My question to you is how many of you today are doing a startup? Living up to the entrepreneur's life, extra long hours, grinding work day and night, losing sleep over your business.
My job today is here to help you become an entrepreneur. When I first started was when I was 18, and I was in the restaurant sector, managing restaurants. Then, later on, I started doing hr, import, and export, art and design, and right now I am currently doing Tech, IoT, Smart city and entrepreneur.
I remember when I first started the first lesson I learned was that I Have to keep learning. Being that life long learner. What does learning mean to me, is that in order to learn you need to ask. Not a lot of people ask questions because they think they have an understanding but in reality, it’s not what you think it’s always good to ask questions. Today I urge you guys to ask questions whether it is to me or to someone else. Personally, I would rather be a fool for a day than to be a fool for the rest of my life just because I didn't ask that question.
Alright let's talk about branding. Have you guys ever read the book The Cookoos Calling by Val Micdermid. Hopefully not, but what if i told you today that Val McDermid is one of J. K. Rowling secret Pen name. Would you have bought or even read The Cookoos Calling, if you knew it was by a famous author. After this announcement from J.K. Rowling that the book was indeed written by J.K herself book sales went through the room. The question now is if this is the doing of J.K. Rowling's brand or is it just the book is that good?
Today business struggle to find the balance between Good Branding and marketing strategies over good quality product. The reason why businesses struggle to find a balance is because the success rate of good brand is over a very long period of time. The rate of return (ROI) is too low. Small/medium companies does not one; have the money to invest long term, two; have the time to invest in long term. When a company decides to advertise, you have to buy an advertisement on a website hence the money, then you need time which you don’t have to track how well your advertisement is doing online over time. Thus in return the ROI of this investment is low, and companies don’t do branding/exposure. So then today the question is are you as a company going to ignore branding overall or put your time and money into sales. From my point of view branding these days are mostly consist of hiring models, famous people, flashy animation and eye catching slogan, but it doesn't showcase meaning or context. I strongly believe that if you want to be on the road to success in branding, as a company you need to understand that branding is an accumulative process. Quality over quantity. A well designed thought out advertisement with a hidden meaning behind it is more effective than an advertisement with no meaning. Sure that hiring actors and models can help get you more exposure and a bigger audience but without meaning you are simply showing that you have the ability to hire these famous people.
Every company today wants to make money. The investors want to know today I invested in this company. What is the main source of income for this company. Some Companies today they sell products, Then products would be their main source of income. In recent years there are some companies on the rise that are selling services. Selling a service such as spotify, apple music, Netflix. These now become recurring payment, fees that are being charged monthly. Today as an entrenapure i have started a business, called Trisco. This business is originally a Traditional business. We sell products such as battery analyzers, timing lights, automotive gadgets Huds, OEM and ODM, prototyping and research. (Enter examples here) Today Trisco main source of income is helping other people make their products. You can consider that Trisco is a factory, and doesn't have branding. The Tech and the skill set we provide is sold to other companies and then our buyers put on their own branding.
A few branding concept that I want to talk about here is let's say today you have a piece of land, a few acres of land in the city. How would you manage this land to turn it into a profitable business. Some people would say that you would build a skyscraper, a department store or better yet, a condominium. All of the answers above are all wrong. Why? It is because all of these require heavy investment of money to build your building. In business, everyone knows, that the money you spend building and refurbishing the building, constructing the building from ground 0 would mean that it would take you a long time to break even. Time is also a factor in this as how long would it take to build this building. In the business world today Time is money. The more time you spend on construction waiting for the paint to dry off, you would be burning cash. On the other hand what if you turned this into a parking lot. Your cost would be buying paint drawing lines, and setting up a ticket collecting system to help keep track of who comes in and who goes out. Lowering cost and increase instant profit. Then when the time is right as this land increase in value as the city expands build or sell.
The second branding concept is this Today if you are a construction worker. All your life you know how to build houses. How can you increase your profit and value in today's standards. For a construction worker who only knows how to build houses, what if this construction worker learned art, Learn how to build better visuals and more visually appealing architecture. The branding concept is how well you can package your product or service that is consumer oriented.
An example that serves as a living proof is Costco. Everyone has heard of Costco. Let's talk about what some of Costco has been doing that is smarter than some of its competitors such as safeway, Sam's club. Costco offers High grade meat, better and large bulk stuff all packaged nicely for its customers while having Low costs. Costco also has its own brand such as its own Kirkland, Shampoo, conditioners, office supplies, furniture, and food. With everything at such low cost and high quality things, a lot of people come to wonder how does costco turns a profit. Costco turns a profit by not selling you this certain product, they sell you a service. That is correct they sell you a membership service that ensures any defective product can be returned at any date, join our membership and you get even more discounts on top of our low price, the more you buy the bigger the discount. With this service, they charge a recurring fee for membership depending on what type of membership you have.
