With the economy becoming increasingly uncertain, saving money wherever possible is becoming a new priority for many. In order to deal with such uncertainty, the UK’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) has called for a minimum wage increase to £15 per hour.
From an employee perspective, this is excellent. However, from a small business’ perspective, this might be worrying. The good news is that there are a number of easy ways to cut business costs to accommodate for things like minimum wage increases and surging energy costs.
Reduce supply expenses
One of the easiest ways to reduce overall costs is to reduce the amount you’re spending on office supplies. Instead of grabbing the first stuff you see, shop around, compare prices, and you’ll be surprised at how much you can save yourself in a short amount of time.
Update your marketing endeavours
We’re not suggesting you get rid of any marketing efforts that are reaping great results, but it’s worth a look at less expensive alternatives if you’re serious about cutting business costs.
Something as simple as increasing your use of social media and reducing traditional marketing attempts can work wonders. Think about displaying related content on business social media platforms and see how many new leads you might be able to capture that way.
Similarly, spend more time networking and less time advertising. Often, clients are drawn to faces that they recognise than a service or product itself, so make an extra effort to form relationships with clients and potential customers.
Consider using freelancers
There are probably certain tasks within your business that don’t require a full-time employee. If this is the case, think about working with freelancers instead. They often work out less expensive because they don’t require training, benefits, or a full-time contract.
Automate process
Similarly to the idea of using freelancers, why spend money on labour when you don’t have to? using marketing automation software prevents a marketing team from having to manually post online, saving them time and the business money.
Although it might seem counterintuitive to spend more money on an automation service, this actually saves businesses money in the long run and streamlines the process.
Use serviced offices
Rather than having to pay for an office space and all the bills that go on top of that, consider how renting a serviced office in Central London could save you a lot of money. Not only do serviced offices have a reputation for increasing office productivity – something that inadvertently saves you money – but they also eliminate additional costs of furniture, software and hardware, even energy bills like heating and lighting.
This leads us onto our final point, which is to:
Work from home
Something that saves even more money than using serviced offices is working from home. We realise this may not be possible for some businesses, but for SMEs, this might be a real game changer. The only thing better than having to pay less for bills is paying none at all.
If your staff are happy and able to work remotely, why not trial it and see how it goes?
As you can see, there are a multitude of options when it comes to cutting your costs, that not only will not compromise your quality of work, but also might be even more beneficial to your employees.
