Small dealers in agribusiness have been asked to embrace the use of online platforms to advertise their produce.
Dr. Kassim Sendawula from the department of marketing and management at Makerere University said many small agribusiness owners have focused on a small marketing strategy, which is their home villages, hence collapsing in their first year of operation.
He said if small business owners embrace online marketing, they will reduce on operation costs and will have a wide market for their products.
“Online business exposes business owners to new customers every day, which contributes to the growth of their businesses. We did a survey in Mbale and Fort Portal on how we can strengthen social media competences of small agribusiness owner managers and other small businesses for sustainable growth of small business in Uganda during the COVID period and we realised that it was a good strategy to small business growth,” Sendawula said.
Sendawula was addressing small business owners at St Joseph’s Inn Virika Fort Portal on September 29 during a one-day workshop on strengthening the social media competences of business owner managers for sustainable growth of small businesses in Uganda.
Sendawula said the survey showed that 77% of small business owners have smartphones and were ready to use them to do business on social media compared to using them for only calls and messages.
The commercial officer Fort Portal city, Michael Kayanja Karwani, told the small business owners that using social media would help them advertise their products locally and internationally.
Augustine Ssekyondwa, a business process analyst at the National Information Technology Authority, who are the directorate for e-government services, appealed to the small business owners not to post products that are not made by them.
“This will make you lose market if a client orders for a product they saw on social media but a different product is delivered to them,” he said.
