Social Media for Small Businesses
Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums. Today we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses. There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefitting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social MediaDefine your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the desired results.Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions.
The 10 Most Influential Internet Marketers (Part 1)
This article is a subjective list of the ten most influential Internet marketers. I could have easily included more than ten marketers, but I had to draw the line somewhere. So, if you don’t see your favorite Internet marketer on the list, please don’t be offended. I purposely excluded individuals whom are known primarily for one particular talent.For example: copywriting and SEO. I wanted to sing the praises of those individuals whom are known as great marketers – first and foremost. And while this list is subjective, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to argue against any of the selections included on the list, as they are all proven excellent and have stood the proverbial test of time.1. Jay Abraham’s uncanny ability to increase business income, wealth and success by uncovering hidden assets, overlooked opportunities and undervalued possibilities has captured the attention and respect of CEOs, best-selling authors, entrepreneurs and marketing experts. Jay’s clients range from business royalty to small business owners. But they all have one thing in common – virtually all have profited greatly from Jay’s expertise. A number of clients each acknowledge that Jay’s efforts and ideas have lead to a profit increase of millions of dollars. [See our Testimonial pages]Jay has identified the patterns that limit and restrict business growth. He’ s one of only a very few people who realize that most industries only know and use one particular marketing approach – even though there may be dozens of more effective and profitable strategies and options available to them.Jay shows his clients how to take different success concepts from different industries and adopt them to their specific business. This gives Jay’s clients a powerful advantage over their competition.Jay has been acknowledged as a unique and distinctive authority in the field of business performance enhancement – and the maximizing and multiplying of business assets. He’s been featured twice in Investors Business Daily both on the front page and in the Leaders & Success Section – saying Jay, “Knows how to maximize results with minimum effort”. The March 6, 2000 issue of Forbes Magazine listed Jay as one of the top 5 executive coaches in the country saying jay’s specialty is, “Turning corporate underperformers into marketing and sales whizzes.”In addition, Jay has been written up in USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, OTC Stock Journal, National Underwriter, Entrepreneur, Success, and Inc. magazine, and many others. [See our Press articles]He has over 10,000 individual business success stories from around the world. Many of the world’s preeminent trainers and consultants have sought out Jay’s advice and counsel in growing their organizations.As a proven business leader with energy and vision, Jay has demonstrated the critical ability to stimulate true breakthrough thinking and execution throughout organizations, in all 4 vital areas of performance enhancement: strategy, innovation, marketing, and management. He understands how to focus on the upside leverage in an organization, while effectively controlling and minimizing the downside risk. He understands the implications, correlations, applications, opportunities and vulnerabilities in a given situation from a “catscan” perspective that is exceedingly rare.He sees overlooked opportunities, hidden assets (both tangible and intangible), and underperforming areas of a business no one else recognizes. His depth and breadth of empirical experience has facilitated exceptional judgment, communication, and collaboration skills, the vitally essential traits necessary to establish, lead and effectively contribute to any organization. These are the prime abilities required to add new life and strategic vision to a company that is struggling, or one that needs to redefine or better distinguish itself in the marketplace.His forte, which is the ability to think “way outside the box” and prepare for multiple potential scenarios, has enabled him to find and successfully implement creative, preemptive solutions to very complex problems in order to generate high-performance results. He has successfully established beneficial relationships with key strategic partners and developed strategic business plans for companies that have consistently been met or exceeded. He has been instrumental in raising performance even while working with adverse business environments.As the founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc. in Los Angeles, California, Jay has spent the last 25 years solving problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients in more than 400 industries worldwide. Jay has seen and dealt with every type of business you can imagine. And he’s studied and solved every kind of business question, problem, challenge and opportunityJay has been extremely successful at what he does for others. He’s produced many thousands of success stories and made Billions for others as well as millions himself. He’s spawned an entire generation of marketing consultants and experts who credit him as their primary mentor as a result of his past Protégé and Consultant Training programs. Nearly 2,000 websites reference his impressive work on the Internet alone.2. Mark Joyner is a #1 best-selling author of over a dozen books translated in almost as many languages. He is widely recognized as one of the early pioneers of e-commerce, responsible for inventing, pioneering, and popularizing many of the technologies we take for granted today (including remotely-hosted ad tracking, electronic books, Integration Marketing, and more …)- One of his books (MindControlMarketing.com) shot to #1 within 36 hours of its release.- One of his websites became the 37th most visited website on the planet within 6 weeks of its release.- His pioneering ebook (Search Engine Tactics) was downloaded over 1,000,000 times years before e-books were common.- He turned a fledgling one-man operation into a multi-million-dollar International corporation with customers in every internet-connected country on the planet in two years time.Other Interesting Facts About Mark JoynerEarned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology through independent study while simultaneously serving in the U.S. Army in the Military Intelligence Corp (he speaks Korean fluently graduating at the top of his class at the Defense Language Institute).Is a cold-war veteran of military intelligence and a former U.S. Army Officer. He held a Top Secret SCI clearance (the highest clearance level in the US) for several years.Was awarded for his military service by the U.S. Army, the Republic of Korea Army, the Korean Consulate General, and the President of the United States.3. Dan Kennedy, a Phoenix-based entrepreneur-extraordinaire has won international recognition as a “millionaire-maker,” helping people in dozens of different businesses turn their ideas into fortunesEntrepreneur Magazine says that Dan Kennedy has “at least 101 moneymaking ideas for any business owner.”Dan Kennedy moves with remarkable ease from one very different field to another, working with clients in 62 different businesses, industries and professions, earning as much as $250,000.00 in a single month providing unusual direct-response advertising and direct marketing advice, strategy, copywriting and marketing materials, video production and infomercials, and profit improvement systems.Kennedy’s clients include everything from sole entrepreneurs to huge corporations. Here are just a few examples – there’s the husband-and-wife couple who came to Dan with an idea, a mountain of debt, and failing advertising. Less than two years later, they have zero debt and a home-based mail-order business generating over $200,000.00 a month at about a 40% profit margin. Or, there’s the now-giant Guthy-Renker Corporation, famous for its celebrity infomercials with Victoria Principal and Vanna White, and its Tony Robbins infomercials. Guthy-Renker is a 200-million dollar+ a year business now, and Dan’s been a key member of their brain trust since their very first infomercial (Think And Grow Rich). Or there’s U.S. Gold, a company that has twice increased its sales by millions with Dan Kennedy provided marketing breakthroughs. And the list goes on and on and on.Kennedy is the “hidden genius” behind full-page magazine advertisements you’ve undoubtedly seen, direct-mail campaigns you’ve received and TV infomercials you’ve seen. In addition to all the advertising and direct-mail Dan prepares for his own products, services and businesses, there are hundreds of clients using marketing materials Dan has prepared for them. His full-page ads have appeared and do appear in magazines like Inc., Success, Entrepreneur, Moneymaking Opportunities, Nations Business, the airline magazines, the tabloids, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, and countless trade magazines. One of his client’s full-page ads is now in its 10th consecutive month, appearing in over a dozen national magazines. In any given month, clients spend over 1/2-million dollars running ads, much more mailing sales letters, and still more airing infomercials that Dan has developed.And, Dan is one of the most popular, in-demand speakers on marketing-related topics. Ironically for a marketing guru, Kennedy gets almost all of his clients with no marketing! Some come to him after hearing him speak – in 1995, he addressed over 200,000 people, including audiences of thousands in many cities, in his 5th year on tour with famous motivationalist ZIG ZIGLAR. Others come after getting and reading one of his books available in bookstores, receiving his newsletter or listening to his cassettes. But most are referred to him.4. Joe Vitale is Founder & President of Hypnotic Marketing, Inc. He has written books for the American Marketing Association and the American Management Association. He wrote the only business book on P.T. Barnum, in There’s A Customer Born Every Minute. He also wrote The AMA Complete Guide to Small Business Advertising for the American Marketing Association. His most recent book, co-authored with Jo Han Mok, is The E-Code: 47 Secrets for Making Money Online Almost Instantly. Be on the lookout for his next book: Meet and Grow Rich!He recently created a software program to help anyone write better sales letters, articles, news releases, speeches and even entire books. It’s called Hypnotic Writing Wizard. He also has a brand-new membership program for those who are serious about learning marketing at HypnoticGold.com.Besides being one of the five top marketing specialists in the world today, and the world’s first hypnotic writer, Joe is also a certified hypnotherapist, a certified metaphysical practitioner, a certified Chi Kung healer, and an ordained minister. He also holds a doctorate degree in Metaphysical Science and another doctorate degree in Marketing.5. Dr. Jeffrey Lant has been a top achiever for a VERY long time. He published his first article at age 5. An afternoon newsboy, he started his own newspaper at age 10, sold stock and, yes, paid dividends! Even then media and communications intrigued him. This has never stopped!
Editor of his high school newspaper, editor of his class book, editor of the literary magazine, he also wrote a weekly column. That continued in college — and so did the awards accumulated along the way.Graduated with highest honors from University High School, Los Angeles, he graduated summa cum laude (one of only 11) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Along the way, he spent his junior year at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where he won the University Prize in Philosophy and became the first American ever elected to the Students Representative Council.At UCSB he became the University’s first-ever Woodrow Wilson Fellow and was actively recruited by over 60 graduate schools, each offering him full doctoral fellowships. He chose Harvard, where he also became a Harvard Traveling Fellow, Harvard Teaching Fellow, and winner of a Master’s Award for special achievement, en route to graduating with both a Master’s and Ph.D.Upon graduation he took a third post-graduate degree, the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Higher Education Administration at Northeastern University, where he became the first student to cite his own published work (by now very extensive) in footnotes to his class papers.After a stint as Assistant to the President of Radcliffe College, Dr. Lant decided to set off on his own. He set up a consulting practice for non-profit organizations in 1976 and published his third book, Development Today: A Fund Raising Guide For Nonprofit Organizations. (Previous books had dealt with English Court ceremonial in the age of Queen Victoria. Entitled, Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria’s Court, Dr. Lant became the first American ever granted access to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Another book, Our Harvard, dealt with the memories of eminent Harvard grads, including Dr. Lant himself.)Development Today launched a busy consultancy, international travel, workshops and direct assistance to hundreds of nonprofit organizations nationwide. It also spawned a series of how-to books that turned Dr. Lant into a millionaire and brought his detailed, hard-hitting, practical advice to people worldwide. (Click here for information about all of Dr. Lant’s books.)Along the way, Dr. Lant developed an internationally syndicated column carried by several hundred publications, a syndicated radio show on the Business Radio Network, and a string of special reports on specialized business- building subjects.So it might have continued but for the creation of the Internet and a series of eye-opening phone calls from George Kosch and Sandi Hunter, two Edmonton-Alberta- based entrepreneurs who were way ahead of their time. They persuaded Dr. Lant to come to Edmonton and see the future — the Internet — for himself.He did. And the rest, as they say, is history.What he saw in Edmonton, back in 1993, was that anyone, anywhere in the world with a computer and access to the Internet could transmit unlimited amounts of information to people worldwide. In a moment, the glimmer of an idea took form that is still being developed right now.This new technology opened the possibility of staying at home and helping people worldwide at little or no expense! As a result of that trip, Worldprofit Inc., a company which has opened the Internet to business people worldwide, people who want to enter and profit from new markets across the universe for their products and services, was born!These days Dr. Lant, still publishing articles just like he’s been doing for over 50 years, helps business people worldwide understand how the Internet can benefit them.6. Marlon Sanders, CEO of Higher Response Marketing, Inc. is a prolific internet marketer, with a dozen internet marketing products and services to his name. He uses his Master’s degree in psychology to great effect by writing great ad copy.Marlon’s products and services include The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy, Push Button Sales Letters, Associate Program Marketing Handbook, Gimme My Money Now, Amazing Ad Copy Secrets Revealed, Create Your Own Products In A Flash, How to Automate Your Web Business, The Web Site Power System, Web Business Operations Manual, Secrets of Speed Publicity, The Cash Like Clockwork System, Daily Stats Software, and The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide.Marlon has spoken at over 120, $3,000 one-day marketing seminars and commands $1000 an hour for consulting. His reseller program for The Amazing Formula is one of the top-ranked systems on the Internet.7. Corey Rudl (1970-2005) was an American marketing strategist, and founder and President of the Internet Marketing Center. He was also an author, speaker, and software producer.Rudl started his first online business in 1994, turning it into a multi-million-dollar business based on Internet marketing. In response to the demand for his advice, Corey founded the Internet Marketing Center, where he taught techniques and strategies that stemmed from his own experience. His Internet marketing guide is sometimes described as the “Internet Marketing Bible”.Rudl’s articles appeared in publications such as http://Entrepreneur.com, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s -SCORE.org, the Direct Marketing Association, MarketingProfs, Opportunity World, Money ‘n’ Profits, Dig-IT Now, and Home Business Journal.Before beginning his business career, Rudl was a motocross driver, winning a 2002 Vancouver Molson Indy sports car event.On June 2nd 2005, Rudl was riding in a Porsche Carrera GT driven by Benjamin Miles Keaton, on a track that was also being used by a local Ferrari sports club. Keaton, trying to avoid a queued car, hit a concrete barrier on the passenger side, killing Rudl.8. Joe Robson, owner of “The Newbie Club” is a Brit and lives in the beautiful County of Yorkshire, England.He is responsible for the overall Promotion and Marketing of The Newbie Club, and is deeply involved with his team of Techies, Writers, and Designers on several unique and ground breaking Newbie Club Products and ServicesUntil he went online in 1998, he owned his own Direct Marketing company, and is a professional Advertising Copywriter with 30 years Sales and Marketing experience under his belt. He is widely acknowledged by many Internet Marketers as one of the Internet’s top Sales Copywriters, and his Copywriting Solutions Website is one of the most respected Web Copywriting Tutorial Websites on the Net.One of his strengths is his ability to reduce highly technical marketing copy, into easily understood Plain English. And he is a avid campaigner against the use of Jargon in writing materials. Hence the birth of The Newbie Club.His Copywriting and Internet marketing articles and Tutorials have been widely published across the Web, and he is the author of several books, including the Internet Copywriting blockbuster “Make Your Words SELL!” – MYWS – co-authored with Ken Evoy of MYSS fame.Joe is a Founding Member of iCop – The International Council of Online Professionals, the highly respected organization dedicated to protecting Internet consumers from the dishonest practices of unscrupulous Internet marketers. He is also a Member of the iCop International Advisory Council.9. Dr. Evoy is also the author of a series of widely-acclaimed “best on the Net” e-commerce books and courses for SOHOs (Small Office Home Office) and small businesses (1-10 employees) who sell (or plan to sell) products or services online. The SiteSell product line has empowered hundreds-of-thousands of people and small businesses around the world to succeed on the Web.A successful entrepreneur, Dr. Evoy has designed over 23 products that have sold internationally, generating 100′s of millions of dollars in revenues for various companies. He also developed several software products including one for the stock market sector.Dr. Ken Evoy is also a Canadian physician who formerly taught and practiced emergency medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He was born in Montreal, Canada and holds degrees in science and medicine from McGill University.Dr. Evoy’s business philosophy is to offer the absolute best tools and information available on the market in the most accessible format and at the most affordable price. He feels strongly that every small business can be empowered to use the Internet to leverage their income-building potential — whether it is to build an e-business, grow an existing offline business, or create a secondary income stream.It is with this in mind that SiteSell has developed its breakthrough Web site-building, hosting, e-marketing solution that delivers real traffic and guaranteed results to novices and savvy pros alike. Some call Site Build It! “The Next Generation of Web Hosting.”Through Dr. Evoy’s spearheading efforts and fanaticism for quality and customer “OVERdelivery,” the SiteSell brand is highly-respected by top influential Internet business personalities around the world.10. Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The Jayde Network currently consists of 12 websites, including ExactSeek.com and SiteProNews.com, two of the most popular sites on the Internet.”SiteProNews” an ezine for business owners and site developers containing articles and advice on how to get the most from your website. SiteProNews (SPN) has a subscriber base of over 500,000!”Another of Mel’s sites – GoArticles – is an immensely popular article directory where you can search for free content for your website.In addition to providing a great resource for webmasters looking to find free content the GoArticles site also provides authors with an excellent platform for promoting their articles. You can submit articles for free that will then be read and used by other websites owners.ExactSeek is a fast-growing search engine and directory and alternative advertising platform that receives over 30,000 new submissions daily.
Four Reasons Why Small Business Fail To Plan and Why They Need To Think Again
It is so widely acknowledged that a robust business plan is one of the key ingredients in small business success, it seems remarkable that anyone serious about their business could considerable it optional. For example, Business Link say, “It is essential to have a realistic, working business plan when you’re starting up a business”. A recent survey showed that small businesses were twice as likely to be successful with a written business plan as compared with those without one. The Times in their annual round up of 100 up and coming UK businesses suggest that “poor business planning” is a key reason for failure. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to find an authority that would advocate the opposite idea, a clear signal that this idea is accepted wisdom. Despite this, a recent survey shows that two thirds of small business owners run their businesses on gut instinct alone.I had a very interesting discussion about this a couple of days ago with a good friend of mine who has run several successful small businesses in which he posited the idea of a “planning gene”. He felt that the only possible explanation for the lack of proper planning in small business was genetic.According to his theory, the majority of people are born without the “planning gene” and this explains why so many people don’t have any written business plan, despite the overwhelming evidence of a high correlation between a robust and vigorously implemented business plan and business success. The majority of us are simply not biologically and genetically wired to plan.This is certainly one explanation, although I have to say I have a few reservations as to the validity of his theory. I talk with small business owners about planning every day. I’m part of a small business myself. I’ve owned several small businesses over the last ten years each with varying degrees of success. In all those conversations and all that experience, this was the first (semi) serious discussion I’d had about the planning gene.If I was to aggregate the results of the conversations I have had with actual and prospective customers on this topic, four distinctive strands emerge explaining why small business owners fail to plan. Whilst I have heard a few other explanations for the lack of effective small business planning, I am treating these as outliers and focusing on the most significant.I’m Too Busy To Plan – More often than not, the small business owners we talk to tell us that proper planning is a luxury that only big business can afford. For them, business planning, if done at all, was a one-time event that produced a document for a bank manager or investor which is now gathering dust in the furthest recesses of some rarely opened filing cabinet. There just aren’t enough hours in the day and if forced to choose, they would do the real, physical work and leave the mental work undone, which seems to be the poor relation at best, if it is even dignified with the status of work at all.Traditional Planning Doesn’t Work – The “I’m too busy to plan” excuse is often supplemented with this one. I’ve heard the stories of the most legendary construction overrun of all time, The Sydney Opera House, originally estimated to be completed in 1963 for $7 million, and finally completed in 1973 for $102 million, more times than I can remember. Sometimes, this idea is backed up with some actual research, such as the fascinating study by several eminent psychologists of what has been called the “planning fallacy”. It seems that some small business owners genuinely believe that mental work and planning is a bit of a con with no traction on physical reality.My Business Is Doing Fine Without Detailed Planning – A minority of small business owners we speak to are in the privileged position of being able to say they’ve done pretty well without a plan. Why should they invest time and resources into something they don’t appear to have missed?Planning Is Futile In A Chaotic World – Every once in a while, we hear how deluded we are to believe that the world can be shaped by our hopes and actions. This philosophical objection to planning is perhaps my favourite. It takes ammunition from a serious debate about the fundamental nature of the universe and uses it to defend what almost always is either uncertainty about how to plan effectively or simple pessimism. This is different from the idea that planning doesn’t work as these business owners have never even tried to form a coherent plan, but have just decided to do the best they can and hope that they get lucky as they are knocked hither and thither like a steel ball in the pinball machine of life.As with all of the most dangerous excuses, there is a kernel of truth in each of these ideas and I sympathise with those who have allowed themselves to be seduced into either abandoning or failing to adopt the habit of business planning. Most small business owners feel the same dread in relation to business planning as they do to visits to the dentist, so it’s unsurprising that so many simply don’t bother. However, by turning their backs completely on planning, they are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Taking each idea outlined above in turn, I’ll attempt to show why business planning is critical, not just despite that reason but precisely because of that reason.I’m Too Busy Not To Plan – Time is the scarcest resource we have and it is natural that we would want to spend it doing those things that we believe will have the greatest impact. Of course, we want to spend most of our time producing, but we should also invest at least some time into developing our productive capacity. As Stephen Covey pointed out in his seminal work, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, we should never be too busy sawing to sharpen a blunted saw. Planning is one of the highest leverage activities we can engage in, as when done effectively it enhances the productive capacity of small businesses, enabling them to do more with less. Nothing could be a bigger waste of precious time than to find out too late that we have been using blunt tools in pursuit of our business goals.If we as small business owners weren’t so busy and time wasn’t so scarce, then we wouldn’t have to make choices about what we did with our time and resources. We could simply pursue every opportunity which presented itself. However, for the busy entrepreneur, the decision to do one thing always has the opportunity cost of not being able to do something else. How can we be certain that our business is going where we want it to go without pausing regularly, scanning the horizon and making sure not only that we are on track but also making sure that we still want to get to where we are heading? I believe more time is wasted in the single-minded pursuit of opportunities that are not right than is wasted by over thinking the opportunity of a lifetime.In short, small business owners are extremely busy and their time is precious. So much so that to waste it doing the wrong things with the wrong tools would be tragic. Small business owners that cannot afford the luxury of making expensive mistakes simply must regularly sharpen the saw through continuous business planning.Traditional Planning Doesn’t Work, So We Need a New Approach That Does – There are some fairly large question marks over the effectiveness of traditional business planning techniques. In an age where business models are becoming obsolete in months rather than years, a business plan projecting five years into the future cannot be viewed as gospel. Nobody has a crystal ball and if they did, they probably wouldn’t be writing business plans but using their remarkable predictive powers to some more profitable end.Dwight D Eisenhower said “plans are useless, but planning is essential”. Whilst producing a document called a business plan is far from useless, the real value lies in the process by which the plan is created in the first place. If this process can be kept alive in a business then the dangers associated with traditional planning can be minimised or avoided all together. In an environment of continuous business planning, small businesses can be flexible and adaptive to the inevitable changes and challenges they will face. Rather than quickly becoming obsolete, their plan will simply evolve with the changing circumstances.Accepting that the plan is a living thing that will evolve necessitates a change of approach to business planning. An effective business plan is the response to the repeated asking of the questions what, why, how, who and how much. It is not a 20 – 30 page form to fill in for the benefit of a bank manager or some venture capitalist, who will probably never fully read it. A business plan should help you, not hinder you, in doing business. If traditional business planning doesn’t work for you, it’s time to embrace the new paradigm of continuous business planning.My Business Could Do Even Better With Effective Planning – If you are one of the lucky few whose business has thrived despite an absence of traditional business planning, then I say a sincere well done. I hope that you can say the same thing in five years time.Business life expectancy in Britain and across Europe and indeed the world are in rapid decline. A study done at the end of the eighties and then again as we marched into the new Millennium showed that life expectancy had more than halved for British businesses in those ten years, from an average of 9.7 years to 4.1 years. Just because a company once enjoyed market leadership does not mean that its future is assured. Many high street institutions have fallen victim to the recent recession. Five years ago it was inconceivable that UK retail institutions like Clinton Cards, Game, Borders, Barratts, T J Hughes, Habitat, Focus DIY, Oddbins, Ethel Austin, Principles, Allied Carpets, Woolworths, MFI and Zavvi/Virgin Megastore would all be either out of business or teetering on the brink of oblivion in 2012. Yet that is exactly what has transpired.Any business from the smallest to the greatest is not impervious to the winds of change. A new competitor, a technological breakthrough, new laws or simply changes in fashion and consumer preference can all re-write the future of a company regardless of how bright that future once seemed. It is precisely because these risks exist that business planning is critical. To survive in business is extremely hard, but failing to effectively plan for the future or adapt to current realities surely makes it impossible and failure inevitable.Of course, it is not necessarily the absence of plans that did for these companies but the quality of their plans and most especially the quality of their implementation. Even a poor plan vigorously executed is preferable to the finest planning and research left to rot in a drawer. Continuous business planning is effective business planning because it emphasizes implementation and regular reviews of real results as part of what should be a continual process of improving company performance rather than simply attempting to predict the future and wringing our hands when our prophecy fails to come true. We believe, like Peter Drucker, that the best way to predict the future is to create it.Planning Is Essential In A Chaotic World – We sometimes feel small and insignificant as we try against all odds to translate our dreams into business reality. It’s easy to feel all at sea when we consider some of the challenges we face. However, whilst it is true that we cannot control the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails and change the direction of the rudder. Difficult and challenging circumstances may come in our lives, but we can control the outcome of these circumstances by choosing which path to take.The truth is that we are fundamentally achievement orientated as human beings. When this is taken away, we lose much of the energy and motivation that propels us forward. There have been numerous studies carried out on life expectancy rates after retirement, which show that when clearly defined goals and daily action moving in the direction of those goals are removed from our lives, the result is literally fatal. The individuals studied who failed to replace their career goals with a new focus for their retirement simply shriveled up and died. The implications for small business owners are clear. Those business owners with clear goals who take action daily that propels them in the direction of their goals are far more likely to thrive and survive than those who take any old goal that comes along or move from day to day with no defined objective other than survival.It seems to me that precisely because life is so chaotic and challenging that effective planning is essential. Without continuous business planning, our businesses and the small business owners that work in them may find that bit by bit they are atrophying and on their way to becoming another business failure statistic.There undoubtedly exists an antipathy for business planning felt by many small business owners. Clearly, this cannot be fully explained by the lack of a “planning gene”, but it equally cannot be fully justified by the reasons most commonly put forward by small business owners to not engage in the business planning process. These reasons must be critically re-evaluated and a commitment made to a continual and never ending process of improving the condition of their small businesses. Without such a commitment, the future for small businesses in the UK is uncertain.