As the credit crunch forces businesses to tighten their belts across the country, ask yourself before you tighten your own belt if what your business needs right now is less marketing and less promotion?

During a downturn it’s common for marketing budgets to be cut, however there are other ways of reducing your spending during a difficult time than cutting your spending where you actually need it the most.

It’s also not uncommon for businesses to fold during a downturn - don’t become one of those businesses, you can tough it out and when the other firms are folding around you, watch your own brand become stronger as you gain an even greater share of the market!

Here are some tips to keep your head above the water…

1. Rent. Rent can make up a substantial amount of your monthly outgoings. If you rent offices now is the time to negotiate your rent; your landlord will be concerned about loosing a tenant at this particular time and you can reassure them that by helping you with a reduction, you are more likely to be a tenant for the long term rather than going bust, leaving them with an empty building that they may struggle to fill.

Alternatively, can you work from home? This will represent a massive saving.

2. Insurance. When was the last time you re-assessed your business insurance and found out if you could reduce your premiums with your existing supplier or by moving to a new supplier?

3. Cash. Keep a very close eye on small every day spends. Every time you spend money, write it down, keep receipts. You may be amazed how much can be spent on the ‘little things’ and once you are armoured with knowledge of your spending, you can make plans to reduce spending in non vital areas.

4. Paying your bills. Pay your credit card bill immediately to avoid unnecessary charges, and if possible pay it off in full each month to avoid paying interest. Do what you can to aid cash flow to prevent bank charges for going over your limits.

5. Respect the environment. Postage and stationery costs can really mount up, consider what really ‘needs’ to be posted and what can be emailed or faxed instead.

6. Shop around. Get three quotes for everything you purchase, even the lower cost items. Getting the best deal for a certain standard of product or service will equate to considerable savings each year.

Take care not to just go around buying low quality products or services, this will be a false economy.

7. Energy. Again, respecting the environment can pay dividends and it’s doesn’t even have to involve costly energy saving initiatives.
It’s estimated that businesses can cut their energy costs by up to 20%, some simple methods of cutting back on your energy bills include;

- Replace normal light bulbs with energy efficient versions.
- Change fluorescent light strips to smaller strips.
- Not placing furniture in front of radiators.
- Keep fridge and freezer doors shut as much as possible and fill empty spaces with bubble wrap to avoid cooling areas unnecessarily.
-Shut down your equipment over night. You can put them on a timer to shut down at night and to reboot in the morning just before the working day commences.

8. Fully monitor any marketing activity. Now is the time to find out what works, and if it’s not working, try something else. You don’t want to be ploughing money into marketing methods that aren’t very effective when you can be discovering those that do work, and spending your money more wisely instead.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under General Musings On Life, Thoughts on Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.