 So, I am joined by a guest and this is a conversation that you stick around for because it's all about branding and if you want a business, if you want to get into a business, if you are your own business, this is a conversation for you. So, you're talking about brand development strategies and I'm joined by Anna Marura, she's the director of Makivans branding and she'll be taking us through what it entails when it comes to branding and developing your own brand and a couple of strategies just to make you a name of a company or yourself as an individual, be known out there in the market space that you're targeting. Thank you very much and for creating time to be with us. Thank you Michelle. It really looked good. Thank you. Ayasasa, this is the time for us and for someone who's meeting you for the first time, tell us who and Marura is. Okay, my name is Annette Marura, I'm the CEO and the founder, Makivans branding and supply is limited. Generally, first and foremost, I'm a mother, a wife and an entrepreneur, yes. So, when did this journey all began? This journey began in 2015. What I can say is actually I was doing it even before that but I had not decided to do it in person. When I was employed back then, I used to get those orders whereby I go to school because what I used to do before was partly branding but not really with my company. So, when I go to schools, take the other products where I was employed, you find the principles will be trying to find out, Annette, can you try and help us to find someone who can do for us t-shirts at a good price, brand for us our games kits, things like that. So, along the way, that's why I was like, okay, I think I can do this because it happened that one principle refers me to another principle, they keep on referring me to each other. So, I was like, okay, I think I can do it. And so, that's when in 2015, I decided like, you know what, I'm going for it. And what did you study in school that led to you getting into the branding space? I did bachelor of commas in finance and after that, actually my first employer took me to sales department. My boss was like, you know, Annette, as much as you did finance, but again, I see how you relate with the sales people. So, I think, why don't you try sales? So, I went for sales and after that company, again, I went to another company for sales and that's how my urge to do branding came up. Would you say that someone requires to have a formal education to get into the branding space? No, not at all, not at all. It's all about passion. It's passion because what I can say is like, I can say like, for example, like me, I did finance, but what happened is because I had the passion for sales and my boss saw that where I was employed, he saw the passion in me with sales. So, he's like, you know, so it's all about passion. I cannot say about any education, but when it comes to education, it's where now graphic designer, most of the designers, they have gone to school to study particular graphic designing, but again, I've seen other people who come there in our offices and this person has that passion. Okay, so generally I can say it's about passion. It's all about passion. While selling to passion. If you wanted to go look for it, what can they gain these skills per se? The skills, they can gain them from, they can come to offices where people do branding. They, okay, we allow, we allow these people of the passion to come, take your time, go through what you see, what the designers are doing or the people are doing other jobs, like maybe the screen printing, you know, or whatever jobs we allow because we are also trying to help the youth. The youth to know their strength, to achieve something, you see. So we allow them to come, they just come to the office, they see what we do and they get to learn, they decide what they really want to specialise in. All right Annet. So let's get into the core business of today and the topic which looks at brand development strategies. So what is brand development? Or let's just start with brand. What is branding and how important it is? Okay, branding is the act of creating a symbol or a design that identifies an individual, an institution, a company with the products or the services that they give. Yes. And what is brand development? Brand development is whereby now you come up with something for a company, whereby you can help a company, create something that they can identify themselves with and see how they can use that symbol or design to achieve their target in the market. And for small SMEs that are into the market space, what are the key essentials that you should look at when it comes to branding? Okay, the small businesses, the SMEs, what you can advise them, first and foremost, always have that logo. A logo identifies a lot with our business because I can't come to you and tell you like I ran maybe a salon, you see. And then I just come, I have no logo, I have nothing because that logo, what can I say? It has that emotional impact with the client. So for example, if I'm walking along the street and I tend to see a salon, with this salon I can see a logo with a name and then maybe something identifying what they are doing, automatically I'll be attracted to that. Rather than I just walk and say a name written salon, you see then. So it's very important at least for these SMEs to have an identification, a brand, that logo, it's very important. Okay, here we are. We have created a brand of our own, we have done everything that you said, we have a logo and everything. So how do we create a buzz around what you're doing so that we can get to be known visible? Okay. You can do it through now, that's when the machandise come in. Most of the time we advise on machandise. You find like, for example, I'm in a t-shirt, it's written Mark Ventus, Mark Ventus branding or just Mark Ventus Limited. You know, someone sees that t-shirt, sees the word Mark Ventus Limited, the name. Curiosity, curiosity I do with the technology right now, we have phones, we have the smartphones, whatever I am. I can just say like, okay, I've seen someone in the t-shirt written Mark Ventus. Behind the t-shirt is written maybe their website, www.markventus, you see. So I'll just go straight out and see, what does this mean? What is this name associated with? You see. So I can talk about machandise mostly, at least that one helps to create the buzz. Again, I'll advise people on things like websites, online, like we have the social medias, Facebook pages, they help a lot. Because now we can say that as time goes, technology is everything. It's everything. Especially during this time of the pandemic, it proved to us that your business has to be digitized. Yes, because I'll just be in my house and I'm like, oh, I need to go to the salon. But my usual salon lady is not around here. So what do I do? Let me check online. Let me see, you know. So how you present your business online again really matters, really matters because this person will just write the name. I'll just make Ventus. Someone will come write Y254 but with a logo and something, you know something attracting, attractive, you see. Automatically that's what will be eye catching rather than just the name. You see. So again I can talk about at least use social media. The same is, should use a lot of social media. They should go have pages in FBs, that is Facebook. They should also have pages in what you call it IG that is Instagram. You know and they should also be posting a lot of their product. They should be active for them at least to have a name out there to create that curiosity and learn to with their clients. My wife. And I feel like when it comes to branding it's all about playing with perception and take us to as a business owner how can I align my brand with my target market. First and foremost you need to identify you need to identify your target marketer because you see like for example when it comes to maybe like I can say like for us for branding I look at it and I am like how do I approach this business to this business you see so I have to have a strategy I have to have a strategy of what I am doing you see so mostly it's about I need to know what I am doing or what I really want. Okay. Yes. Speaking about strategy. Yes. All right. I believe in every business that you are getting into unless you are very innovative there are other people there is competition. So talk to us about competition research and how can one identify their unique selling point. Okay. What I can say you know in branding your brand creates like load it to your clients and apart from that to beat your competitors you as a business person having created your brand you need to have that like how you relate with your clients they the kind of services you give you see and how you relate to them after sales service is what I can say actually can beat their clients because apart from branding you have to have a marketing strategy yes you have to have a marketing strategy so that means if for example you just do like branding and then you just sit there and wait of course your computers are coming up with something else No yes every single day Yes these computers will be like okay you know like for example I can give like myself in branding I'll be like I don't want to just you know what I don't want to market because what I have the machines I have everything you know but this client of mine will be like I have to beat my competitors I'll be doing this they tell the client I'll deliver you know so he takes the products to the client he goes out there to the clients when maybe a client wants something and maybe the client I'm in Patatakwa Facebook I'm somewhere this person now goes to the client so apart from branding you need to have a strategy like what do you do unique which is unique so that you can beat them your competitors yes oh speaking about clientele so let's talk about customer relation and a couple of ways I can actually retain my own client even if I'm starting off in this but in the you know small business how can I retain my client and how can I win potential clientele okay it's all about I'll still talk about the strategy you know how I can get my clients or maintain them it will be different from you very true yeah it will be different from what you're going to do so what I can say it depends it depends on some strategy and how you understand your client yes how you understand your clientele what kind of a business it is so in terms of how to maintain your clients and all that it all comes back to someone's business and how you do it as a person yes all right so how does brand positioning help to occupy a distinctive place in the markets in the markets you know whatever you're doing as a business what I can say branding one it trusts it trusts because when you brand you find that this identity this identity because someone will be more more comfortable purchasing from you because they feel that having this person identifying themselves or you know having this brand they just that trust two you find that it cross loyalty it cross loyalty three you find that also the employees themselves they get encouraged you know they identified with something you know when maybe an employee is working somewhere and people are like yeah that someone is working for so and so I feel part of the organization yes so that identification so it also motivates the employees we can talk about branding automatically generates revenue yes it generates revenue automatically because okay in this way you find that as I have told you how I do it maybe like like I say personally for my company as much as it's a branding company how I do it I have a website yes I have a Facebook page I have an IG page so you see so I'm very active on that I make sure like I tend to update my clients or generally the the society of what is happening what's new with branding you see what I do so you know as you you are active you post and all that people get curious so you get people coming in maybe calling you directly or maybe inboxing you to find more about your product you see and I can say that's how I get my clientile mostly like 90% of my clients I don't know them yes talk to us about okay here I've already done exactly what we've talked about is the branding aspect of our business so how important is brand management and do I actually need it branding is very important and actually in any business no matter how small the business is branding is very important because as I've said it creates that trust with your clients this loyalty and then branding it helps like it covers mostly most of your marketing it covers most of your marketing because you find that already if you brand yourself out there already there are people who have created curiosity in them so they want to know more about your business or your company you know so already you are you're doing marketing rather than going they are tactically as a person doing the marketing already the branding is doing for you some marketing let's look at in the situation whereby there is a reputation or damage for particular for your business or even if your own business so how do you deal with that and control the just the damage control yes what I can say mostly in business there's always up and downs no matter how good you try there's always that one way or another maybe one customer is not satisfied and that customer could be eloquent could talk about it and you know so what you do what I can advise is what you do first and foremost face it head on don't go back defending yourself look at it what has happened maybe this customer was not satisfied this customer has gone into media wrote about it or something you know face it head on first and foremost approach your client approach your client that's courtesy talk to that client know where the problem is apologies you know something like that then when you go back to where maybe the the client expressed themselves now that's so you can do the damage controller there explain it's this and this and this that is after after having talked to the client because when you go again defending yourself before you talk to the client that can create even more sin you know yes so first and foremost approach your client talk to your client and then from there now you can go back to the social media maybe where it was posted or something and talk about it another thing I can talk because there are some who don't post but it's something maybe even maybe employees have done it and it has maybe created some rift in your business you know it's always good to face it head on accept the mistakes and you know always move on you know accept yeah couple of mistakes that you have seen businesses that are just starting off do when it comes to branding during the early stages most mistakes are like first and foremost this grid you know whereby I want to come to you know most people believe that branding business has and makes a lot of money yeah you see so someone comes into the business and this person is directed by grid because you come with the perception that I want to make this money very fast because yeah there are people who come to that business and they make money very fast you see so you come with that perception whereby you want like you overcharge your clients you know such things actually that is very wrong so that's one two you don't have the passion to do the business but you want to come because Annette is doing it I also want to do it Annette is doing it I can see that her life is okay because of this business I want to be also in that position you see that's not the thing you come in you have no passion for that because like I can tell you like for example like during campaign times do you know we at times work over it and if there's no passion for that you'll get tired so fast and then there's some sometimes a client will tell you fine I want to give you business but you know what for every product I want for you to brand for me I want a sample and that sample is on you yes it's on you so if you're not ready for that you know that's already a business gone and you already you get bored get bored and then there's some people you take maybe clients you take they are samples too they're not satisfied they'll be like no this material is not good can I have another sample you see so it needs that passion then time it's also take your time you need to take your time at least to know your client understand your clients because before branding this is what we do we call designs you have to do design you know and there's some clients you send the design they check they're like no there's a special mistake here here change here no I was thinking even maybe you have sent and you have already agreed so what you are like okay now I'm waiting for at least maybe some payments for me to start there business for commitment the client will be like okay fine I'll send tomorrow then comes tomorrow send the designs again like no I've talked to a few people and they're like no why don't you do this how do you deal with that being patient and all that you have to be patient you have to be patient and then when you're already starting the when you're starting the design you need to talk to your client and let the client understand that you know what we are doing for you this design and what we give is we give this at least this time for corrections and all that and please this back and forth has to be like minimized on the time of back and forth you know yes you have to agree like kindly I've sent you this design the first design take all your time look at it indulge your friends or something you know and then after that you see you come up with all the corrections because you can be very much time consuming yes it can but patience is all about it and understanding your clients you know yes so and how can people find you across all social media if they want to keep this conversation going if they need your services okay you can find me on social media that is facebook okay my first yes first camera yes my facebook page is magventas branding and supplies limited my website is www.magventasbranding.com on email you can find us at info at magventasbranding.com our number is 0721173018 oh wow thank you very much and marura for creating time to be with us thank you for watching and talking to us about magas pertaining brand development and strategies yes thank you okay thank you very much so guys back at home we have come to the end of the show make sure you create time next tuesday time frame was usually 7 till 10 am at y2 for channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at michelashira is where you can find me across all my social so make sure you keep the conversation going across all our social media platform again is at y2 for channel at michelashira so enjoy the rest of your viewing have a nice day take care of yourself and you loved ones keep it right here on y2 for channel remember we're celebrating four years and we're celebrating with you have a nice day