When it comes to small business planning, we understand how important it is to thinly spread out your budget! With so many different expenses funneling into your venture, it can feel overwhelming at times to be constantly losing out on your earnings. Cutting down costs is an ideal solution, but it's not always as easy to see where you should trim the fat. These five tips can help you cut down your business costs and start saving!
Purchase Gently Used
The urge to buy all brand-spanking new equipment is strong! Of course, you want to get the best of the best in order to properly jump-start your business...but new isn't always a necessity. Obviously, when it comes to your merchandise you should always strive to sell the freshest or newest products to customers in order to entice them. But when it comes to office supplies, furniture, vehicles, or anything else, it's best to go second-hand. Buying gently used items can help you save a lot of money in the beginning, that way you can prioritize other more important expenses! Look at different websites or even on Facebook Market Place to find the best deals. While buying second-hang might not be the most fun thing in the world, your wallet and your business will definitely thank you later on!
Go Paperless
The environment isn't the only thing you'll save! A paperless office is a work environment that uses minimal physical paper or none at all and instead uses primarily digital documents. The notion of a"paperless office" has existed since computers started to become a staple of the modern working environment. Despite the fact that most workplaces primarily use electronic documents and email, most businesses still heavily rely on paper documents whether for contracts, or receipts...However, there are so many benefits to going completely paperless. The most obvious one is that it helps the environment. Eliminating excess paper means fewer trees have to be chopped down, and less waste has to be thrown out. But it also saves A LOT of money too. Digitization reduces the cost of paper, printers, ink, postage, office space for files, and employee time.
Market Online
In the age of social media, marketing online is a must! However, you don't have to break the bank to successfully launch a marketing campaign on the web. Lucky for you there are so many different organic options for marketing online. You can produce inbound blog articles to attract customers, create fun social media posts that capture the essence of your brand or even design some short videos to really get your message across! And if you want to pay for advertising well, the Facebook Ads Manager has plenty of cost-effective options for campaigns with features that let you pick and choose your target audience. Marketing online saves a lot of money especially in comparison to print advertising or radio and TV. Once you've broken ground with social media you can take advantage of your follower count or website sign-ups through email advertising! Email advertising works well through different CRMs that you've used to create your website (like HubSpot for instance). There are so many different opportunities for marketing online, that you'll be able to reach a lot of potential customers without spending too much!
Downsize When You Can
There are always going to be expenses that you don't actually need, so cut them down when you can. As we discussed above in regards to"gently-used" items, you don't need the best of the best when you're starting out! But cutting costs goes much deeper than spending less on office supplies. Downsizing needs a thorough assessment of your products, and utilities in order to understand what is useful and what's dragging you down. You can downsize your store, going from a large showroom to a small shop; You can try leaving the restaurant behind and starting a food truck or you can cut down in other areas. Maybe you don't need to be spending so much money on advertising, especially if the campaigns are not working...or perhaps that brand new software system isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Downsizing is never easy, but sometimes it's an important aspect of business and a real-life saver when you're trying to keep your company afloat!
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