The Business Incubation Center at the University of Peshawar is holding a session on brand and digital marketing for its third cohort, continuing the cohort’s program of entrepreneurial learning. The session will be led by Dr. Muhammad Hashim Khan and is scheduled for 2:00 PM. Its working theme is to help founders build their brands and reach their customers, and its content covers four areas: building a recognizable brand, developing effective digital marketing strategies, reaching customers online and planning engaging social media content. For early stage companies with small budgets, those areas often decide whether a product is noticed at all, since a young startup rarely has an advertising budget and relies on its brand and its online presence to attract its first customers.
Dr. Khan brings an academic background in the subject. He is a lecturer at the University of Peshawar’s Institute of Management Studies, holds a PhD in Public Administration and lists marketing and brand management as his core research areas. He also serves as a cohort coordinator at the Business Incubation Center, which means he works with the founders in the program beyond individual sessions. The combination of research in brand management and day to day involvement with the cohort suggests that the session is meant to connect marketing concepts to the actual businesses in the room rather than to treat them in the abstract.
The format is practical. According to the announcement, participating founders will work through activities in which they develop their brand stories and prepare a 30 day content plan to strengthen their digital presence. A brand story explains what a company stands for and why a customer should care, and it gives a founder a consistent message to use across a website, social media and sales conversations. A 30 day content plan turns that message into a schedule of posts, which helps small teams keep their social media active without improvising each week. Founders leave the session with documents they can use immediately, which fits the center’s stated purpose of nurturing young talent, supporting startups and promoting sustainable business growth.
The session is one in a series for Cohort 3, and the announcement does not list the other sessions or say how many founders are in the cohort. It also does not say whether the session is open to anyone outside the cohort, so interested outsiders will need to ask the center directly. What the announcement does make clear is the aim of the day. Founders are expected to work on branding and online marketing during the session, finish with a content plan and begin applying it to their businesses, which is a concrete outcome for a half day of training.
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