Planning pays off

 

Banks like to see your business plan if you’re asking for loan or overdraft facilities – although they’re heavily focused on the numbers.  Potential business partners also like to see your plan, whether it’s for the project you’ll be sharing or your full business plan, so they can see where your focus is and whether this project is a critical business cornerstone, part of a bigger plan or an afterthought.

But a business plan doesn’t have to be a 30+ page document.  You can do a business plan on one page (although you’ll probably need to work up parts of it to turn it into an action plan).

With a new calendar year just a couple of days away, this is often the time when businesses start to look at their plans for the year ahead.  Goal setting takes place – and then, in 3,6 or 12 months you check your progress.

Are you thinking about the year ahead and getting focused on what you’d like the year to be like for your business?

Do you want to grow financially, more staff, bigger premises?

Do you want to earn more, but work less – so you’re looking at ways to generate residual income?

Are you scaling back to give yourself less stress, or more time with family?

A business plan isn’t just about making more money, it’s also about having the lifestyle you want.  It’s no good working 14 hour days to make the business successful if you don’t have time to do the things you love with the people you want to spend time with.

Get a big piece of paper or a pad of sticky-notes and jot down all the things that you want from your business in 2026.  They don’t have to be in any kind of order at first, just getting them out of your head – regardless of how crazy they may sound – is your aim for now.

When you’ve asked yourself that ‘what do I want my business to achieve in 2026?’ question three times and can’t think of anything else, it’s time to review your ideas and get them into some kind of order.

Maybe prioritise – high, medium, low – and turn them into goal statements.  You may be able to amalgamate two or more into a single goal.

Be specific – so not ‘more profitable’, but ‘increase profit by 20%’ (of course, that means you need to know what your current profit is!)

Getting results

The problem is that – you can’t ‘do’ a goal.  You need something to aim for, but getting there requires a ‘to do’ list of actions that take you, step-by-step, towards that outcome.

For example, you might say “I want to increase profits by £100K by this time next year.”

Now you’ll need to work out:

• Which product/services and how much of each you need to sell to generate that level of profit
• What the cost of each sale is – including overheads – so you are focused on profit, not turnover
• Whether you want to increase prices, frequency of sale or customer base, or all of these to generate that profit
• What activities you need to do to make more sales – not just ‘maybe’, but guaranteed sales
•  How much time these activities will take
• Who will do what – it may not all need to be you, but you will need to create very specific, clear briefs to ensure that the right things are done right!

These details probably won’t be part of the main business plan, but are a critical part of achieving success!

STOP PRESS!

That phrase is old-fashioned newspaper language for a story that is so important that they stop the press to include it.  Of course, printing presses are no longer how newspapers are printed, but the thought behind it remains. 

As a business it’s almost impossible to attain that level of story, unless you’re in a huge corporation, where your activities may have an impact on a large proportion of the working population.  However, many people, getting their business into ‘the media’ is something they aspire to.

Most business people consider ‘media’ to be newspapers, magazines, industry journals, radio and TV.  But there’s so much more to it than that.

Media isn't just where you get coverage - it's anything that carries your message to an audience. If you create it, curate it, or contribute to it, and it serves your marketing goals, it's media.

Of course, the publications and broadcast media play a part, but if you’re sending out press releases at regular intervals, that’s probably not going to get the kind of results you hope for. 

Broaden your horizon and consider some of these media opportunities:

Digital publications & lead magnets

eBooks, whitepapers, and research reports are brilliant for establishing authority whilst capturing leads.  Think industry benchmarking studies, how-to guides, or comprehensive toolkits that solve a specific problem your audience has.  These can be anything from a single page to a few thousand words, depending on the subject and style.  I’ve got a whole section on my website featuring these – I call it my Treasure Chest.

Event-based media

Award ceremonies and industry events aren't just about winning; the application process, announcement, and post-win content all create media moments.  The same goes for speaking at conferences, local events, hosting webinars, or running workshops.  They all generates content that you can repurpose.

Educational content

Online courses, masterclasses, email series, and certification programmes position you as the expert.  These work especially well for B2B businesses with complex offerings; it gives you the opportunity to explain and explore the nitty-gritty.

Community-driven media

Newsletters (proper ones, not just promotional blasts), membership communities, forums, and user-generated content campaigns.  Think customer case studies, testimonial videos, or community spotlights.

Visual & interactive media

Infographics, interactive tools and calculators, quizzes, templates, and downloadable resources.  These get shared far more than blog posts and have longer shelf lives.

Micro-content

Social media series (LinkedIn carousels, Instagram guides, etc.), short-form video content, email sequences, and even well-crafted comment sections can all be strategic media.

Collaborative media

Guest appearances on other people's content, podcast or video interviews (not just hosting), collaborative research projects, and co-branded content with complementary businesses. 

Once you start thinking about media as ‘any channel that carries your message’, rather than just ‘places that might mention your business’ the possibilities really open up.

Why you're the wrong person to write your marketing copy

Here's an uncomfortable truth: you're probably rubbish at writing your own marketing copy.  And before you close this tab in a huff, let me explain why it's not actually your fault.

You know your business inside out.  You've lived and breathed it for months, maybe years.  You understand every feature, every benefit, every clever thing your product or service does.  That's brilliant for running your business, but it's absolutely terrible for writing about it.

The curse of knowledge

When you write your own copy, you're writing from your perspective, not your customer's or client’s.  You're explaining what you think is important, not what they actually want to know.  And here's where the problem lies: these two things are rarely the same.

You might be super-excited about your ‘revolutionary 12-stage filtration process’ or your ‘cutting-edge cloud-based infrastructure’.  Your potential customer?  They just want to know if their water will taste better or if their files will be safe.

You’re talking to the wrong person!

Most business owners write marketing copy as if they're explaining their business to themselves.  They use industry jargon that makes perfect sense to them, but sounds like gibberish to everyone else.  They spend three paragraphs on how their business was founded in their garage, when potential customers are frantically scrolling to find out whether you deliver to Manchester.

It's not that your founding story doesn't matter, it's that it matters after you've convinced someone you can solve their problem. But you're too close to see which bits go where.

Features aren't benefits (even though they feel like they are)

This is where business owners trip up constantly.  You list features because you're proud of them.  You worked hard on that stuff!  But customers don't buy features. They buy the life improvement those features give them.

‘We use organic, locally-sourced ingredients’ is a feature. ‘You'll know exactly where your food comes from, and it tastes incredible’ is a benefit.  See the difference? One's about you; the other is about them.

But when it's your business, making that shift feels counterintuitive.  You want to talk about what you've built, not translate it into what it means for someone else.

Too much context, not enough clarity

You know all the context.  You know why you made certain decisions, why your approach is different, why that particular feature exists.  So when you write, you accidentally include loads of backstory and explanation that nobody needs.

Meanwhile, your potential customer has about eight seconds of attention span before they click away.  They need the answer to "Can you help me?" immediately. Not after a preamble about your business philosophy or a detailed history of your industry.

For example – when you look at the first screen that appears when you load your website – does it tell you what/how you help?  If not, you might need to rethink that – before your visitor hits the back button.

The solution? Get out of your own way

This isn't about you being a bad writer; you might be a fantastic writer.  But you're writing about the one thing you can't be objective about: your own business.

The best thing you can do?  Get someone else to write it.  A copywriter, a marketing-savvy friend, even just someone who fits your target customer profile.  Give them a brief, answer their questions, and then let them translate your knowledge into something that actually connects with real people.

Or, at the very least, write your draft and then brutally edit it whilst pretending you're seeing your business for the first time.  Ask yourself: "Would I know what this means if I'd never met me?" and "Does this answer the question my customer is actually asking?"

Your business deserves better than copy written from inside the bubble. And your customers deserve copy that speaks to them, not at them. 

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is admit you're standing too close to see clearly.