Keeping your plan numbers up-to-date with changes in market conditions

Whether the change is good or bad, you must adjust your implementation action steps to keep in line with those changes. For example, recently, there’s been Brexit, trade wars, China’s slowdown, digitization, 3D printing, and any number of new competitors. Any one of these could render your implementation plans out of date and ineffective.

Another aspect of business that is changing rapidly is the effectiveness of parts of the sales and marketing process. Two new research reports have confirmed what most business owners know instinctively regarding digital and social marketing, namely that the volumes have increased enormously, plus, many people are now deliberately ignoring of the information tidal wave. The most startling finding is that in the last 3 years the amount of ‘‘Shares’’ has declined by 50%, despite the fact that the volume of posts and blogs has increased enormously. Normally we ignore ‘Shares’ because they have no financial value, but there is no escaping the fact that ‘Shares’ do lead to more people landing on your website, to more enquiries, and eventually to more sales. A decline of 50% in any element of the sales and marketing channel cannot be ignored because it could have financial and management implications.

Sales and marketing budgets must be re-examined to take account of this change. The degree to which each business will be affected will vary, but almost every business now utilizes digital and social media marketing to one degree or another. Some businesses use this purely as a means of keeping their profile high amongst their pool of contacts, others have found ways to grow their contact and inquiry base, and some businesses are now dependent on digital and social to drive sales. Therefore, it would be sensible to re-examine your business’s activity plans and associated financial budget for the forthcoming year.

As a firm of chartered accountants, ad+ advises many businesses throughout Central Scotland, and from that work we see that achieving long-term goals involves implementing effectively. That implementation requires continual adjustment of plans and tactics to keep up-to-date with changes in the marketplace. This drop interest and responsiveness to digital social output, is one of those market changes which could have a profound effect on your activity and financial budgets. Fail to implement marketing changes and there is a possibility that you will not meet your financial business plan targets.

Although it can be time consuming to re-examine your plans, we are happy to help you to identify the key numbers within your business plan, and to re-examine the financial implications of changes, both in terms of increasing your sales and marketing budget or the possibility of declining sales. With the correct financial and marketing data you could confidently make decisions about your revised plans.

Because ad+ completes bookkeeping on behalf of a variety of trades and professions, we can see that money is being invested into digital marketing by construction, retail, services, and hospitality business. That is true for almost all sizes of business operating within Glasgow and Lanarkshire. Therefore, this change could have widespread implications.

ad+ is always happy to meet with ambitious business owners to help design information systems which will capture the data and provide the KPI’s you require to monitor and manage your business.

Get in touch with David Charles to arrange your initial discussion with one of our Chartered Accountants to learn how we could help you.

• E:  dcharles@adplus.co.uk
• T:  0141 643 9200