Industry Tips with Gift Nkhoma: Three tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs in Malawi

Starting and running a small business or being an entrepreneur can be a challenging and rewarding experience. It requires a lot of hard work, determination, and strategic thinking to succeed. To help small business owners and entrepreneurs navigate this journey, we sat down with Gift Nkhoma, a successful entrepreneur, business leader, and Lead – Brands and Communications at Airtel Malawi PLC, to discuss his tips and insights on how to succeed in the industry.

In this interview, Gift shares three key tips that he believes are essential for small business owners and entrepreneurs to focus on in order to achieve success. Gift’s advice is sure to provide valuable insights and inspiration for anyone looking to take their business to the next level.

Here are the three tips I would give to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Malawi.

1. Lack of clear communication in media assets – Due to budget constraints, small businesses have a lot of information in one advert, to save costs on making the advert and media buying. This proves to be costly in the long run because nobody understands the value proposition when there is so much information in one advert. An example is billboards with multiple lines of services offered, it is advised to have one value proposition (max 3) on any outdoor media. The same thing applies to social media marketing where I see entrepreneurs selling 4 to 10 cars in one post on Facebook, this doesn’t work. Where an ad is difficult to process or understand, social media users simply just scroll down. In this case, posting one car at a time will make sure people read through the specifications of one car at a time.

2. Hiring Family Members in their Business – Again, it goes down to saving costs or compassion towards unemployed family members but it is not advised to recruit family and friends. They start to treat the business as a personal project and take out business capital for personal gains. Where a set of process controls are placed in the structure, this shouldn’t be a problem. Controls in place can include CCTV for retail shops, hiring an independent auditor to give an external assessment, etc.

3. Starting businesses without research – With entrepreneurship recently embedded in most of Malawi university’s curricula and the high unemployment rate, graduates are pressured to invest all their savings to start businesses as a get-rich scheme without proper research of the investment industry. For example, in pig farming, anyone can start a business with limited funding just because they heard it’s a good business – this is true but also not true if you are not well aligned with the industry. People know that pigs multiply a lot in a year but what they do not understand is this depends on feed, breed of the pigs, location of the farm (and weather), and understanding of their reproductive system, etc. It is always best to understand the business industry you are getting into to avoid frustration.

In conclusion, Gift Nkhoma’s tips and insights provide valuable information for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to take their business to the next level. By focusing on building a strong brand, developing a clear marketing strategy, staying organized, and managing finances effectively, you can set your business up for success.

At Oasis Brands, we understand the importance of these tips and that’s why we offer a wide range of services including marketing advisory, design services, and digital marketing to help small businesses and entrepreneurs achieve their goals. Our team of experts has the knowledge and experience to help you create a powerful and effective marketing strategy that will help you stand out in the competitive marketplace.

We also encourage you to subscribe to our blog series “Industry Tips” where we speak with leading experts in the marketing and design industry to bring you valuable insights and strategies to take your business to the next level. We believe that this series will help you stay on top of the latest trends and strategies in the industry and will give you the tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for reading our blog post and we look forward to helping you achieve your business goals.