When you run a business, at least half of your attention is always on the bottom line. You know how much everything costs, why you need it and how much profit it could help you make. Sometimes you just can’t avoid spending money to make money, but here are four simple ways for you and your business to save money.
4 Ways Your Business Can Easily Save More Money
1. Creative Marketing
No matter how big or small a business is, marketing is always going to be a huge budget consideration. There’s a simple way of getting your marketing out to more people without costing you any extra. When you send out an invoice or a product, put your latest flyers and leaflets in with them. When a customer buys something from your shop, slip a few coupons into the shopping bag at the counter. It has not cost you
When a customer buys something from your shop, slip a few coupons into the shopping bag at the counter. It has not cost you any more and you have increased the reach of your marketing campaign.
2. Streamline Your Online Shop
It used to be expensive to set up an online shop. Having systems to manage your stock, private information and payment security were never cheap, but now you have two options. You can either use one of the many free online shop websites to create your own shop or you can use Amazon and Ebay to be your shop. Neither of these has any up-front costs and would greatly reduce your need for an expensive website.
3. Buy at the Best Price
When you are buying for your business, there is the temptation to buy the latest and the greatest brands. It’s not always the best idea when it comes to office supplies. Buying discount office supplies or own-brand goods is a quick and easy way to cut down on your costs.
You must ask yourself the simple question: if it doesn’t affect your product or services, why would you spend more on it? Will any customers know if you have brought paper which was half the price?
4. Move to Open Source Software
Buying software licenses for the Office suite or the Adobe suite is a major outlay for any business. Before you commit to what could be an investment in the thousand’s, have a look through the Open Source options. These are free programs, which will perform very similar functions to their expensive cousins. The free OpenOffice is a great replacement for Microsoft Office.
There is nothing in this list which is going to create a vast amount of upheaval or disruption to your business. In truth, very few of your employees and none of your customers will ever notice the difference. On the other hand, your accountant and bank manager will immediately see the positive impact of making any of these four changes.
As a business owner, can you really afford not to try something as easy as switching your office supply order? Especially when you think that the in the long term you could save your business thousands.