There is absolutely no doubt, that if you are looking for advice to help you grow your business in the UK at the moment, there are people falling over themselves to support this through funding. You will find just a few of the options here. This funding with either pay for support from suitably accredited consultants, or from business advisers employed by organisations like Business Growth Service and the Manufacturing Advisory Service. Whilst BSA is accredited to deliver this advice, and believe that planning for growth is vital, there are times when you actually need to do something to grow, and here the funding options become significantly more limited. At this point I will focus on marketing as it is what I know, and there is no question that investing in a well planned (yes that is very important) and properly resourced marketing strategy is key to the sustained growth of any business. I know this because it’s our bread and butter, working with clients to do just this, and very little of our work is grant supported. However, I know there are business who could benefit from our expertise, but who would need grant support to access this sustainably. We could access funding to support the planning aspects of the programme, and we could work with clients to create a viable and effective plan; Then what? The funding stops, and so it’s over to the business owners to implement the plan, but the fact is that good marketing is an investment and in many cases the benefits can take a while to kick in. In our experience this leads to businesses reverting to old habits and “giving up on the marketing” before the investments have time to bear fruit. If on the other hand support extended to seed corn funding for the plans implementation, allowing the support to continue in the easy days of the implementation to a point where theses fruits make the plan self sustaining in the long term, would this actually deliver more effective growth within the economy? I should stress that these are my opinions, and I am not arrogant enough to think that my opinion will change Government policy in this area. I raise the subject with the simple aim of stimulating debate.
