyond their financial or capability reach.

In our October Main Event were looked at Establishing a Winning Brand. A business, be it service delivery or sale of goods, needs to be easily identifiable and differentiated from its competitors. It also needs to be clear what that business does, how and why. To achieve this one has to build a solid brand therefore a brand strategy is essential. We had our "brand strategy guru", The African Knight, Musekiwa Samuriwo address the group on developing a brand strategy.

He began his presentation with questions one should ask themselves when establishing their brand, for example;

Do you have a clear understanding or view of how your industry may be different ten years into the future?

Are you seeing further than your competitors?

To what extent is your brand influencing the new rules of competition within your industry?

Such questions provoke ones mind to think strategically about their brand and the "domino effect" that occurs enabling an entrepreneur to develop a winning brand.

He also touched on how you would be able to extend your brand, he asked if as entrepreneurs in the 21st Century if we are thinking globally and acting locally. Or if we are thinking locally and acting globally? Better still are we thinking glo-cally?

When we have carried out this analysis we can then strategically focus our brands not only on our target market but on growing that market. He touched on co-branding and closed on brand and corporate strategy, removing the disconnect.

*Mr Samuriwo is writing an eight part series on brand development for the Entrepreneurial Report which is posted weekly on a Wednesday.

We then had our Online brand development partner Mr Simbirirai Maramba from Enchant Creative address us. He gave us an introduction to developing 'Your Brand Online'. He informed us of the importance of having an online business presence and the figures spoke volumes: Facebook has 3 billion users, Twitter has 200 million users and linked in has 70 million users worldwide. Now these are figures worth looking at particularly as Facebook has now confirmed that there are 900 000 Zimbabweans living in Zimbabwe who are on Facebook. Of those 500 000 access the internet via a mobile device. These figures show the potential for growth of a business by utilising social media and other online tools for brand development.

What are you doing in your organisation to capture the attention of the potential 900 000 consumers online? OR possibly the 900 000 people that you could tell about your business online and they could in turn tell their friends and family, neighbours and village headmen? The internet could become a pivotal link in your marketing strategy if you learn how to use it effectively as a brand development tool. All in all the event was an eye opener for most of the participants and both presentations certainly gave me a lot to think about in my own business brand strategy development plan.

See images of the event below: