Creative destruction - the value of information

Smaller companies find getting information difficult. Many small firms exist in "survival mode". They have enough income to survive and stay what they are doing, but with little room for error or any spare cash for expansion.


The approach to break out of this "survival mode" takes confidence that you can reach a market that long term will enable growth and profit. This confidence can be gained in a number of different ways:

• Fate or good luck giving you a good customer - this helps you identify other "good customers".
• You do some research - but make sure that you match the results (potential opportunities) to your capabilities
• Trial and error, taking little steps at first and testing your way before developing a formulae for dealing with your market. This will probably involve a number of parameters around your marketing, not just your promotions.

Often it is a mix of all 3.

Research is often thought of as "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Implying that research bolsters weak arguments artificially. I would agree - you can find as many facts as you like to support an argument. In this situation the person has been subjective, the statistics are subjective and the result is still opinion.

Owning a small business is a highly personal experience. Whilst you are expected to be objective in your decision making, you are effected emotionally as your business is your lively-hood. If you have selective information then you have an emotional person making decisions based on insufficient information.

The majority of businesses do not take positive action for their businesses with respect to marketing systems as they do not have enough information to know that it will work. In the short term they have not got enough cash to risk. The result is stalemate - and a business may stay here for years.

Research studies do say that stable and growing companies have both the ability to form complex marketing systems (ie more than just advertising) to grow and make a decent profit.

One of the key "entrepreneur" abilities is finding dealing with hard to find or ambiguous  information (and taking action).

Clearly both these factors are linked and the mixture of collecting, analysing and making decisions is important for any company to make a better than average start.

http://plugintoyourmarket.blogspot.com/ deals with these issues and http://prdpartnership.com/plugged.htm gives details of a service that supports small businesses to make those key decisions.