By Rosana Beechum

Are you running a small business or are just about to start one? Running a small business isn’t easy, and every penny really counts in order to succeed and be profitable. To stay competitive, you will need to cut costs across different areas of your business, whilst still providing high-quality goods and services. Here, we will take you through some of our top tips for how to save money when starting a small business.

Using free marketing

One of the best things about starting a business now is that you get to take advantage of all the amazing new technology in this digital age. The internet and social media provide you with a range of different ways to advertise your business for free and drive people towards your business. Social media allows you to build online visibility for free, and this is a fantastic way to get your brand name and message out there. In doing this, you can also engage with potential customers and build a relationship, which should then convert them into buyers.

[amazon_link asins=’163076261X’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’succeedingi0d-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’582ded9f-d2d2-11e8-bba5-13e96c9ff5b5′]Hiring temporary staff

As a new business, it is a big risk to take on a lot of permanent staff and there are a lot of costs associated with this. Instead, a great way to go around this is to use temporary staff instead. This type of flexible working will benefit your business as you can hire people as and when you need and it will give you the option to scale up or down depending on when your busiest times are. For example, if you are starting a small café or restaurant, you may need to take on more staff during busy seasonal times such as Christmas. You can visit a company such as staffheroes.co.uk for all your temporary staff needs.

[amazon_link asins=’B0067TGSOK’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’succeedingi0d-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’5f85a85e-d2d2-11e8-bcfc-8165b138de2b’]Negotiate

As a small business owner, one of the top skills you will need is to be a good negotiator and know how to barter and trade. Remember, you do not have to accept the wholesale cost given to you by suppliers or vendors. A good idea is to accept the wholesale cost initially, then once you have developed a relationship with them, you can start to negotiate on better prices. You can usually get better rates if you are willing to commit longer. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, so it is always worth a try negotiating for a better deal!

Free software

Another great benefit of starting a small business in this new digital age is that you can take advantage of lots of free and amazing software. While there is plenty of great software out there that charge you a fee, as a small business it is most likely that you won’t need this yet and that the free software will be more than enough for you to get by on. This is another great way to save a lot of outgoing costs on your business.

Get rid of the office

Another great money saving tip when you are starting a new small business is to cut out the business premises. Of course, for some businesses this won’t be possible such as for those who are starting a restaurant, but for many, an office space really won’t be necessary and you can simply work from home instead. This is definitely one of the biggest cost cutting tips that you can take on board as this could potentially save you hundreds of dollars every month. In the age of the internet, you really can do everything from home, and if you have other members of staff working for you, you can simply arrange regular meetings to keep on top of your workload and where everyone is with their work.

[amazon_link asins=’111916379X’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’succeedingi0d-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’8f597616-d2d2-11e8-b422-677b7da6b1ef’]Time meetings

If you start to time and take a note of how long you and your team are spending in meetings each week, you will find that this quickly adds up and can actually be one of the most time-consuming and expensive parts of your business! While, of course, some of your meetings will be important and will take longer, you will tend to find that most are actually too long or completely unnecessary to begin with. All of these meetings can quickly add up to your business salary costs and when people are spending time in a meeting, this is potentially time that they could be spending making money. To solve this, try and limit who is attending meetings, line out what is being discussed and have an agenda of what you want to have completed by the end of the meeting.

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Rosana Beechum is a business and marketing undergraduate from Nottingham Trent University from the UK, who is attempting to share her knowledge through written articles for small business owners.