Business and marketing experts have urged entrepreneurs in Nigeria to adopt modern and technological tools and techniques to build sustainable structures around their businesses that would ensure survival with or without them in charge.
They spoke during the inaugural Advertisers Association of Nigeria Small and Medium Enterprise Business’ summit in conjunction with the SME Mall in Lagos, as part of the activities for the ADVAN Africa Excellence Awards scheduled to hold in November in Lagos.
Speaking on the theme, ‘Marketing as a tool for sustainable business development’, the President, Advertisers Association of Nigeria, Osamede Uwubanmwen, said most entrepreneurs built a business around their own skills, abilities, and vision, without considering their business to be a separate entity
“As an entrepreneur, you have to pay yourself and make sure your business is separate and distinct, and it is dangerous to deep your hand into your business funds to run other things outside your business,” he said.
While speaking on business structuring, the president said it was essential to take into consideration the different types of business structure which include capital structure, business structure, functional and organisational structures.
He said, “Every entrepreneur must inculcate the habit of record keeping, and also have functional organisational structure through which activities of the business will be monitored and evaluated for the sake of performance assessment.
“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.”
A marketing professional, Samuel Akinrimisi, who spoke on ‘Building sustainable SME brands’, noted that every entrepreneur whether big or small should consider his or her business as a brand and work toward building the brand.
Akinrisimi said, “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 are very important.
