When it comes time to review your business expenses and find ways to cut costs without cutting quality, there are a few things you may want to consider. Small monthly or weekly expenses add up over the year, marketing may not be giving the return you desire and your shipping costs could be higher than necessary. Here are three ways your business can cut costs.
A Green Office
Making your office more environmentally friendly is great for PR. You can boast about it on your website. It will also save you money in the long term by reducing your energy costs, paper waste and more. Small steps can make a big difference especially if you have a small business. Turning off equipment when not in use stops electricity leaking away all night. It may seem too small to worry about, but over a year, it adds up. This is easy to do if you keep equipment on a power strip. Using printers that print on both sides of the paper is great, but you can do this manually with any printer.
Maintaining paper files may be necessary in some cases, but keeping your invoices and other things in the cloud will not only reduce paper costs and prevent lost time looking for a misplaced document, but it will also allow employees to work at home. Google Drive is one such app that allows for document collaboration from a centralized location. Another technology that can save money is virtual meetings. They reduce time off and travel expenses. True, sometimes you need to have personal contact, but it can be reduced.
Transportation
Consider transporting goods by sea freight. Large container ships transport goods cost-effectively. You can ship as much or as little as you want to ports all over the world. Your goods are tracked every second and with competitive shipping companies, your costs are reduced. If you have a small or medium-sized business, you may need an intermediary to deal with the huge, international shipping companies. This is good because the mediator will negotiate the lowest price for you and can utilize all types of sea transportation.
Not only are your transportation costs lowered, but you also get assistance from freight experts to seek a competitive pricing track, your cargo, and keep in communication with your carriers. They will manage all shipments and deliveries in one place because they have the tools and expertise that you don’t have.
Update Your Marketing
Your marketing return on investment (ROI) needs to be realistic. It can be measured based on your whole effort or specific campaigns. If paid advertising is bringing in major revenue, you don’t want to change it, but there are other cheaper alternatives that work well in the digital age. Email marketing is often considered old fashioned and last decade, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Even today, with marketing on social media, considered a top tactic, email marketing remains one of the top ways to reach customers for both large and small businesses.
Another inexpensive and very effective marketing tactic is good reviews or testimonials on social media. People look at and trust unsolicited testimonials on social media and make decisions based on them. Since customer service is one of the first things most people look for, good comments can boost sales.
Office expenses and other business expenses can add up over the year and, surprisingly, be quite big. You may want to reduce your financial output without reducing the quality of your product. Take the time to do an in-depth analysis of your expenditures, and you will find there are many places you are hemorrhaging money unnecessarily.
