Why 92% of businesses don’t have a strategy

I recently did a bit of research through my social media about how many people have a business strategy. A whopping 92% of the SMEs and freelancers who replied to me said No. So I did a little digging into why.

There are a few reasons, ranging from boredom and overwhelm to lack of understanding as to what a business strategy actually is.
Which is why through my blog and social media, I want to help you get to grips with your business strategy, planning and why it’s important.

1) The word itself: Strategy.

*Shudders* It’s the sort of boring thing governments and councils bang on about, and you snoozed your way through history lessons, having to learn about them…
Which is why you see so many alternatives floating around on the interwebs. Masterplan, blueprint, proposal, roadmap… all of these synonyms stem from the same thing. WHAT you’re doing, WHY you’re doing it, WHO for, WHEN and WHERE ie, your strategy.

There’s a little more to it, but I can understand why it gives people the ick. We start our businesses because we want to do what we want to do. Creating a strategy is not the vibe you started your business for, so you bypass it and crack on. Or you get caught up in working in your business, so you don’t have time to work on it.

But what if I told you it’s also why 60 per cent of businesses fail in the first five years in the UK?

Making time for business strategy is a bit like making time for self-care; it fills up your cup.

2) It’s overwhelming

Creating a business strategy can be overwhelming. There is a LOT of information out there about how to create one and it is a lot to process. From a SWOT analysis (or a WHAT? analysis) to a PESTLE (not and mortar), the jargon and amount of work you need to put in can feel like a lot and no one really knows where to start.

That’s one of the reasons why I created SeasonologyⓇ the way I have. My FREE starter course Seasonal Foundations takes you through the evergreen roots system of your business and gets you thinking about your vision, mission and values, which are the cornerstones of your business. Your what and your why. From there, you can create a strategy that flows with the seasonality of your lifestyle and business trends.

By breaking your strategy down seasonally, it reduces the overwhelm and encourages you to review it at regular points throughout the year.

3) You have one, but it hasn’t been updated for years

Let’s say you wrote a business strategy and plan when you started your business. Done and dusted. Your business took off and you grew quickly, but now it has plateaued and you can’t work out why, when you’re doing the same thing you’ve always done.

Your strategy hasn’t changed.

Every season, businesses change. Your Seasonal Foundations might be solid; your what and your why. But your strategy - the who, where and when needs to be fluid.
Let’s take Covid as an example. The world changed overnight. We had to get to grips with Zoom and homeschooling and loneliness and one-hour of exercise a day, etc, etc… and there was one word that really boomed in the business world at the time: PIVOT! If you said that in the style of Ross from Friends, then *high-five*.

If you didn’t pivot your business during the pandemic, then the chances are, it didn’t survive.

Case study:

At the start of the pandemic, I was running a PR agency in the tourism sector. I watched in horror as pubs started to close and I knew that the rest of the industry wouldn’t be far behind. And guess what department is the first to go when a business needs to make cuts? Marketing.

Despite the Government bailing tourism businesses out, I knew that if they didn’t keep their audiences engaged, find a way to pivot or keep telling their stories, when the world reopened, they would be gone with the wind. The world would have moved on…

So, I started pushing the importance of keeping your PR going, telling your story and engaging your audience. I posted daily prompts and ran free live videos about how to keep your PR going.
As a result, while PR agencies around me lost all their clients overnight, my business boomed. I was able to employ freelancers to help me who would otherwise have been out of work.
We got some amazing results, featuring clients across national and international titles, so when the ban on domestic travel started to lift, the business came flooding in.

All because I tweaked my strategy. I didn’t say “Oh well, tourism is dead, I’ll put my feet up,” I saw what was coming, changed my messaging and pushed it out to my audience.

That’s the power of strategy. You see what is coming, and you meet it head-on.

4) You have a plan, not a strategy

While STRATEGY is all about the long-term goals of the business, your PLAN is how you’re going to do it. When you’re creating a strategic business plan, you don’t want to look more than six months ahead (in my opinion) unless you need to for a business loan or something that demands it because, as I mentioned above, the world can change overnight and that can throw all of your carefully thought-out plans into turmoil.

I’ll discuss this in detail in the next article, but as your business strategy changes with the seasons, so should your strategic plan. Your HOW.

For example, say as part of your strategy, you are planning to launch a new product or service in the autumn. You’ve got the launch all planned out and are ready to go.

If it’s because you want to launch it without any strategy behind it, there’s a risk it’ll flop, because you don’t know if there’s any need for it.

But if it’s because you know it is something your target market will be looking for, based on your business research, and you position it strategically, then there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a success.

Your plan might be solid, but if there’s no strategy behind it, you won’t know if it’s a good idea or not. With a strategy in place, you’ll know if there’s a market for it and even the simplest tweak to your plan, such as the timing of it, could make all the difference.

5) It’s just marketing…

I hope by now I’ve demonstrated that a marketing strategy is not a business strategy. While there are many overlapping factors in a marketing strategy, such as audience analysis and socio-economic influences, they are two very different things.

Much like the business plan mentioned above, marketing should sit firmly within your strategic business plan and feed into it. As part of your strategy, you will look at your audiences, both demographically and psychographically, you’ll look at socio-economics affecting your sector and wider influences on your markets. And that will all influence how you market your business.

But you’ll also look at your products, your processes and your team. You’ll look at your profit margins and how you’re budgeting. You’ll look at what’s impacting your business internally and then get out your crystal ball and try to predict the future, ensuring your business is future-proofed against anything coming your way.

It is an evolving and ever-changing process, and the anchor at the root of it is you.

If you’d like to develop more of an in-depth PR strategy for your business, take a look at my online course Seasonal Storytelling™️.

6) Lack of support

You’ve got a business strategy, now what? It just sits on the shelf or in a folder doing nothing for a few years…

I launched The Seasonology Circle™️ to ensure you are remaining on top of your game when it comes to strategic business planning. It takes you step-by-step through the Seasonology Ⓡ framework, from your Seasonal Foundations™️ to your Seasonal Strategy and Seasonal Storytelling™️ and offers ongoing seasonal support calls, training and networking following the Seasonal Wheel of Business™️.

Put simply, it’s an all-access membership for everything SeasonologyⓇ.

The result is a strategic business plan that allows you freedom and flexibility within your business, by ensuring your business works around your seasons and your lifestyle.

7) You CBA

If you have read all of this and still feel either overwhelmed or that you simply CBA (can’t be arsed) I do offer a bespoke service to work with you one-to-one to create your strategic business plan.

By booking a Strategic Season ™️ with me, we’ll work together over a few months to create your strategic business plan step-by-step.