It was a wonderful session during our Smart Business Solutions Workshop with fellow entrepreneurs, Business owners and members of NASME LAGOS. The Microsoft team was also very supportive as they welcomed us warmly in their beautiful office with so much ambiance.  No wonder they are tagged one of the”Great places to work”  in Nigeria. To think of it.  Bill Gates and Paul Allen were entrepreneurs in the 70’s. A small business that has grown to a world world wide brand. That’s something for us Entrepreneurs to think about!

Appreciation to Mrs. Remilekun Olowu of Microsoft,  who handled the welcome address.

Tope Bello of Microsoft was also very kind to grace the session and spoke  on  the Microsoft cloud vision  and the importance of leveraging Microsoft cloud technology for business to make money, enhance business brand and maintain good market share.

We brainstormed and analyzed  all the challenges we could muster and as many as our white board could occupy; experienced by Medium,  Small and Micro   Enterprises (MSME) in Nigeria.  We also listed the technologies  available to us entrepreneurs today, with emphasis on leveraging them as  dangling-right-before-our-noses low hanging fruits like your phone!  Yes that your  phone!  That’s a mobile  advertising tool and not for selfies alone. It is very important that we understand the need to use what we have to market our brand.  Funds for marketing as a small and medium enterprise is hard to come by now especially in this recession and to get a loan, grant or other investment support requires one meeting a native doctor’s demand for an eagle’s egg, the teeth of an ant and a tooth of a life lion.

So we need to look inwards and see some other tools  and services within reach like our  GSM phones and data,  laptop, tablets, social media (Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram and  LinkedIn) to market our businesses.

We need to reduce our Social media activities around the government, President Buhari this and that, EFCC this and That.  corruption here, recovered loot there and channel more efforts to pushing our brands with these tools. I am not saying they are not important or worthy causes but i think the time spent on that may be better spent on pushing your products and services like the big brands out there. There are on social media too pushing even with all the money they have.

As a Chelsea FC fan, i had Chelsea brand on all my social media walls. I have a lot of people connecting with me on that level even till today. I also posted on the government and all. One day i thought about it. Will the recovered loot get to me? Will Chelsea give me a part of their money from tickets et al? My answers to these pertinent questions were all capital “NO”. What if the discussion is about Scimitar Global Services? Why can’t my pages be an additional business touch point for pushing my brand, selling my products and services? As a Business Solutions/ Sales & Marketing professional, who practiced marketing management and has been pushing company brands over the years as an employee, i slapped myself and started making changes and i advise you to do same, if you haven’t. For the records am still #foreverBlue!

I also shared with the participants, the importance of  Four “P”s of marketing as it applies to  small and medium Enterprises and the activities around the “P”s required to push a brand.

As an Entrepreneur and Business Owner you MUST understand the four P’s of Marketing  and it has nothing to do with running around begging the customers with your product in hand!  You have to create the right Product , Promote it at the right Price through the right channels(Place).

These are the 4 P’s of Marketing.  We finished the session with a charge. See the screen shot.

As a Microsoft Partner, Scimitar Global Services Limited (SGSL) can help your MSME Business with modern business tool to support your plan and strategies at low cost relative to your business.  We will show you activities to help push your brand. So do contact us today for a chat on helping you or your employees to market your business leveraging  budget friendly technologies available to you.

Get connected

Twitter: http://twitter.com/scimitargsl

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scimitarglobalserviceslimited

Google: https://plus.google.com/scimitarng

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scimitarglobalservices

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/10966281/