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5 tips to cut the costs and save your new business money

November 28, 2016 | Financial Saviour

The first couple of years for any new business is extremely difficult, its that time we decide if it’s everything you thought it would be, we decide if we’ve got what it takes and we decide how we are going to save some of our hard earned cash!

Businesses love to eat up cash, as much as they can get, you’ll notice that every time you pay money into the account, you’re taking it straight back out again to pay someone else. Its a never ending cycle but wouldn’t it be nice if there was just a few simple tricks we could try right away and see a sudden impact on our outgoings? Well you are in luck because that’s exactly what we have put together for you.

We have decided to put together a list of 5 hot tips on cutting the costs on your business overheads, if you’re interested in saving money with simple yet effective tricks then read on ahead and start saving money today.

1. Going Green To Grow Lean

That’s right we kick start this cash concealing brainstorm with a little tip about improving the “green rating” of your business, but that’s not the only reason. According to Xero around 40% of office paper is discarded within 24 hours of anyone printing on it, can you image just how much money you are throwing away all so that someone can have a look at a design on paper before judging it on screen?..no?…well it’s a lot! We urge you to consider how much you are spending on your little printing friends, paper, ink and maintenance will soon add up.

Here is the best part, there are plenty of free online tools that can not only save you money on printing supplies but increase the productivity and flow of your workforce. Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Work space, Amazon Cloud Drive, DropBox, and Microsoft One Drive are all designed to enable you to work from home, away or on the go as well as have every resource available to you. You can collaborate with colleagues and share files giving everyone in your team complete viability without ever touching a printer.

2. Modern Advertising

It goes without saying that advertising your service or product is very important to the success of your business. If your target audience don’t know you exist how will you ever turn a profit?
But the biggest problem with advertising is the cost, it’s a very expensive procedure that can show both huge and very little return on investment, that’s just the nature of advertising. Traditional methods of advertising, although still regarded as some of the best for ROI are very expensive. Television adverts, radio adverts, magazine spreads, printed distribution etc.. all come with large costs, so whats the alternative?

Modern advertising methods such as email marketing, social media marketing, social media advertising offer the same high and low return on investment as traditional advertising but at a fraction of the cost. A Facebook advertisement can run for a month to a selected target audience for just £150 a month. With a strong following and engaging creative content it is possible to cut the cost out all together and receive the same ROI your £150 advert achieves without spending a penny! The capabilities of social media are endless, with a creative mind an eye for the audience it’s possible to achieve huge viral success completely free and you can’t get better advertising than that.

Female Entrepreneur sitting at Office Table with Computer

3. Intern experience

Every business finds itself at some point putting out adverts for temporary positions to help with increased workloads and demand. The most common option is to hire temp workers on either temp contracts or on an hourly paid basis. But the problem with both of these is that they come with a high cost, temp agencies usually come with a high fee and with the National Minimum Wage set to increase to £7.50 by April 2017 these might not be the best options for you but there are people out there willing to work for expenses and experience…Interns!

That’s right interns are in the perfect for a business looking to save money, they are studying and working towards a career they want too work in, but understand the need to gain live industry experience. This makes inters the perfect candidate for your new business, they might now handle the high priority important daily tasks but they can pick up the slack else were allowing you more time to focus on whats bringing in the money. Interns are usually willing to work for low pay, expenses covered and a great recommendation helping them gain future positions at other companies in the industry. Your business could save a lot of money by bringing in interns but you could also be providing the industries next innovators with their first steps on the ladder.

4. Only Buy What You Need

A lot of small business owners think that buying in the bulk is the best way to save money, often enough its not. Yes if you bought your office stationary in bulk the cost per item might reduce but as a small business you need to ask yourself is there really any need for me to bulk buy stationary? Am I ever going to get around to using them, or am I going to end up loosing half of them because I know I’ve got a box full back at the office. Speaking with small business bulk buying and leaving boxes of stationary, paper, ink and commodities lying around is basically the same as throwing money down a well because you don’t need it at that time and when you do need it you’ll have lost, used, given away or forgotten about the 2 boxes of post it notes sat in the stationary cupboard.

You can greatly reduce the everyday costs of your business buy only buying what you need, when you need it.

 

5. Save time, Save Money

As a small business owner you spend more time at work than anyone else, you put in a lot of shifts but time will always be a limited resource. All it takes is a little time management and if you feel that you need help with this there are plenty of methods out there dedicated to this very subject. A very popular method of time management is the SCRUM methodology. Scrum preaches being able to teach a method of working that allows you to do twice the amount of work in half the amount of time.

It has been said before that this is one of the most important lessons to learn as a small business owner. As a general rule of thumb, if your saving time, your saving money as the age old saying goes ” Time is money”.

Following these tips should help your small business save money and allow you to propel to the next stage. There are of course many other available options to help you save money and sometimes the best option is to look at your business and find places you can save money yourself without jeopardising your service or product.

 

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