If you are running a business, or looking to start one, no doubt you’ve learnt by now the first rule of business: it takes money to make money. You might even be shocked at the amount of money that is being taken to make money.
Don’t be too disheartened. There are somethings you can do to save money. And in this digital age, you know they’re all online. In this list we will cover everything from phone systems to marketing to find spaces where you can save money. Read on for all the details.
Table of Contents
Digital marketing
Digital marketing went through a drastic evolution with the invention of the internet. Getting eyes on your product is now cheaper, more accessible and far more effective than using traditional media means.
All of this is to say that handling the marketing of your products is possible to do with a DIY approach. However, it will take some know-how to get it right and use it to its full ability.
There are guides online that put everything into simple terms, so you might want to look up concepts such as Search Engine Optimization, keyword research and affiliate marketing. You can even take it a step further and take one of the subscription-based courses offered by companies like LinkedIn and Skillshare. It will ensure you know what you are doing before you dive in.
A big chunk of online marketing is creating a social media presence with content, which means you will need to become a jack of all trades. Editing, filming, photography, etc. are all areas you can have fun in when making content, but the data is what separates digital from traditional marketing.
With the data provided by digital marketing, you can reach your audience better, see where they have come from, see what they are engaging with, see what they are buying and you can adjust your campaign to suit.
Phone system
A reliable phone system is key to running a business in these days. The explosion of systems like Open Phone have allowed staff members to work from home, travel while they work and clients to avoid a long journey for a meeting.
You might think you don’t need it, until you find that someone is snowed in their house and needs to work from home, or a staff member on a networking trip is on a train with no landline for 8 hours.
But where do you save money? By eliminating the need for a landline. All the phone and video calls, texts, and everything else is done over the internet, cutting down on at least one pricey monthly bill.
The basic systems offer phone and video calls, but with a platform like Open Phone you can send texts, use group messaging, and mute calls during out of office hours. You can get a local and toll-free number for as many employees as you wish and use the automated customer service features to direct customers to the right person, saving you time fielding calls.
Smart premises
Smart in technology stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, meaning that the tech around you will analyze a situation and report their findings to you, usually offering a solution and usually feeding into your smart phone. Although you’ll have seen smart tech mainly on the high street with hotels using keycards rather than keys, there are a lot of applications in the office.
For one thing, you can save on your bills by implementing smart tech where you can. Smart thermostats to keep the temperature optimal, saving energy and therefore money on your monthly bills. Smart lighting that is motion detective and will shut off after a certain amount of inactivity.
But the best money saving aspect is in security. By investing in a smart security system, you can avoid any bad events from happening on your premises. A camera feeding into your phone will warn you of anyone approaching, as well as the local police, and with the remote-control capabilities you can control your security from anywhere, so you can unlock the door if someone needs to get in.
You can also assign all your staff members a smart keycard to ensure that access security is up to par. Smart cards contain data, so you can upload all your employee’s details to the card and allow and remove access to areas as you need to. Plus, the data creates an automatic paper trail, so if something were to go missing, you would know who has been in there last by accessing the data on the card.
Automation platforms
As the saying goes, time is money, and therefore anything that saves you time is going to be saving you money, right? Running a business is full of so many spinning plates pulling you in all directions that the tedious and routine things become frustrating to have to deal with.
Luckily, in the internet age, business owners can take advantage of a wealth of software advancements that, if they don’t reduce the tedious tasks, they can outright take them off your hands. For example, there is the project management platform, Trello, which allows you to assign work to each of your employees to follow, without having to check in with you five times a day. Watch productivity soar as your staff check off their tasks and use it to break down big projects into smaller sizes, ensuring that everyone is pulling their weight.
If your business dabbles in ecommerce, you will eventually have to think about shipping. It is a big part of keeping your customers happy, getting their items to them, and if you get it wrong you will see a lot of unhappy reviews popping up. Using a platform like Zendbox can allow you to track and follow all your packages as they travel via Amazon, Royal Mail, UPS, Hermes, Fed Ex, and more major shipping companies. You will get in real time tracking that will allow you to solve a problem before it even arises.
About Carson Derrow
