Small Business Essentials

From the outside looking in owning your own small business looks very rosy, with small business owners being perceived as both rich and underworked. However the truth is different, as you will know if you already have a small business of your own.

Small business owners face all sorts of problems and challenges, all things you don’t see when you’re an employee. Never mind all the things you have to do in the business, in the UK small business owners are beset with red-tape and endless bureaucracy. Of course, with the right small business plan you can succeed. But you do have to plan. Leaving it to chance is the quick way to go bust.

And so many people would be afraid to leave the apparent “security” of a job to take the risk of starting a small business. But the apparent security of a job is illusory: the problems are still there, only you don’t get to hear about them until you get laid off.

Yet, undeterred, many thousands of small businesses are started every year, and many social commentators are putting forward the view that the notion of “going out to work”, as in having job working for someone else is a temporary blip in human history.

More and more it seems individuals are taking the plunge, leaving their jobs (often with handsome payoffs), and starting a small business.

However, most people starting a small business pay scant attention to their marketing. It’s understandable because their business is what interests them, the small business idea they had for carving out their own place in the economy. Unfortunately, the market is neither understanding nor forgiving and in the UK small business owners have only a 20% chance of still being in business after the first 5 years of trading.

The real tragedy of this is it’s so unnecessary, since effective small business marketing can easily make a small business outperform its competitors, even the “big chains” small business owners like to blame for their problems.

The key to succeeding with your small business idea is using effective small business marketing to generate a non-stop stream of prospects for you to turn into customers and clients. It really is that simple, and it’s so simple you might think it’s too simple and too good to be true.

But to avoid this fate, you need a small business plan. Small business marketing is both an art and a science and isn’t something for you to indulge in when you feel like it, or upon a whim. There are some very solid - and proven - strategies and techniques you must both understand and learn to put for work for you if you want to see your small business idea turned into a profitable reality. By failing to have a small business plan, you’re planning for your small business to fail.

So, take a look around the rest of this site, and get into some of the detailed small business marketing strategies you can put to work for you right now and have them making money for you by tomorrow!

Happy Marketing!

Chris Cardell