With businesses falling and economic pressures mounting, resilience is key. Andrew Scott, founder and MD of Purplex Marketing, explains why now is the time to hold your nerve, stay visible and keep investing in growth.

Another month, and another big name casualty on a high street that is increasingly littered with the corpses of once-famous brands now gone to the wall. This time it’s the turn of WH Smith, and while its shops have been sold with the pledge of ‘business as usual’, the name itself – trading since 1792 – will disappear.

It’s a sorry story, and one increasingly familiar as Government tax raids on businesses kick in. It’s not quite a return to the austerity of 2008 onwards, but when brands such as WH Smith have gone, along with staples including Wilko, Pierre Bistro, Debenhams, Top Shop, Cath Kidston and many others, you can’t help thinking that it’s a pretty accurate tribute act.

In construction and fenestration, we’ve also seen an unsettling number of firms going under, even at a time when a housebuilding boom is constantly being trumpeted from Whitehall.

Now, while it’s easy to blame the current Government for such woes, the truth is that several factors – not least the pandemic – are at work here. However, with her tax and NI increases, chancellor Rachel Reeves has done nothing to bolster UK business confidence, especially when we’re still struggling to recover from the events of 2020, along with dramatic changes in the world’s political order that always have a knock-on effect.

In short, we’re in one of the toughest periods I can remember. There’s constant talk of ‘jam tomorrow’, yet that’s exactly where the jam will reside if we rely 100% on our leaders to deliver what we want and need. As business owners, many of us are at a crossroads – do we quit while we’re ahead or plough on in the hope that the promised green shots spring up earlier than expected?

As I say frequently “Business never sleeps”, and this applies particularly to entrepreneurs. We’re driven individuals who don’t give up easily, especially in the face of adversity. However, to get through current troubles we need two things to happen: 1) an end to unnecessary red tape that holds us back from driving growth and 2) continued investment in our businesses, especially marketing, to make sure our brands remain visible.

The first involves on-going pressure; lobbying to get rid of the bureaucratic roadblocks that inhibit risk and the potential to thrive. We need more encouragement and less regulation – if we don’t get it, as a country we risk falling behind.

Investment is a thornier problem. The instinct is to cut back, rationalise, reduce. All of which is a natural and sensible response to cuts and higher bills we’re facing, and if savings can be made, then they should.

However, there is the danger of panicking, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This applies particularly to marketing; from my experience, cutting spend in this area is disastrous at a time when firms need to be as visible as possible. If your reputation is already good, or you’ve been growing it successfully, why throw it away now? Yes, marketing comes at a price, but it’s never as large as the price of losing your business.

Purplex Marketing is set up perfectly to support businesses by creating and delivering bespoke marketing strategies designed to raise brand awareness and generate new leads. We’ve been in business for more than 20 years and we’ve weathered all sorts of challenges while assisting our clients. We understand pain because we’ve experienced it.

Perhaps the glue that binds both approaches to current challenges lies in a word: resilience. In a world of doom and gloom, and seemingly no good news from any direction, it can be hard not to feel crushed. In a word, don’t.

Resilience is the common characteristic of every successful entrepreneur, from the corner shop owner to the tech billionaire. The journey from start-up to success is rarely smooth, and rightly so, because only by embracing challenge, difficulty and even failure do we learn how to be better business people. Hang on in there – things can only get better…