Mr Mohammed Ali, a Marketing Specialist, has urged players in the poultry industry to prioritise marketing and make it an integral part of their companies as it has the potential to increase profit margins.

Mr Ali said there was the need for industry players to deliberately adopt marketing strategies to make themselves more visible and viable to the customers as well as potential buyers.

He was speaking at a training programme for poultry feed millers and other value chain actors at the Livestock, Poultry and Fisheries Trade Show in Accra.

The Livestock, Poultry and Fisheries Trade show (LiPF) 2019 is a collaboration between the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Agrihouse Foundation sponsored by Amplifies.

The training aims at improving Ghana’s poultry feed production capacity and enhance the poultry value chain to increase the availability of quality poultry feed, improve its accessibility to poultry producers, and expand the trade of poultry products, especially eggs.

Mr Ali said there was the need for poultry feed millers to engage the services of professional marketers to enable them scale their production and profit margins.

He said engaging professional in their operations would lead to the easy identification of the company’s unique selling preposition, which could engineer the growth of business.

He added that the local poultry feed millers and poultry value chain actors were doing well in terms of marketing but mainly doing piecemeal marketing without any strategy.

Mr Ali said it was time the company operating in the sector position themselves and develop specific strategies to advance their businesses, adding that it was important for them to take into account the branding and labelling of products.

He said the first thing to consider for marketing was branding, adding that branding was the art of creating an image for the purpose of recognition, adding that brands were usually represented by images known as a logo.

He said brand identity included brand name, logo, colours, packaging, and product description, adding that there was the need for strong corporate brands and personal brands to maximise visibility on the market.

He said branding strategies were activities or measures taken to differentiate a company and its product, adding there was the need for value chain actors to get their packaging and labelling right to attract more customers.

Ms Alberta Akosa, the Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, in an interview, said the training was organised as a complement to efforts of the Livestock, Poultry and Fisheries Trade Show to get people to appreciate the whole cycle of the poultry industry.

She said the training was geared towards building capacity of more people in areas that they might not really be thinking about and to enhance the skills of those already in the sector, who needed to enhance their capacity.

He said there had been a big gap in animal agriculture and hence commended Government’s efforts at getting people more excited about the sector, which led to the recent launch of the rearing for food and jobs programme.