I’ve worked in marketing for many years and there is one truism that has held throughout my career which is, “Murphy’s Law reigns supreme.”  Yes, if it can go wrong it will go wrong and the only way to protect yourself against an unsuccessful outcome is with contingency plans.  Please notice I used the plural here.  It’s not good enough to just have one back-up plan. I encourage all the entrepreneurs I work with to have contingency plans to improve their chance of success.  When something goes askew of your business predictions you may not have time to work though an alternative plan. Being ready to change direction or make a course correction can save a business from losing market share.

Here’s an example from my personal experience.  We shipped our promotion materials to an out of state upcoming event.  I was even been smart enough to confirm they arrived.  I got to the show a day early to set up and no materials.  They weren’t at our booth location, they weren’t at any one else’s booth location.  Now what?  I thought I was a really prepared marketer as I had shipped  extra copies to my hotel room, my contingency plan. But as I said in the opening of this blog, there was Murphy’s law to deal with. You guessed correctly if you surmised the copies shipped to the hotel couldn’t be found either.  It appears event hotels have cavernous shipping rooms. My point is I wasn’t preparaed for both events to happen.

Since I’m the type of person who learns from experience, all future shipments were wrapped in dayglo tape with the company’s logo similar to what the police use in marking off crime scenes. You can see those boxes a mile away and delivery folks have no problem knowing exactly who owns the containers. Now of course I also carry promotion materials in my own suitcase and pdf files on a removable drive along with the location and phone numbers of local printing facilities that can do same day or 24 hour turn around.  My back-up plans have back-up plans.

I use this illustration only as a way to underscore how important it is to have both marketing and business plan contingencies built into your planning process.  No one has a crystal ball if we did we all would have bought the right stocks and winning lottery tickets and I wouldn’t be writing this blog.

Susan Frederick