Small business owners are always looking for way to save money. We have compiled a list of ways you can save your business money that are not only practical, but they can be implemented with little resistance.
Outsource wherever possible
Hiring employees costs a business insurance, office space, benefits, and salaries. By hiring on independent contractors, laborers, or having a part-time accountant, a business can meet its goals and fill customer orders without losing a lot of revenue to hiring staff.
Automation is the key
The digital age has provided business owners with a number of ways to automate operations – from turning a smartphone into a point of sale to accept credit card payment, cloud-based documents and team collaboration space, online accounting applications, scheduling, task management, and even payroll. By embracing automation, business owners can save a tremendous amount of money that would otherwise go toward hiring executive assistants, keeping files on site, and working around everyone’s schedules to get them all in the same meeting room.
Interns! Interns! Interns!
A business can save on expenses by offering part-time or unpaid internships to people who want to do things like run the social media side of the company, SEO, and even internal tasks like filing and organization. Business owners are helping people build resumes, while getting things done inexpensively by hiring interns.
Open source software
Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on expensive software licenses, a business can function by using the open source equivalents for free. Everything from office software (spreadsheets, documents, and databases) to accounting software, and everything in between can be had for free, and the quality is on par with their retail equivalents.
Keep meetings short and to the point
Business meetings have been listed among the biggest eaters of time, and that they cut back on productivity. By keeping meetings lean and focused on the topics at hand, time (and therefore money) can be saved across the entire operation.
Get creative with marketing
Instead of spending money on giant billboards, glossy pamphlets, and traditional marketing paths, try something different. It has been shown that a business can really draw attention when it bucks the system and finds alternative routes to draw in potential customers.
Customer research
If your business knows its target audience, then you can steer operations and marketing to rope them in, rather than wasting money on campaigns to draw leads in a dead or non-existent market. If a business knows its customer, then their habits will become almost predictable (what else they are likely to buy, what they do for fun, etc.), and you can make a presence in those venues.
