A penny saved is a penny earned, as the old saying goes, and earning money is the point of any business model.
By reducing the ongoing costs of your company, you are making it far more likely that your business will be a success. From landlord to employees to suppliers, your regular outgoings need to be constantly checked to see if there are better options available.
It might be that your current rent is higher than you’d expect it to be, or that one of your suppliers is charging more for their services than an alternate option. Looking for ways to save your business money is always a worthwhile action to take.
Go Green
From energy-saving light bulbs to cutting down on paper by using cloud-based documents, going green can have a significant effect on your profits. As well as the chance of seeing your office management bills seriously reduced, there are a number of government schemes available that reward you for taking the initiative, and you’ll be benefiting the planet at the same time.
Outsource
There are a number of reasons why outsourcing has become more and more popular for businesses looking to save money. Taking advantage of the expertise of others allows you to refocus on your money-making, and outsourcing can be used for everything from website management by clickintelligence.com to deliver services that will replace entire sections of your factory unit. Outsourcing can increase efficiency, reduce your overheads and ultimately help you to create more profit.
Hire talent not age
A good way to cut down your wage bill is by hiring graduates. Instead of asking for ten years of experience, finding an enthusiastic graduate who has drive, knowledge and is of course up to date on the latest trends in your field is an effective way of reducing your wage bill while finding a passionate member of staff. The chances are that you will learn from each other, and as a result, your company benefits.
Encourage staff to stay home
You might find that because of the benefits of living in a connected world, it is more cost effective to pay your employees to stay home rather than travel to the office. Home-working is growing in popularity for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it seriously reduces the necessary size of your business premises.
If even half your team works from home, you may be able to reduce your rent costs by moving to smaller, more cost-effective location, and with video-messaging services like Skype and Google Hangouts, even board meetings can be done from the comfort of your own home.
Change your way of advertising
Traditional marketing can often be expensive and depending on your business type, using a full-page ad in the local paper or paying for a billboard might not be the best use of your advertising strategy.
Look at more creative ways to manage your marketing plans. It might be that your customer demographic is primarily 19-30-year-olds, and as such you might want to focus on using social media promotions rather than another expensive radio campaign. Guerrilla marketing as well can be a useful way of reaching potential customers, and has the added benefit of often being newsworthy in itself.
It’s a simple task to do price checks on a regular basis to make sure that your business is consistently getting the best value for money. After all, that’s money that can be passed onto your customers.
