In our webinar with Clarina De Freitas from Bizcommunity, she shared 3 tips on how B2B businesses can use Bizcommunity as a free resource to grow business in Africa.
Background on Bizcommunity
Bizcommunity is an independently owned media company in Africa. It is a community where individuals, companies, organisations and brands can take control of their daily corporate communications. Established in 2001, which is 5 years prior to the start of social media. It is one of the first media companies in Africa and one of its only kind in South Africa. BizAfrica, so far has a footprint in the following Africa territories Angola, Algeria, Botswana, Coed’lvoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Bizcommunity’s Audience
- Bizcommunity’s target audience is made out of tech-savvy business professionals, decision-makers, economically active and trend adopters.
- The majority of their readers are female (55.6%).
- 38% of their readers have university degrees, while 26% have college diplomas.
- Most of their readers earn over R50 000 per month.
There is a significant amount of buying power and business mindsets in this community.
3 Tips on how to use Bizcommunity to grow your business
- The power of connecting on Bizcommunity. Create a free Bizcommunity account/profile. This free account will allow you to submit news, events, galleries, new appointments, new business announcements and a free standard business listing as well as multimedia and even contributor content. This also helps in terms of your SEO / SEM reach. This is key to building your digital presence and establishing a voice and public image as a business in your industry.
- The power of reading Bizcommunity. Subscribe to the daily industry newsletters, specifically in the industries that are relevant to your business. For example, daily Agriculture top stories impact directly on the Retail sector and Retail impacts on Logistics, Logistics on Automotive, eCommerce and Finance etc. Every sector is impacted by another, there is no sector that will not benefit from the updates and information on another sector. The newsletters are compiled with business articles, events, jobs, how-to’s and so forth. Extract information that is relevant to your business, your strategy and compiles a database and search for leads.
- The power of networking. BizCommunity has an event page, where different events are listed with some free events that one can attend. Use these events to learn, network, add your business events and establish your business and yourself in the market.
Industry Trend reporting
Annually BizCommunity delivers a Cross-sector Trends report. In 2021, the BizTrends Report featured over 130 contributions from its business-to-business communities across 19 sectors, everything from automotive, agriculture to logistics and ICT and so much more… One of the biggest trends coming through on the consumer side that should be taken into account in every industry is that consumers want to buy from and be associated with AUTHENTIC BRANDS. This ties into movements we have seen as far back as the early 2000’s when leaders were advised to start sharing their WHYs in order to connect with employees and build stronger teams. See Simon Sinek’s, Why TedTalk as a reference.
Link to recording of webinar
What is brand authenticity?
Brand authenticity is all about being genuine and real. When you’re an authentic business, you’re honest about your organisation’s mission and values. Your policies are transparent, and you create an emotional connection with your clients. More so, you align what you say and how you behave with the shared perceptions of others. It helps you bridge the authenticity gap between your customer’s expectations and the actual customer experience with your business and brand. There are many reasons as to why most businesses miss the mark with aligning customer expectations to customers experience. Sometimes its over-promising on the marketing side, inadequate processes to support fulfilment, leadership, organisational cultural, KPIs and so forth. None of that matters to the customer though. The only external parties who are concerned about your business short-comings are your competitors. So, if you are promising quality products, then deliver quality products.
After all, 77% of customers return and refer people to a business, if they have a positive experience
Next steps
With this added knowledge and free digital resource delivered daily into your email box. What shall you do? Find leads on customers that you can pitch in the pages of Bizcommunity. Write and submit an article about your industry, experiences or insights and start building a reputation as a thought leader. Attend the online and in-person networking events, and promote your business… In practical terms, whatever the most strategically important item on your list is, do it first.
Spend at least the first 90-minutes of each day focusing on the most important item. Second to that, ensure that you are making time to connect with people in your industry, your employees and learn as much about your customer as you can. Lastly, make time to be creative, destress and always remember that it doesn’t matter how many times you fall, it’s about how many times you get up.
Knowledge and action combined can win over any adversity known to man. Karen Hawkins
Again, a special thank you to Clarina DeFreitas for taking time out to chat with us B2Bs. Bizcommunity was generous and run an on the spot competition in the webinar and gave away premium listings to 2 entrepreneurs who best pitched their business in the breakout rooms to other participants in the webinar.
Reach-out to the BizCommunity team on 📧: Clarina@bizcommunity.com 📞: +27 84 6188 181 📞International: +27 (0)21 404 1460
Link to recording of webinar
Follow BizCommunity on social Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter @Bizcommunity; @Biz_Marketing; @Biz_Africa
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