Part 2 of 13 Growth Barrier Bustin'
Finding a business growth strategy that gives you confidence
We get asked this question by a lot of business leaders:
Do I really need a growth or marketing plan?
The truth is it actually creates a growth barrier when you don't have one. If your business feels like you're flying by the seat of your pants, then you're in good company. Half of all businesses don't have a marketing plan or a growth plan.
And if you're not familiar with the term flying by the seat of your pants, which is where our title comes from, it refers to the days of early navigation in aviation. Barnstormers would fly without any navigational aids, beyond what they could see. They'd follow the roads or rivers.
They traveled around the country in the 1920s and they would perform stunts. But in between stops they had to just pilot by familiarity and what they could observe visually.
In a similar way today, 50% of businesses don't have a marketing plan. They are navigating a very complex market with huge competing forces without the aid of a plan. When the market shifts (as it continues to do) it can be very disorienting if you're flying your business with visual flight rules.
Why Don't Businesses Have Growth or Marketing Plans?
You have to ask the question why? Here are seven reasons:
1. The business plan that you had to start with probably had a marketing plan in it. But, in most cases, It didn't actually work, or it became outdated so quickly that it was discarded.
2. Strategic planning isn't working the way it used to. We used to do three to five-year plans and walk them out. But that's not how we do things anymore. It's way too slow for the pace of business. Strategic planning and marketing plans can go by the wayside.
3. There are lots of people who are happy to help you implement their good idea. We end up substituting their one-off software or their ad strategy for a plan. They're happy to sell you their solution as a strategy. For some leaders, the strategy that other people offer by way of software or an ad budget is the only plan that they know. That's a plan by proxy, and you're betting that the salesman is really smart.
4. Maintaining strategic marketing or a growth plans may just not be your thing. You might not be a planner and that's why you don't have one. Many entrepreneurs (I plead guilty to this) really enjoy creating and experimenting, and that's how they run their growth strategy. Sometimes founders get stuck in this role and it keeps their business from growing.
5. Sometimes though we substitute a bunch of gig workers or competing vendors as a substitute for a plan. I guess it's the wisdom of the crowd?
6. For some software is their plan. They trust that the software designers had the right way to grow in mind. They have email software, website software, an SMS text messaging software, etc. They substitute solid use of a marketing channel or tactic for an actual plan.
7. Another reason why people don't have growth or marketing plans is that the market has changed so much. It's been super hard to keep up. When the ground keeps shifting it's hard to keep the plan up-to-date. Change is exhausting and if you aren't a planner then keeping the fires out takes the place of thinking ahead.
Here's why the lack of a plan for growth is a barrier to growth
First, it leaves you and your team at the whim of the next shiny object. Now I'm the first one to admit that I like shiny objects. I like new software. I like new toys. When a new one comes out, I'm really excited about it. That's really a problem for guiding business growth because all of the toys can take us way off course.
Second, The lack of a growth plan is a barrier because you lose efficiency when all your different tactics are completely disconnected. You have to do a lot of data re-entry, comparing, and updating, and you don't have good granular tracking as a result. So it's very inefficient.
The third reason hot having a growth plan creates a barrier is because there's nothing for you to collaborate around. How do you engage team members and outside growth teams when you have no coherent way to move forward together? The answer is, you don't.
We're living in a crisis of disconnection.
Imagine putting a football team on the field and not having a place to run. How about an army? That's really what's going on when you don't have a growth plan.
It's also very expensive to run this way because essentially all marketing is an experiment and you're running without a way of testing to see if your hypothesis was correct. You also have overlapping efforts and you don't know which one is actually creating the impact.
A fourth reason is that you're repeating things that don't work. Some of the errors keep cropping up because there's not a disciplined pathway for you to move forward with.
Scalability is a huge reason to get and use a growth plan. The ability to grow predictively absolutely relies upon efficient marketing. If you can't acquire customers at the right cost, then you cannot grow. The lack of a growth plan impacts your ability to sustainably win new clients because that's the driver for growth.
There's nothing wrong with a good growth experiment.
As an entrepreneur who has a bent to create, it should be natural to continually be experimenting. But you always need to have the discipline of data within your experiments.
So instead of just kind of doing this ad hoc or by the seat of your pants, it's a much better strategy to actually run with an experimental design. You start with a great hypothesis, your best guess of what to do. You run the test and then you keep doing what works and innovate on the things that don't.
When you have a growth plan that is built for an experimental approach the goal should be to fail fast. You can adjust as you go, and if you repeat this cycle over and over again, you'll end up with something that's really amazing.
Experimental designs are not created without understanding what others have already done. No one wants to repeat the same old experiment. So if you take what others have learned and what has already been proven to work, then you can work to apply it in your setting. Notwithstanding all of the experts who promote their magical outcomes, the way someone else applied marketing or growth will not work exactly the same way in your setting, with your team with your customer.
You need a plan to innovate and experiment. It's what allows for real progress instead of an endless series of unplanned experiments.
So instead of running by the seat of your pants, you should be using an experimental design. Now we have a name for this. It's called Growth Driven Design. This is the process of using experimental processes to apply the best possible approach and then improve it after testing. Growth Driven Design provides the methodology for implementing a plan and then continuing to use it as you adapt.
The plan? Chart a clear course with goals and the outputs required to reach them. Select the best methods, then apply an experimental design to make each element perform until your growth goals are achieved.
This is how you reach mastery. This is how successful companies are winning online.
Video Transcript
It's a great time to bust through another growth barrier for your business. This one's called growth by the seat of your pants. Now I know it sounds like a weight gain diet or something, -, maybe a way to bulk up, but it's really a growth barrier that results when you don't have a great way to plan and strategize for your way forward, We get asked this question by a lot of business leaders.
Do I really need a growth or marketing plan? But the truth is it actually creates a growth barrier. When you don't have one. So if your business feels like you're flying by the seat of your pants, then you're in good company. Because half of all businesses don't have a marketing plan or a growth plan.
And if you're not familiar with this term flying by the seat of your pants, which is where our title comes from, it talks about the days of early navigation and aviation, because these Barnstormers would fly. Without any navigational aids, other than what they could see, they'd follow the roads, they'd follow the rivers.
And they would travel around the country in the 1920s and they would do stunts and they had to just pilot, -, just by familiarity and what they were looking at. So 50% of businesses don't have a marketing plan. You have to ask the question, why is that? So here's some of the reasons. The, the business planner that you had to start with, it probably had a marketing plan in it.
It didn't actually work, right? Because we know the business plans have to be modified on a regular basis. And probably the only part of your business plan that you've been updating is kind of the cash flows. So the original business plan that had marketing in it didn't really work. And the real truth is that, -, strategic planning.
Isn't working the way it used to. We used to do three in five year plans and walk them out. And that's not how we do things anymore. It's way, way too slow now. There's lots of people that are happy to help you implement their good idea, their one off software, their ad strategy. They're happy to sell you that strategy.
And for many people, the strategies that other people give them by way of a software or ad budget is the only strategy that they have now for some people, -, having a business marketing plan or a growth plan. May just not be your thing. You might not be a planner. That's why you don't have one. Sometimes though we try and substitute a whole bunch of gig workers or competing vendors and that's our marketing plan or for others, we just treat software itself as our plan.
Our plan is to have these softwares. We have an email software, we have a website software, we have an SMS text messaging software. Another reason why people don't have marketing plans is that things have just changed so much. It's been super hard to keep up. So here's why the growth, -, the lack of a growth plan is actually a barrier to growth.
Number one, it leaves you and your team to kind. At the whim of the next shiny object. Now I'm the first one to admit that I like shiny objects. I like new software. I like new toys. And so when everyone new one comes out, I'm really excited about it, but that's really a problem for guiding business growth because we're attracted to that and it can take us way off course.
Secondly, The lack of a growth plan is a barrier because you are losing efficiency because all your different tactics are completely disconnected. And so you have to do a lot of movement of data re-entry and you don't have good granular tracking as a result. So it's very, very inefficient. Another reason not having a growth plan is a big problem is there's nothing for you to collaborate around.
Imagine putting a football team on a field and not having a place to run. That's really what's going on when you don't have a growth plan. It's also very expensive to run this way because essentially all marketing is, is an experiment and you're running without a planned experiment. Therefore, everything you're doing is more expensive.
You're repeating things. You don't have to. and some of the errors keep cropping up because there's not a disciplined pathway for you to move forward with. Now here's the deal scalability. And the ability to grow predictively predictably is reliant upon absolutely relies upon efficient marketing, and you've gotta get to efficient marketing.
If you want to have sustainable and scalable. The lack of a growth plan also impacts your ability to sustainably win new clients because that's the driver for growth. So the truth is there's nothing wrong with a good experiment. You could, you should be putting your entrepreneurial bent to work and always experimenting.
But you always need to have the discipline of data with your experiments. So instead of just kind of doing this ad hoc or by the seat of your pants, it's a much better strategy to actually. Run with an experimental design. You start with a great hypothesis, your best guess of what to do. You run the test and then you keep doing what works and innovate on the things that don't.
And the idea here is with experimental design is fail as fast as possible. So you can adjust if you repeat this cycle over and over again, you'll end up with something that's really, really amazing. That's what happens when you have an experimental process, rather than just seat of the pants market. Now.
Experimental designs are not created without understanding what others have already done. No one wants to repeat the same old experiment. So if you take what others have learned, what has proven to work, then you can see how it applies in your setting. Now, the way someone else applied marketing or growth will not work exactly the same way in your setting with your team, with your.
With your customers with your products and services. So you're gonna have to build from what someone else has already done, and you're gonna have to innovate and you're gonna have to iterate. So it works better and better. And so, you know, in growth and marketing, everybody's got a formula, some kind of magic secret to get things done, but the reality is those are all.
Potential experiments for you that you can put to work in your unique situation. So instead of running by the seat of your pants, you should be using an experimental design. Now we have a name for this. It's called growth driven design. This is the process of using experimental processes to apply the best possible approach, and then to improve it.
And that's how you reach mastery. This is how successful companies are winning online. So I wanna encourage you and even call you. To move from just doing sea of the pants, marketing and sea of the pants growth to actually intentionally experimenting and creating progress for yourself that you can document and build upon.
That's how you get to something really amazing.
