Selling Clay Without Dough: Creative Strategies for Budding Entrepreneurs

Hello and welcome to the show. Before we begin, apologies. Apart from the usual noise outside, that is, the cars driving by the road, you're going to hear some generational noise. And that's because as at the time of this recording in my estate, we had the usual transformer issues. As soon as we sorted that out for one night, then there was the labour strike and you know, effectively the whole country was in a total blackout.

And when I say total, I mean total like 100% everybody, no power for roughly about 2 1/2 days. So we're kind of in the throes of recovering from all that. And so that's why there's generator noise everywhere now. Let's see. OK, so the question we're going to look at today is how to build a sales strategy that you can execute on a shoestring. In other words, we're going to answer the question, does sales have to be expensive or do sales and marketing activities, do they all have to be expensive And the answer is the capital N&O?

No. However, all sales and marketing efforts have a cost associated with them. Please get what I'm trying to hint at. Sales and marketing. Does it have to be expensive? No, but that doesn't mean that sales and marketing will be free because you're going to see lots of stuff on the interwebs people saying do these free marketing tactics, do these free sales, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's no trusting as free. Everything that you're going to do, sales and marketing related is going to have a cost associated with it.

It is either going to cost you time or it is going to cost you money. There's nothing that is free. So for those of you running around looking for free this, free that, perish your thought if it's sales and marketing related, I can't speak of any other aspect of business. But if it's sales and marketing related, it's either going to cost you time or it's going to cost you money and you are going to spend the one that you have excess of.

Because the problem with all this free stuff that people are promoting to, you start off and yeah, it's free, but it requires a lot of effort. And then after a while you get tired. It's like people who are tired of playing the organic social media game. Organic social media is free, as in no money, but you have to spend a whole lot of time to get things going. So if you are listening to this episode because you think there's going to be some easy thing that you can apply, I'm sorry, that doesn't exist.

You will either spend time or you will spend money. My advice is to start with the one that you have in excess. So if you have excess moola, if you have lots of money right now, then use sales and marketing tactics like advertising, which is essentially paying for your messaging and your content to reach the widest audience possible or the most qualified audience possible. So that is advertising. If you have tons of money, by all means start off with advertising.

Also use money for merchandising. Merchandising summary. My own rough and ready definition is just paying for stuff to look good, paying for stuff to look at and Polish branding. You know everything like if you set up your office or your studio. Back to my wedding photography days, you know, you stepped in into my studio, I had the wall length mirror, I had the wooden panelling, my nice wooden desk with what's it called, a bookshelf built into it.

My wife came up with a really cool design. I had my plush carpets, nice unit to keep the whole place cool. You know, you understand all that if easy. You know what we Nigerians like to call packaging, especially Yoruba people. You say package yourself, so merchandising equals packaging in the Nigerian context. So if you have tons of money, yes, these are the things that you should do. Pay for advertising, pay for merchandising, branding,

packaging, everything. However, even if you have tons of money, as in you've raised lots of money or you have investors or whatever, when it comes to the content game, still I would advise that you produce organic content first so that you can get a general idea of what's working in the market before you throw money behind it. Because one of the difficulties of having tons of money and starting the game with plenty of money is that sometimes you throw money behind things that are not going to work.

How you can figure out what is going to work is if you do some organic stuff 1st and see the kind of engagement that comes from that, and then that's what's going to tell you. Oh, OK, you know what, let me throw some money behind it. I was having conversations with someone, didn't end up working with the guy that was a fellow who was doing male sexual enhancement products. We didn't end up working together. And I was putting money behind promoting perfectly crafted comedy skits.

And the skits were not bad, you know, they were good. But The thing is, if you're trying to promote skits, but right now it's looking as if natural, unscripted, authentic Instagram reels are the things that are popping off, like that's what's gaining traction, then really you're just wasting your money. So in my own opinion, I'll say like, if you're in that kind of situation, create your skits and then create your reels, then put them out organically.

See what happens. If it looks like the skits are popping off, uh huh. Then throw advertising money behind the skits. It looks like reels are popping off and throw money behind the reels. Or you can use the feedback to see which kind of content is getting the highest organic engagement. And that will not tell you what kind of advertising to create. Should I create advertising that looks like it's natural, unscripted, authentic, you know,

natural point of view, simple camera phone kind of thing? Or should I put, should it be a high end properly produced skits? So if you got money, that's my approach, do the organic thing. That organic give you a sense of what is popping off, what is working, then you know what to throw money behind. So if you're broke and you have a lot of time on your hands, you're going to need a lot of body contact. Now, when I say body contact, I

don't mean that kind of contact for those of you who need Jesus. I'm talking about meetings, phone calls, visits, trade shows, networking, basically all that old school stuff, the stuff that nobody likes to do, the things that people think our fathers who are trying to hustle in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s, OK, no, by 90s had the Internet come 90s anyway, whenever it is that the Internet came pre Internet. OK, let's say pre Internet and then OK, no, we're still in the Internet.

We can't say post Internet, but you get my stuff, you get my juice rather. So all that stuff that people had to do pre Internet, that's what I'm calling body contact in this episode. So you have lots of time on your hands. Then what you're going to do is lots of body contacts as you need meetings, you need phone calls, you need visits, you need trade shows, you need networking. You have to be seeing people one-on-one as I'm here in the flesh and I'm looking at you in the flesh and we're having conversations in the flesh trying to move things along.

Or the phone. Phone is still kind of in the flesh. Definitely better than e-mail, but you get my drift. So if you're broke, then body contact, that's the way to go. Plenty of leg work, plenty of driving, plenty of bus, plenty of taxis, plenty of Ocada. You get the gist. Then for online activities, if you're broke, you're going to require a lot of content creation. And that's the reason why I say nothing is free. They say these free content ideas, blah blah blah blah,

blah. And then you start doing it and you realize that ah come, I woke up at 8:00. I started with content production. It's 2:00 in the afternoon. I'm still doing content production. Which kind will Hallow be this? Unfortunately, it's just the name of the game. Yeah, they're going to require a lot of content creation, content repurposing, content promotion. And the reason why the repurposing and the promotion is important when you don't have money is because organic content that is created and is not promoted goes absolutely nowhere.

Let me repeat it again. It doesn't matter how solid your videos are, your text, your reels, your whatever. If you create organic content and it is not promoted, it is going to go absolutely nowhere. If you are on discovery platforms like Tiktok, then you know you stand a chance. The the philosophy behind Tiktok is these platforms are they call discovery platforms. The philosophy is slightly different. The algorithms there are trying to show up whatever seems interesting.

Doesn't matter how much traction it may have gotten in the past, but he's just trying to show put up interesting stuff now. If people seem to love it, then you know the algorithm is going to promote it more. But for other things, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, things like that, platforms that are not discovery, then you actually have to promote because good stuff that is not promoted will go nowhere. And the example that those of you will know who've been listening to the podcast for a while, you guys know that in the first three years, my total downloads were at about 5K.

Now currently I'm at almost 15 K. But you guys know that me doubling my audience really was in the first six months of last year kind of when I started promoting really aggressively. So most of you who love the show, actually, let's say 80% or 90% of you who love the show, actually you guys are just newcomers. I've been here for a while doing this podcast for I'll say maybe like four years now, maybe slightly more. So those of you who actually love the show and you know, you guys have been growing my base.

Actually, you are the the new cats, the O GS have been here since good luck Jonathan era. So, yeah, so my own case is, is a pretty good example of what is that I'm talking about. For the first three years, I just made the podcast and I put it up. My idea was like anybody that will discover, let them discover. But unfortunately what I guess is after three years, 5000 downloads. But then one day I wake up, wise up, start doing the work.

Within six months I double and currently I'm at 15 K. So that's that's the proof. So you can't argue with that. Create good stuff, but then you have to have a content for distribution. So you need to have a strategy for distribution and promotion. How was I promoting promotion doesn't have to be complicated now I was mostly sharing the links on LinkedIn. I also did some link sharing on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Threads, on YouTube.

But after a while I was like, man, this is too much work for my temperament because I don't mind how it work, but it I won't like I was I was kind of stretched. So most of my podcast growth, as impressive as it seems, has come from sharing mostly on two places, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. So I share on LinkedIn, I share on WhatsApp and that's it. Once in a while I lose myself, I forget and I try sharing again on Facebook and Threads and YouTube.

And then I remember that, oh, OK, there's a reason why I stopped this. So and then I stop again. So I've been focusing mostly on two platforms. So for those people who say focus on specific platforms to get growth, they actually do have a point there because I've I've seen it happen that once I narrowed down to only WhatsApp and LinkedIn because that's where I was seeing the best amount of traction, I actually made progress.

So let's look at the case study now. And I'm going to look for the most obscure business that I can find that I can think of as a Nigerian. Let's look for a case study about how to grow sales and marketing on the budget. And what I'm going to pick is those of you who are artists, pottery people, clay people, because there's someone right now who does clay pottery kind of products. They sell the clay and it's about 3500 naira and a pop.

And so for someone in that situation who has plenty of money, like I said at the top of the of the episode, go into your merchandising and your branding. So get the right look, get the right feel of the product, get your packaging right, you know, set up the websites, you know, go and pay boys or girls that go with design, you know, the Instagram, your website, you know everything. And then just start running advertising on the Meta suite that's on Facebook and Instagram and also on Google.

Make sure you target schools and parents who have little children. And that's how you're going to get traction pretty quickly if you have money. But if you don't have money, remember what I said. Body contact. The good kind, not the bad kind. Don't be promiscuous. So body contact. Start attending book fairs, education fairs. Get an affordable booth. Run demos for free. Do free classes, but get people to contribute something for the clay.

Talk to school principals and art teachers about how you can expand the art curriculum, some extracurricular activities. Propose fun activities in school or in church. Engage in community building online. You know, you're doing all of these activities and bottom line is you're trying to sell your clay. But make sure that you promote yourself and your products. Doing all this leg work because I know someone who is doing it right now.

OK, Well, I don't know the person because I've not seen the guy or the girl. I don't even know if he's a guy or a girl. And that's because there's someone who's currently doing the rounds and the person has hit my son's school. And it's a very smart move. Not a bad idea. You're trying to sell your product, you're inside the schools. I mean, that's, that's good, especially since in Abuja schools can have, gosh, I don't know, let me say 30 children per class.

If they're like 10 children in each arm, that is 300. Then plus secondary school that is 310 arms would be 3000. OK, well, let me just leave it at that. So you can have about 3000 kids per per school. So that kind of leg work is not a bad idea. But my son's clay arrived. And The thing is, I have no idea who the artist is. So the only profit that this artist is going to make or this entrepreneur is going to make is the 3005 that each parent has paid.

But there's no future possibility. There's no possibility for future sales or classes. So this guy or this girl should have included Flyers to send home to the parents so that at least the parent know who it is who to call later on to say, Oh, my son love this clay thing. My daughter loves this clay thing. How much for classes or do you have clay in red or in green or whatever? So you could have sent home Flyers. The person could have packaged the clay better, you know, fancy packaging that has your contact details on it.

Or they could have sent home offers for the kids to give to the parents so the parents can have a look at maybe their classes for adults, because adults can do this thing as team bonding activities and stuff like that. So you get the whole, you get the whole gist. So you can, you can do money, the whole advertising and merchandising thing, or you can do plenty of legwork like this person has done. Now this is actually a business.

The answer is yes. People do this as a business because while my kids were in nursery school, there also was another person who came by. But this person, we saw the person, he did a smart move because he included parents in some of the activities. So we got to know that, OK, he's here, this is what he does, this is his artwork. If you want to do bonding activities in the office, these are the packages, you know, stuff like that.

So this person was more strategic about it. But actually, yes, it is a business that people do. And that's one of the things I'd like to do here on the podcast to show you guys the different shades of entrepreneurial activity that goes on in this country. So it's not just wedding, wedding photographers and people in the fintech space. There's all kinds of things in between, and this is also another one of those interesting businesses.

So 16 minutes, let me stop here. Tomorrow we're going to look at popular perspectives online on how to tackle this problem of selling while you're broke. So today was me just restarting on the Mass app. Tomorrow I will look at what the pundits on the interwebs tell you guys to do, and we'll try and look at all those things from a uniquely sales and business development perspective. So that's all for today, folks. Thank you very much for listening.

Please connect with me on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140 and the country code is +234. Then connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Aidi, I'm the host of the show, and you can confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.