Small Business: 4 Ways to Save Your Business Some Money

Every day new companies emerge, and it’s really hard out there for a business to survive, especially a small one. It is understandable that you want to cut some costs, but you have to know what you can safely save on, and where you shouldn’t try to cut any corners.

You have probably already bought some used or recycled items or equipment, and made an agreement with your bank, but there might be a few things you forgot about.

1. Use Social Media like a pro

Whatever business you are running, you need to include social media in your marketing strategy. As you are a small business, you need a good marketing strategy in order to get noticed by people. An all-encompassing marketing strategy isn’t cheap, and as your budget is probably very tight, you can focus on advertising via social media.

Start with Facebook and create a company page. Facebook, as well as Twitter, provide you with various opportunities, including creating a fully fledged store on Facebook or adding a Buy Now button on Twitter. However, all you really need is a properly filled out page that looks professional. It should include a link to your website, concise but informative description of your business and contact information such as e-mail, phone number, address, etc.

If you are making crafts, clothes or jewelry then you need to have Pinterest account, as well as Etsy shop. If you plan out your strategy well, you won’t need pamphlets, ads and other in the beginning.

2. Split the costs — become frenemies

If you have a neighboring business, you can become good neighbors and split the costs of advertising and organizing sales together. You might think that if they are in the same business you are rivals, but it’s better to be friends and profit. Talk to your frenemy, and organize together various promotions such as sidewalk promotions.

Take your friendship to the next level, and propose sharing mailing lists. You can even organize some discounts together, while making sure that both businesses are providing customers with the same incentives. Also, you can set up an agreement with another business for bulk purchasing discounts, from which you can both benefit.

3. Outsource some tasks

If your business requires one more team member or more of them to complete some task, then it is better to outsource that task than employ another team or a person. If you don’t have enough money for training and employing more people, then make sure you find a good team or even one person to outsource.

Don’t assign additional tasks to your employees who already have several things on their plate. You can’t expect people who are juggling multiple assignments to do a very good job — our brains just aren’t wired to perform complex multitasking with any kind of efficiency.

Instead of giving your 50% attention to one task and 50% to the other, it’s better if your employee gives their 100% to one task. Even if the person gets some quick training for the new position, it still won’t be as time-efficient and cost-effective as hiring a freelancer that specializes in that field.

4. Create a successful team

This may not sound like a great way to save some money, but let’s take a closer look. When making a team, you have to pay attention to many things — from their experience, and education to their personality, because one toxic or incompetent person can destroy your team in no time.

Therefore, it is important to choose wisely, motivate them and provide the needed training. A team like this will do their best to earn you more money, and become successful in the process. However, if you don’t provide them with good salaries and you give them no training, you will certainly be late with your projects and will waste money on hiring new people constantly.

A competent, happy and motivated team will work together and complete everything on time. If there is more work than they can handle, or if a bunch of small problems pop up that would only burn your team out, then go back to the third point and outsource it.

Most small business fight hard just to survive, so play it smart, save money in the right places, and don’t cut corners on the important stuff. Create a social media strategy, keep your audience updated, establish a good and productive team, and when needed, outsource. These four points will save you a lot of money and help your business keep pushing forward during those early stages, before you can start turning a profit.