Are Small Businesses under attack?…or is that just how it feels?

Recently, a number of changes, such as increases to National Insurance for employees, Identity Verification for Persons of Significant Control and Directors, increases in the numbers of online attacks, scammers and finally, and probably most significantly, the fluctuations in energy prices, fuel costs and vehicle excise duty, have increased the pressure on small business owners.

It just feels at the moment that anyone trying to build a business, especially a retail business, is under constant attack from all sides. It is no wonder then that 37 shops a day closed in 2024 which, although a rise of 28% over 2023, it was below the numbers seen between 2019 and 2022. This disparity could be simply down to the fact that post pandemic subsidies were still in place, although being systematically withdrawn and that the various price increases were yet to really bite.

It is pretty full-on being a business owner especially when you couple all of this additional cash flow stress with the constant demands from suppliers, customers and colleagues. So what can you do to give yourself some breathing space?

From previous blogs you will know that we work to a monthly strategy broken into daily tasks, spreading the marketing workload and when you couple this with a clear idea on who we want to be talking to, reduces this burden considerably.

At the same time make sure you have a strong business plan in place, but look for opportunities to take a break from the day to day work and recheck your plan periodically – are your assumptions still true today?

Pick your battles. Do you need to be on every single social media platform or constantly commenting? Refer back to your marketing persona and check where the people you want to speak to are going to be? Recently we made that same decision and stopped our Facebook business pages as our client base was just not there.

Creatively Yours Ltd helps businesses like yours succeed online through website design, website development, and our Helponomics system that offers support and training as you need it and highlights areas that could increase your sales.

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Then why not drop us a line to helping@creatively-yours.co.uk, or simply call us HERE