Over the past 2 years SpaceKenya.com has gone from a business started in an Old Pentium 2 machine in a Cyber Cafe in the heart of Nairobi to a Medium sized outfit with an Office and a Data Center to serve our customers better.
Here are 4 Simple tips that have seen us make this modest success in such a short time.
1. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER: This is a fundamental step in any Business and probably where most fail. Ask yourself what services are you offering and how many people roughly would need this service. You can use tools like Whiver.com to understand what Kenyans need. In summary FIND -> ANALYZE -> USE DATA (RESEARCH)
2. ESTABLISH AN ONLINE PRESENCE: Whether it standing the middle of Kenyatta Avenue with a billboard, you have to find your customer or they just will not come.This is what you need
An Official EMAIL and/or WEBSITE: The BIG mistake people make is they sign up for FREE services BIG BIG BIG Mistake. Your Grandmother was right! There is nothing for FREE!!! When you sign up for a free service what you are basically doing is selling the secrets of your Business to your competitor because the Free Host scans, reads and sells your data to the highest bidder who is most probably your next door competitor… and you wonder why you never seem to catch the BIG BREAK… Huh now you know
Solution: Go to SpaceKenya.com search for a cool official Email and Website name and pay as little as Kshs 2500 for your Official Private Secure and Kenyan BRAND. We also do fantastic Web Design as well… See Portfolio
3. ADVERTISE YOUR PRESENCE: Ok you now have the best Kenyan websitebut no Business is coming through
You need to get Business Cards done ASAP with important contact and location details on the card. Contact services@spacekenya.com for 1,000 Business Card Design and Printing @Kshs 6,000
You need to Add your website URL to your email signature
Most importantly the rule of thumb is to add and create a Profile or Classified listing on Kenyan Social Media e.g. Whive.com Add your profile link to your email signature E.G. ours is http://www.whive.com/spacekenya Don’t wait do this now !!!
In Kenya SMS SMS and SMS is the answer for you advertising needs 10,000 SMS Ads will get you at least 3,000 potential customers. Don’t take my word for it, try out the service at http://SMS254.com SMS cost only KShs 1.80/SMS.
Word of advice TV, RADIO, NEWSPAPERS are a waste of time if you don’t have MILLIONS to spend advertising. They are known as CORPORATE MEDIA. What you really need is SOCIAL MEDIA. This is without a doubt the GOOSE that LAYS the GOLDEN EGGS.
4.ENGAGE THE CUSTOMER: To engage the customer you need to be SOCIAL. This is easy if you are a Kenyan. You remember the way you used to yap when the teacher left the classroom? Yes just do the same on the Internet about your product or service. To see the full picture I advice you to go thoroughly through our website www.Whive.org
But to summarize this is what you need to do, if possible starting tomorrow.
Analyze your web traffic, if you are hosted with us just log into the Cpanel and go to WEB STATS. Its fun almost like sorcery or what my teacher called math, but hey we need to do this at least on a monthly basis.
Adjust your Business Plan accordingly, its not wrong, Hawkers do it by running away from the City Council and setting up shop elsewhere. You can do it with a few adjustments to your website.
This simple but modest budget plan (Not more than Kshs 30,000 by my count) will see you off in a very big way. It doesn’t matter if you are a Supplier or Muratina brewer (I hear its the next big business) this WEB BUSINESS PLAN will work for YOU.
NB: I have created the SPACE KENYA NETWORKS BUSINESS GROUP here please join and create a profile of your business there are over 1000 Business in my network each selling a service the other might need. Millions in trading between each other can happen just within this platform so do create your profile and share what you are doing with the group.
Kenya’s economy in the past decade has made great strides despite numerous challenges most notably the 2007-2008 Post Election Violence as well as endemic corruption, cronyism, and elitism that make up some of the systemic challanges and failures of Kenya’s political and social setup.
Kenya Business 2009 Round Up
Despite this challenges Kenya remains a country with great potential, remarkable innovation and hard working citizens. These attributes have led the Kenyan Gross Domestic Product(G.D.P) tripling in size within a space of nine years. Analysts have attributed this success fundamentally to the lazier faire or hands off approach of the current Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki who is credited with implementing reforms that have seen widespread investment in education, infrastructure as well as opening up credit and the financial sector to local players.
While the Kibaki Administration can be credited with the above. It is important that we deliberately set out in the new constitution to enforce the principle of subsidiarity which protects smaller institutions like small business from unfair competition from larger corporates whether local or foreign. We should also create an environment that allows larger enterprise to set up cheaply and pull as much human resource from Kenya and the East African region to make Kenya a hub for technology and innovation in the region.
Kenya should also take advantage of the world food shortage and curve a niche for itself in exporting more food to the rest of the world. This is dependent on Land Reform as well as developing food processing capabilities in the medium and long term.
Below are some of the early indications that this is indeed happening.
Have you ever wondered how we can find opportunities during the recession. Economist Alex Tabarrok argues free trade and globalization are shaping our once-divided world into a community of idea-sharing more healthy, happy and prosperous than anyone’s predictions
This is a refreshing talk by Alex Tabarrok on how we can all use our own ideas to ride the economic storm and come out the better for it. Really inspirational stuff here. Watch the Video below
Dambisa Moyo gave a talk about Exit Strategies for Aid for Africa at the Africa Business Network where she urged governments to pursue development. Aid according to her is an inhibitor because it creates DYSFUNCTIONAL governments and creates STIGMA amongst the African people. i.e. People will always ask for relief from donors and will not seek ways to actively improve themselves. In addition corruption, bureaucracy, ethnic strife and poor political representation are problems associated with constant reliance on AID.
She urged trade with China, increased foreign direct investment and use of the capital markets as direct alternatives to the AID MODEL. Strengthening of micro finance institutions and remittances will also form a huge component of the EXIT strategy from AID.
Dear friends this week i continue with my posts on African development with some ideas from Euvin Naidoo a Harvard Graduate who has worked with McKenzie consultanty agency as well as various development and investment agencies.
Watch the video below and share some of his insights into development in Africa.
Euvin Naidoo: Africa as an invesment
In my view Africa will really begin to take of when many of the economies become more integrated and goods and services can move indiscriminately across the different regions of Africa. It is also good to note that economies such as Angola are growing at 18% which is the highest economic growth rate in the sub saharan Africa. Watch the Kenyan Prime Minister discuss about these developments in Africa.
Watch Mark Shuttleworth, President of the Ubuntu Foundation,and June Arunga, Open Quest Media, speak about opportunities and challenges business and individuals face in developing parts of the world.This a lovely talk of African Prospects with historical occurences being put into context. June Arunga has travelled Africa from Cairo to Capetown and is an expert in the Mobile Phone revolution in Kenya. Kenyans are using mobile phones to expand their economic space and conduct business. She argues that the country needs to develop address systems to allow people to conduct business in a transparent manner. I also remember reading that issuing of title deeds to squatters would be an efficient way of distributing capital and wealth. Anyway here are the videos.
DLD Internet and Mobile Entreprenuership Conference
I disagree heartily with the notion that Africa needs more economic AID to help spur its own economic growth. Indeed as evidence has clearly shown the last 50 years of economic AID have hardly helped any single country in Africa reach even middle income status. Furthermore the countries which have ignored economic AID like Malaysia and India have seen rapid growth and are now emerging as the dominant economies of the 21st Century. Indeed the AID dependency model that is employed by the World Bank and IMF has fueled corruption as well as laid back attitudes in governance.
Dead Aid
Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has spent the better part of this year canvassing around the worlds huge media networkings promoting her book “Dead Aid” which among other things compares and contrasts different economic models that have worked for the Tiger Economies and the failed policies in Africa.
I have posted some videos here for you to watch and please feel free to make your comments there in.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta also echoed this sentiments and urged African countries to reduce their dependence on Foreign Aid. Uhuru encouraged the Private sector especially social entreprenuers to work hand in hand with goverments to reduce this dependence. It is interesting African leaders are begining to read from the same page, which shows that dambisa’s book is timely. Watch these Videos below.
Please read this feature on Rwanda’s model of economic development by Jeff Chu. [Read Here]
ALJAAZERA INTERVIEW – RIZ KHAN
PAUL KAGAME & UHURU KENYATTA
BOOK REVIEW
The question of international aid to developing countries is one of the most controversial subjects in modern development literature. One simply needs to look at any local bookshop under the “current affairs” section and you are hit with many large and often time consuming volumes on the subject. So when I stumbled on DambisaMoyo’s book at my favourite bookshop (WaterstonesCharing Cross Station), I felt a mixture of delight and nervousness. Delight because here we have a Zambian academic weighing in on a subject that has been the preserve of self-appointed “development experts”. This should fill every Zambian with pride and admiration. God knows we have so few Zambian economists ready to engage such serious issues, let alone publish a book on it. That feeling quickly gave way to nervousness because with so much written on this topic by leading experts such as Easterly, Collier,Riddell and others, could Dead Aid really offer any fresh thinking on the subject? [Read More]
