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1) Marketing plans are only good for big businesses
Who ever heard the term “marketing plan” and thought of anything less than a Fortune 500 business. Think about it – there’s a reason for that. Marketing plans are only for ultra successful businesses – that’s not you (is it?).
The whole purpose of a marketing plan is to make it easier to map out decisions for a business ahead of time, rather than in the heat of the moment. Who doesn’t prefer making those decisions by the seat of their pants? Why make informed, intentional marketing decisions when you could just do whatever you see your competitor doing?
2) The flexibility of small companies makes them stronger.
Everyone knows that the primary advantage smaller companies have is being more responsive to their customers than their larger cohorts. Why would you want to make a plan ahead of time and risk becoming rigid in your approach?
Really successful people reach that pinnacle by doing whatever feels right at the time – not by thinking, planning, or purposeful execution, and they certainly don’t spend any time communicating that vision to others in the organization.
3) You don’t have the time anyway.
What small-to-medium sized business has any time to devote to non-essential activities where real work time gets eaten up with frivolous measures aiming only at pushing your company forward beyond your current activities?
How could this heads up approach possibly take you any further when there is other work to be done – if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean my supermarket supervisor used to say. That kind of busy work is probably much more likely to bring you more business than anything else you could possibly do with your time.
4) We don’t have the right information to put together a plan.
It’s probably true that NO ONE on your leadership team, staff, or even you have ANY idea what your business is really about, especially if you’ve been in business for any length of time. The fact is, you don’t have a dedicated researcher or industry expert on the payroll. So how could you possibly know anything of value to your organization? And there probably aren’t any industry resources or existing research available anywhere on Google, so why try?
Surely no one at your company has learned any valuable lessons over the time that could stand to be written down and passed to other employees or staff, right?
5) We’ve made it this far without one.
The great thing about complacency is that you’re satisfied with the way things are. Why rock that? It’s not like things have changed in your industry. You’ve surely never had the technology or the level of competition change in your industry if you’ve been in business longer than five minutes.
It’s probably best to just keep doing things the same way they’ve always been done, right? Just think of how things were done 30 years ago – probably no different from today, right?
Ready to get started?
We didn't think so. So please don't call our offices. There's a crazy guy there named J.R. who thinks planning, strategy, and constant change are the key to taking stagnant businesses to the next level.
Should you see him, we recommend you run the other way before he gets his hands on you and pushes you out of that reassuringly warm comfort zone you're nestled in.
Run while you still can!