SCORES of students at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha region, have been trained on the best approaches for branding and marketing to enable them to develop their start-ups.
The six-day mentorship and training boot camp has been carried out early this week, to help the students to prepare a clear strategy for marketing and branding their products and services.
The training was organised by Sahara Ventures to empower the NM-AIST students with the needed knowledge to establish various business start-ups.
“The training helped arm the students with the best approaches and ways they can adopt to increase their brand visibility as well as to improve consumer loyalty to their products,” explained the training facilitator Idrisa Jaffary.
He said the mentoring session, among other things, aimed at providing teams with tools and resources to help them package their ideas well in a structured manner.
Among other concepts, the Nelson Mandela University students learned about presentation and communication tools for start-ups.
On the last day, the teams prepared seven minutes pitches about their products and/or services which they then presented to the judges and received feedback.
The pitches focused on the problem they were trying to solve, the solutions they were providing, and the strengths of their team.
The judges used various judging criteria to select the best teams that were ready to move ahead and join the next stage of the programme.
“I found out that most students and the general public have little idea of what the two concepts mean, the clear line of distinction, and when to do branding and when to do marketing,” the facilitator said.
This misconception ends up costing most start-ups money and even leading to the closure of many of their businesses.
An independent consultant, Mr Jaffary focused on training marketing and sales teams in various companies, SMEs, and individuals.
He helped the trainees to enter incubator programmes that are offered by various national and international organisations.
By making the branding and marketing training available via podcasts, Mr Jaffary makes his classes easy and affordable to access remotely at the trainees’ convenience on any mobile device.
