“All plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

A few weeks ago I wrote about how working backwards can be a useful way to lay out goals and targets in your metric stack.

Without knowing where you’re heading means your path might stray – there’s no end game or anchor to re-calibrate things when things start to diverge.

There isn’t a business in the world that has had a perfect path or route — there are just too many variables in play for that to happen (in most cases) – it’s why many (many) business plans don’t often turn out as expected.

The turbulent nature of some business environments doesn’t mean that plans need to be entirely thrown out the window — it simply means your planning skills have to constantly adapt and be as agile as needed to keep pace.

Part of that on-going planning means keeping an eye on your relative market size.

In the digital world I see an endless amount of data that can help act as a proxy for relative market size that can come via digital marketing channels. Even with the amount of noise we see in the digital world, it’s a great way to keep tabs on different surface metrics that ultimately affect performance and other important impact metrics (leads, bookings, profit, revenue etc.).

Knowing The Terrain (And The Game)

“Seeing the whole board” is what I like to call this.

If you were playing poker with a deck of 45 cards instead of 52 cards, or if you were playing chess where you could only see a fraction of the board you’d likely not play or perform as well as you might expect.

You might win a few hands or even capture a few pawns, but without eyes on the full set the odds of missed opportunities goes up dramatically.

It’s very much the same with your market size.

If your small business works on homes, knowing an approximate idea of addressable homes in your service area is likely important.

If your small business performs a service in or around important life events (selling/buying a home, marriage, etc.) understanding these metrics become important to keep tabs on.

If your small business performs a service for other businesses (perhaps even within a particular vertical/industry), then understanding how those industries are changing in size becomes important for understanding how (and if) you can grow your small business.

Use A Little Logic (And A Bit Of Common Sense) To Gather Information

As mentioned above, different industries and markets will have different datasets and other sources of information that may or may not be relevant to your particular small business.

If you are strictly residential, then focusing on home or housing data is likely more relevant than looking at or including commercial buildings. If you work on commercial properties, that becomes more relevant (and logical) to understand.

Consider, also, indirect factors and data as well — there are some factors that, if you sit down and review, can affect the set size of customers you can ultimately align with.

Precision Might Not Be Perfect, But You Need Some Basis To Keep Tabs On

As mentioned above, there are a lot of variables when it comes to ultimately determining market size — meaning that you might not always have 100% precision with your figures.

Even if you do have precise numbers, there’s a good chance they only represent a “snapshot in time” as folks move into, through or out of your market. Different competitors can enter the market and other micro- and macro-level factors affecting set size can also affect this size over time.

I don’t want to get into every factor that can affect your relative market size – you likely have puzzled these out if you’ve been in business for a bit (you should see the list of things that can affect digital marketing figures), but the idea here is creating a foundation for understanding the figure and creating systems to keep tabs on that figure.

There are no perfect business plans, but the art of planning can be close to perfected with the right foundation.

So I’ll leave you with this question: when was the last time you checked on your relative market size?