How we Re-positioned a Natural Food Supplement Product Produced in Our Community

Africa has the greatest potential for entrepreneurial success, not because of its status as a developing continent filled with third-world countries but Africa lays unique demands that are key to economic growth and commerce. It’s nothing but the uniqueness of Africa, and many expatriates and foreign industrialists have recognized this and therefore taken advantage of it to create diverse kinds of thriving markets in Africa.
As an African business owner with even more legitimate rights to do business within the continent and grow to exponential extents, you need to get acquainted with some very unique factors in the African market that albeit might be different from what obtains in some other economies of the world, are important determinants of successful businesses situated in Africa. Here are 4 ways you can do things differently;
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Isolate solution from product</li>
</ul>
A place with problems needs solutions and profit is made when a need is met. Africa might be known for diverse kinds of problems of varying degrees but this is fodder for creations and innovations. You should latch on to the opportunity to create solutions first, then place these solutions within products/services.
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Leverage the community mindset</li>
</ul>
Africa thrives on community and once there is a sense of community, Africans come alive. Promote your values and target the market that holds the same or similar set of values, you will find that this particular market will begin to own your product and will form a tribe around it. It is not a product that holds a community but a common belief system.
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Be true to your market</li>
</ul>
As much as any human can sense dishonesty a mile off, Africans have “sharp brains” meaning they can sense dishonesty two miles off. You can create a niche for your business by telling it as it is, make only promises that you will deliver on, and be open.
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Create pricing plans and packages</li>
</ul>
Break your product into as many tiers as possible to be able to meet either the quantity need or the economic capacity of different customer groups. This is not to say that you shouldn’t have a specific target but in Africa, even with your target, there are still diverse sub-groups with slightly differing preferences. Create as much diversity from your product as you can and have broken down payment tiers if you can manage it.
Africa is a unique place to be and if you can create strategies that fit the landscape, your business can flourish.&nbsp;

4 Business Secrets That Can Help Your Business Thrive in Africa

Whether as a solopreneur or manager of a well-staffed team, running a business can often prove tedious and overwhelming. I’ve found myself at this junction countless times.
It often seems like the tasks are endless: Emails to reply, teams to organize, meetings to attend, clients who want your attention, queries to issues and it almost leaves no time for even lunch. At the end of the workday, exhaustion makes you hit the pillow only to rinse and repeat it all on the next day.
After a while, you would realize that there’s been neither room nor time for novel and creative thoughts. The implication here is that your business is run in the same way and therefore, achieves the same results no matter the set target.
In this post and the next 2, I will talk about these 3 things you can do to ensure that running your business becomes less stressful:
<ol>
<li>Think differently</li>
<li>Create a system around your business</li>
<li>Give your employees a level of autonomy</li>
</ol>
The famous words “Think different” by Steve Jobs might be just the game plan you need to turn the tide for your business.
Here are 2 ways you can begin to change your thought patterns:
<h2>Create a vision and stick to it!</h2>
A vision is a mental picture you have for your business about the level of growth you hope to achieve within a time period. A clear vision helps you set the right goals, make the right inputs, and most of all, know what you as the manager/owner of the business should not become immersed in. When you know the endpoint, it becomes easier to set priorities. Reduce the stress by setting the right picture and creating only what you see.
<h2>Be more flexible</h2>
In contrast to what popular opinion might be, not running your business by the book does not mean failure. If none of the rules of the book work for you, throw the book out the window. Don’t be afraid to innovate on existing methods to create ones that work for you. Your business location, your work hours, your strategy, your voice, etc. can be flipped and re-thought.
<blockquote>Your questions should be “Does my current strategy help me achieve my goals?” “Is my business achieving any measure of growth?”</blockquote>
Put your feet up some time today and dive into some honest thoughts.

How Entrepreneurs Can Reduce Stress.

When it comes to measuring the scale of your business, small is not actually small. I repeat SMALL IS NOT SMALL. Here are 3 costly assumptions you might be making as a ‘small’ business:
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">We are too busy building, documentation and record-keeping can come when we become big.</li>
<li style="text-align:justify;">All businesses function alike especially if they are in the same industry</li>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Our initial strategy is perfect, we just need to stay loyal to it</li>
</ul>
Everything stems from your belief that “we are just 1 or 2 on our team”. This makes you quickly lose the consciousness of the fact that ‘business is business’ if you are in for the long term. Here is a 3-part series on the thought-patterns of potentially big businesses but we will focus on the first today and walk through others, subsequently.
Most small businesses do not take documentation seriously right from the start, and it is not just enough to have it all in your head. When our brand was about to launch in 2018, we almost committed this same blunder, mixing up records, and not making it clear enough. I mean we were so excited about carrying out market research and developing our product that keeping track of something as small as transportation cost, or writing reports (keeping records is not limited to cash flow alone) almost seemed insignificant. Phew! It was a roller coaster of activities, but the key importance of doing this is that you will be able to track spending, revenue, and profit as well as to measure the progress your product is making in the market.
As it is important in everyday life to do reviews, evaluations, and backtrack in order to be able to map out the best way to move forward, make improvements, correct mistakes and keep tabs on excesses, the same goes for a business, irrespective of the scale.
A small business is like that baby that you just have to nurture until it matures. You will pay close attention to the kind of food he eats, possible allergies, etc, and make necessary changes or keep a habit, depending on the baby’s response. And if you are not observant and diligent at keeping track enough, something really bad could happen to the baby.
Other forms of documentation that are imperative include; Vision, Goals, Objectives, Projections, Achieved results, Timelines, Customer feedback, etc.
You keep records to be able to know early on, what works for your own particular business and what doesn’t.
What kind of documentation do you consider important? Kindly comment below.&nbsp;

Business is Business — Keep Track

The first step for a startup is to focus on learning and discovery processes, from starting the company to scaling the business, Steve Blank writes in his groundbreaking book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. This statement, which is at the base of the Customer Development Model, would prove to be the germ idea that gave the world what we today call the Lean Startup Methodology, fathered by Blank but popularised by Eric Ries. The third component of this Methodology is the Business Model Canvas which was independently developed by Alexander Osterwalder. These tools have become indispensable in building more agile businesses that are adaptable and flexible during the uncertain beginnings of new ventures or product launches. They ensure that founders are not bogged down with the static act of writing tedious business plans that become obsolete as soon as they are completed or launch products that customers won’t touch with a ten-foot pole after committing all the available capital to pack such products full with all sorts of bells and whistles. They also ensure startups experiment as fast as possible, learn quickly, and integrate new learning into product development while being frugal with capital until product-market fit is achieved. In fact, the holy grail of the tools in a combo is the quick arrival at product-market fit.
Many companies fall for the trap of committing huge resources to a product’s development before ascertaining if customers want the product in the first place or want it as the company envisioned it. Blank’s breakthrough thought was that the “Build it and they will come” mindset was one of the most injurious to successfully building a business when you have not validated who your paying customers are. He was able to articulate how many startups failed because they focused all their attention on product development while neglecting the most important metric for business success — customers (in increasing numbers and with increased spending commitments). He stated that the customer development process of a startup was as important as the product development process.
The book The Four Steps to the Epiphany proved to be a major gamechanger in the way startups approached building their businesses. But it was not only startups that embraced Blank’s proposition; mega-corporations likewise did.
While Blank may not be well known by many, the name Eric Ries may be more familiar as he built on the concepts espoused in Blank’s Epiphany. Ries absorbed the wisdom of Steve Blank by voluntarily copy-editing this seminal book through which Blank revealed his theory and it was on the strength of this as well as his own failed attempts at building two startups that he went on to create his Lean Startup model as well as write the book The Lean Startup. It was also in the process of practicing the lean startup model at IMVU that the term “Minimum Viable Product” gained currency and has become the ubiquitous means of validation for startups. An MVP assures investors that a startup and its founder(s) are serious enough about the prospects of their product and that they have the first piece of the puzzle in embarking on the journey of product-market fit.
Sometime after the creation of his Business Model Canvas, Osterwalder and Blank met and they were able to look at ways to better integrate their respective theories. It was after this that Osterwalder went on to create the Value Proposition Design tool that helps accelerate startups’ arrival at product-market fit in the shortest possible time without having to burn their fingers too often.
So, today, we pay homage to these men who have shaped the history and landscape of startup building and success and we can’t wait for others to emerge who will build even more powerful and holistic tools on the foundational frameworks these men have given us.&nbsp;

THE PIONEERS OF LEAN

Eridan is an incubator and accelerator designed to build transcendent founders for transgenerational businesses. As an organization, Eridan believes strongly that sustainable impact businesses are made of great communities.
To achieve this, Eridan works toward building communities of exceptional founders and providing them with the right resources, which will help them transform their startups into sustainable and impactful growth businesses.
To reach the right audience as well as scale the organization, Eridan needed a brand narrative and a website that portrays all the value they present to the founders that will use their services.
A member of our directors happened to be on the Eridan team at the time we executed this project, and he gave us a breakdown of the goals and vision of the organization. This breakdown helped us understand the project as well as to come up with the best strategy for this project.
With the strategy, we were able to highlight three of our services that would help achieve their goals which are “to educate, equip, nurture, connect, invest in and project exceptional founders” to be;
<ul>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Branding</li>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Website development</li>
<li style="text-align:justify;">Content creation and management</li>
</ul>
Under our Branding service, we developed a brand visual identity which includes; logo design, brand colour, typography, favicon, and imagery to reflect Eridan’s core values of “Community, originality, versatility, and future-mindedness,” as well as to equip, nurture, and invest in exceptional founders.
We designed the Eridan logomark to hinge on the ‘womb’ that houses a fetus, nourishes it till it matures and is ready to start life on its own. We did this to reflect Eridan’s mission statement which is “to educate, equip, nurture, and invest in exceptional founders, just like a womb provides nourishment and life for a fetus till it is ready to start life on its own.”
The website was designed and developed using WordPress as the building block. This decision was made to make room for seamless functionality and easy accessibility of the platform without altering the quality and usability of the website. It was also considered for the CMS (Content Management System) to enable the Eridan team to publish and edit content seamlessly as soon as the project was handed over to them.
It is not enough to develop a website without quality and value-driven contents to accompany the aesthetics of the website. So, we created very engaging content to reflect the values and goals of Eridan as a brand that served them on their different social media platforms. Alongside these contents are social media templates designed to fit perfectly with each of the content created.
We managed the website and the social media platforms for a couple of months to ensure quality assurance and consistency across all platforms, after which a handing over to a webmaster from the Eridan team was done.
Working on this project was a beautiful one because it gave us the leverage we needed to understand brand identity better and like every other project before and after it, we learnt tangible lessons that we are still implementing in our processes.
Stefan Persson, a Swedish billionaire businessman said, “Loyalty is not won by being first. It is won by being best,” and just like you, we can only get better.&nbsp;

Versatility, Originality, and Community: Reflecting Eridan’s Core Values Digitally

As a small business owner seeking to scale your business’ profitability, having a well-optimized website will help you create conversions and increase sales. A well-optimized website can increase your sales and conversion rates by as much as 15% if done correctly, and the keyword here is “been done correctly!”
That is one of the reasons why it is important to make sure you have your website professionally built. However, if you want to create your website yourself (I salute you), you would find the information contained in this article useful.
1. Start with a simple conversion path.
A conversion path is the steps a client would take to convert into a paying customer — if your ultimate goal is sales. Every business has its own unique conversion path, it all depends on what the business owner’s ultimate goal is. If for instance, you own an online store, you would want to make sure that your customers find it very easy to check out and pay for each item purchased, while an accounting firm would want their customers to be able to find as much information about them from the website as possible and also be able to contact them without issues.
Therefore as a website owner, you would want to adjust your website in such a way that people who find you online find it easy to do any of the above objections. Eliminating anything that makes it easy for your leads to get sidetracked, or hampers them from performing core functions on your website is what you must do to ensure a simple conversion path.
2. All essentials should be kept above the fold.
In the process of designing your website, you must ensure that you keep all your valuable information above the fold — “above the fold also known as above the scroll” is the portion of your website that is visible without having to scroll down. It has been proven that the content above the fold gets 57% of all viewing time, that is why this area is the most critical area for gathering leads.
Unfortunately, a lot of small businesses with websites ignore this portion of their website, instead, at the top third of their site, they position photos, animations, or basic site menus. So, make sure that this area has the call-to-action needed to get your leads to convert instead of irrelevant information.
3. Avoid cluttering your website.
Ever been on a website and you immediately started having headaches? Well, that is what having a cluttered and scattered-looking website can do to your potential customers. Many owners of small businesses strive to fit as many pieces of data as possible on the website. In web design, this is a novice error, leading to a chaotic website that scares away visitors. Take advantage of negative space — white lines — for efficient lead generation. Increase the visibility of more important items, such as your calls-to-action or critical pieces of data, by leaving plenty of space between elements on your web.
4. Optimize your website for SEO.
Website Optimization for search engines is one of the essential aspects of web design that small business owners neglect. 51% of all web traffic comes from organic search, making the marketing of search engines a good lead generation tool. SEM -Search Engine Marketing — relies on the capacity to rank in popular searches. For better search engine indexing, the website’s code should be optimized, so consider getting a competent SEO audit. It will allow your website to rank higher on searches if you have the correct meta descriptions, keyword usage in your content, and link infrastructure.
5. Have a clear CTA on every page.
Finally, getting the call-to-action (CTA) in the right position is one of the main parts of lead generation. This is especially true and useful for e-Commerce websites, where you have to constantly present specific items to buyers. Personalize your call-to-actions and place them in such a way that, anyone who views your website and navigates through it can do anything they want to do very easily.
<span style="color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;">Also, note that the marketing and optimization of search engines is a huge component of driving traffic to your web, so make sure it is optimized. At<a href="https://qeola.com/" target="_blank"> <span style="color: inherit;background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;"><ins>Qeola</ins></a><span style="color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;">, we can save you all this stress by building your website for you with the keyword, “done correctly!”
I hope these tips are useful, tell us in the comment session, which tip you have found most useful.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Website To Generate Leads.

Simon Sinek in his book, Start with Why, expounded on a principle that holds every time you, as a business owner, are trying to ‘woo’ your customers into patronizing your business. Think about this, at the core of every one of the purchase decisions we make as customers to other brands, our emotional connection with the brand plays a significant role in picking them over another — consciously or unconsciously!
It is the same principle that applies to why some would choose to drink Coca-cola over Pepsi or wear a Gucci and not a Versace. This emotional connection to brands is explained by Tony Robbins in this five minutes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iRUJv6knQk" target="_blank"><ins>video</ins></a> of “why people buy feelings and not things!”
In a market where you can find an incredible number of brands offering the same product as you, your question will most likely be How can my brand stand out? The market has become globalized because of the presence of technology, meaning your customers may be able to get what you sell, from anywhere in the world.
Now, you must know that your brand deliverables such as logo, colours, branded tees, etc., are not what would necessarily stand you out. They could assuredly become a blur in the eyes of a customer who sees many of those every single day. Marketing alone doesn’t cut it; everyone does that too.
The question remains; what makes some more successful at convincing their customers than others?
From the Golden Circle theory by Simon Sinek, he talked about three (3) levels of portraying your brand to your customers: What, How, and Why!
What — This is a simple description of what you sell.
For example, you can say; Qeola is a digital agency that provides business development services through branding, software development, and digital marketing to startups and SMEs.
How — This talks about your mode of operation. The unique way you deliver your product.
For example, you can say; we offer our digital business development services using agile processes and a hands-on approach that allows you to customize your solutions to your specific business challenges.
Why — This describes your rationale for being in business, even when many offer the same ‘what’ as you do. This will be what stands you out — your real game-changer!
For example, you can say; we are gardeners, who have seen how small businesses struggle to survive their first few years with more than half of them dropping out before their 5th anniversary. Therefore, we grow, nurture, and scale businesses in order to help them flourish and be sustainable while strengthening the economic system of their country.
People who share the same values as you do will pick you over other brands, so you need to share your values and inspire your target customers. Inspired people are the ones who will become loyal customers.
Your Why is what your customers really connect with and therefore, should be the basis of your branding; it should define your brand colours, logo style, advertisement message, etc. Now, your strategy should be to find out and creatively draft your Why, then put it as the frontline message when creating your marketing materials.
Wrong: What before How before Why
Right: Why before What before How&nbsp;

Blog

How Entrepreneurs Can Reduce Stress.

How we Re-positioned a Natural Food Supplement Product Produced in Our Community

4 Business Secrets That Can Help Your Business Thrive in Africa

Business is Business — Keep Track