Jakarta, 17th September 2024 – According to Mr. Felix Zulhendri, founder of Efi Propolis/Kebun Efi and Researcher at Universitas Padjadjaran, the key to linking science and business is by building close relationships with the customers. Businesses must first analyze the market they’re targeting and conduct a research to better understand customers’ needs and preferences, which can be done through regular customer engagement, collaborations or providing personalized service. With the rapid advancement in technology and globalization, social media is becoming the most relevant zero-cost marketing tool hence it is important for business owners to be their own content creator. This means actively establishing his/her own digital presence through creating valuable, engaging, and relevant content through popular social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and X.

These contents include meaningful expertise, behind-the-scenes insights, customer stories or reviews, which are usually posted in the form of posts, videos, or podcasts. Not only does building a reputable online presence amplifies brand visibility, but business owners can also directly influence customer perception and create a deeper emotional connection with their audience. For example, Elon Musk still attends podcasts and other interviews to stay relevant in social media in spite of being a billionaire entrepreneur, engineer, and founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter). In order to build a reputable presence in the digital world, it is important for business owners to build their own skills and experience in order to have credibility in their words. As businesses begin to dominate the social media platforms with the marketing of their products and services, people are inclined to trust what they’re seeing online.

Viral marketing strategies tend to create controversy but according to Mr. Felix, that’s not how we try to get branding recognition. Instead, we need to know how to attract our target audience. All of these social media content ideas can be quite challenging as Mr. Felix claimed that social media was like a wildfire, once you use it wrongly, there will be big consequences. Furthermore, Mr. Felix also explained that the business environment and working as a professional are 2 different worlds because although people have the tendency to start a business, they don’t always succeed. What we need to realize is that doing business requires experience. Not only do we need to educate ourselves with new knowledge, we also need to upgrade our way of thinking so we can run the business as we expected. Calculating cost and income should be the main objective of a business therefore we have to minimize the cost in order to get a fixed maximum profit. In response to the new market trend “fish milk, Mr. Felix stated that the Indonesia market is very unique and has a very specific niche hence only a small minority of Indonesians are aware of ultra processed food.