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UK business - going for growth

UK businesses are well and truly going for growth in 2014. As the economic recovery gains momentum, businesses are showing signs of shifting their focus from recession to recovery, with growth now said to dominate the management agenda in 50 per cent of organisations. This is according to the latest wave of our Marketing Confidence Monitor in association with Bloomberg released this week. The monitor is a quarterly business barometer based on a weighted survey of more than 1,000 marketers across the country.

When we launched the monitor in October 2012, confidence was first starting to return to UK businesses following the economic turbulence of the financial crisis. However these early signs of optimism were cautious and inconsistent. While small and medium sized companies reported that they planned strong investment and increases in headcount in the coming year, their larger counterparts foresaw having to set cautious growth targets, rein in budgets and reduce staff numbers.

Over the last five quarters, this outlook has become increasingly positive. UK marketers are now reporting that confidence in future business performance is at its highest level since our research began, with almost half of marketers reporting an improving outlook for the year ahead. There are also signs that with the UK now experiencing economic growth, companies are increasingly acknowledging the need to invest in new business practices, products and people, with over 42 per cent of businesses reporting a positive appetite for risk and investment over the next 12 months. Furthermore, 46 per cent of marketers state that their organisation’s financial performance exceeded expectations during the past year, and six out of ten marketers believe consumer confidence will rise over the coming six months.

When looking beyond business performance at the wider economy, our study found that confidence in the UK’s economic situation continues to improve. Around 60 per cent of marketers report increasing confidence in UK economic growth and performance in the year ahead, twice that of October 2012. This finding sits in stark contrast to the number of businesses reporting a more downbeat assessment, which has fallen to just 13 per cent, a reduction of almost two thirds over the same period. This continued optimism is underpinned by a reduction of some 12 percentage points in the number of businesses reporting an above average level of uncertainty facing their company since the beginning of 2013.

It’s hugely encouraging to see cautious optimism, which was evident at the beginning of our study, strenghten over the course of the last five quarters. However shifting the focus to growth once more must not mean a return to pre-recession ways of doing business. As economic recovery gathers momentum, it is tempting to get caught up in this optimism and fail to acknowledge the ways in which the economic turbulence over the past few years has changed the business environment for many marketers. The recession and the financial pressures it placed on consumers and businesses alike has served to shape what consumers want and expect from brands and what organisations need from their marketers. Therefore it is now the time for marketers and their wider organisations to take stock and determine how they can adapt their business and practices so that they thrive in 2014.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Thomas Brown .