Many small business owners don’t actually have adequate insurance for what they do. For example, someone who uses their personal vehicle might think they are covered with their personal insurance policy, but in reality they probably aren’t. Home business owners may need to take out additional coverage for business equipment or property that’s located in the home. Make sure that you have all the coverage you need so you aren’t stuck paying huge costs because of something unexpected. Of course, it’s also important that you take all the necessary steps to protect yourself. This includes making your business premises as safe as possible and being diligent with the quality of your work and products.
Sometimes the best way to find ways to save money is to force yourself to do it. Start out by putting aside a very small amount of your sales revenue. It should be at most 1%, but it could even be half of that. After a few weeks, double that percentage. Keep doing that until you notice that your margins are extremely tight. At that point, you should start to think of ways to decrease your spending to make those margins a little more palatable. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if you need to make concessions, you will figure out how to do it in a way that makes sense. What’s more, you will also be growing yourself some rainy day funds that you might need later on.
In some situations, saving money isn’t about lowering costs on a regular basis, but preparing for the unexpected. If you are sued, or your business suffers from a natural disaster, then you could end up with crippling costs that aren’t reflected in your financial plan. To avoid paying out of your savings for these costs, you need to take care of your risk management with business insurance that protects you against all possible risks.
Have a Financial Plan
It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that when most people start their small business, they are dreaming about potential revenue and not about saving money. Yes, most of us have a return on investment in mind when putting together a business plan, but finding as many ways as possible to save money isn’t the priority.
Running a business isn’t just about maximizing your revenues. If you aren’t being efficient with your funds, then you are limiting how successful your business can be. Take these money-saving tips to heart so that you can get the best return on your investment possible.
Be Efficient With Your Marketing
One of the best ways to find savings for your business is by making a detailed financial plan. It will outline all of your costs and your projected revenues. Make goals for all of your financial targets, both in terms of revenue and expenses. Many businesses fail because they do not properly plan right out of the gate. You might think it’s unnecessary, but it may be one of the most important early steps you can take.
With outsourcing, you can be flexible about when you pay for needed tasks. You can outsource your marketing, your accounting, and even a personal assistant. Freelancers are already experts at what they do, so they can start working with you almost immediately. You will only have to pay for the hours you need them, and you won’t have to worry about turnover.
The Right Insurance
Search Engine Optimization is another great way to get traffic to your website, where visitors can be greeted with quality content that leads to conversions. The best thing about SEO is that while you may be able to do certain things on your own, you can hire marketing companies to handle the parts that you can’t do. That includes creating content, meta tags, and strategy. Your website is the virtual hub for your brand online, so you want to get as much traffic as possible. Plus, that traffic will already be predisposed to your type of product or service.
One of the biggest expenses a small business can have is staffing. However, in many cases it’s not efficient or necessary to bring someone on to perform tasks for a short time period or that don’t take up even part-time hours. When you hire someone, you need to go through a thorough process to find candidates, take time for interviewing, and then train the successful applicant. After that, they may leave shortly after and you have to do it all again.
Take Advantage of Free and Low Cost Tools
However, we’ve all heard the saying “a penny saved is a penny earned.” It’s absolutely true. The more you can save for your business, the better your balance sheet will look. It’s not just about the big savings, although they are no doubt important. There are smaller and more uncommon ways to save money that can make a huge difference when they are compiled together. Here are some saving tips for small businesses that will help you stay lean at all times.
Outsourcing
A good financial plan provides you with sign posts for what makes your business financially healthy. You start with where you are in your current situation, and make goals for where you want to be in 6 months, a year, and even beyond. With a financial plan in place, you can track when your spending seems to be getting out of control and into a dangerous area. Plus, you can start to plan and save for when your revenues might dip. A financial plan will provide a backup plan in case you have to go through tough times.
As a small business, you might want to make a big splash when you are first starting out. Luckily, with the rise of internet marketing it’s never been easier to be efficient with your marketing costs. For many businesses, there’s no need to use traditional marketing like print, radio, and television. For example, social media advertising can be targeted to specific demographics that are more likely to be interested in purchasing your product or service. The costs for these targeted ads are pennies on the dollar to traditional marketing.
Set Aside a Small Part of Your Revenue
There are many tools out there that cost nothing or close to it to help you and your team be more productive. Cloud-based solutions provide a simple way to create and share documents, and communicate with your staff and customers. There are many productivity apps available that can help with your project planning, task lists, task delegation, and much more. The free versions often have enough functionality for a small business, and you can buy extra features as you need them. If you do think you have to pay for something, do some shopping around and you may find another platform that offers a similar feature for free.
