Advertising, office leases, supplies… These are just a handful of business expenses, some of which cost businesses up to 8% of the revenue each year.

If you’re interested in making more money in 2019 as a business owner, we’re here to tell you that if your sole focus is on increasing sales, you’re missing opportunities.

Many business owners are able to increase their profits extensively by taking small steps to reduce the number of checks that they’re writing for products and services.

Below, our team steps you through a handful of the best cost savings ideas that we think are well worth you trying out.

1. Try Out Low-Cost Advertising

Advertising is a necessary expense for many business owners, mostly because today’s business landscape is so darn cluttered. Just because you need to invest in advertising though doesn’t mean that your investment needs to be steep.

For example, many businesses are getting savvy and allocating more resources toward earning organic web traffic through SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) works to optimize your web content in such a way that search engines like Google and Bing will send more leads to your site free of charge.

Given that billions of people conduct Google searches every day, SEO done right can provide you with a massive (and free) boost in consumers.

2. Audit Your Expenses

A ton of money slips through the cracks when you’re running a business. Maybe you forgot that you were still subscribed to that digital faxing service, maybe you accidentally checked the “premium snacks” box when you placed a recurring order with a food vendor.

Whatever it is that you may be doing that is costing you unnecessary dollars, you’re never going to be able to catch those mistakes if you don’t make it a point to audit your expenses every now and again.

3. Get Your Business Functions Sponsored

An unconventional cost savings ideas example that big businesses use frequently is getting their events sponsored.

For example, if your business hosts a community walk-a-thon every year, having a co-sponsor from the area will bring in extra cash. All you’ll likely need to do for them is shout their brand out a few times in speeches during the event and add their name to your event’s signage.

4. Keep Extra-Circulars In Check

During the economic downturn of 2008, it became commonplace for businesses to lay off employees in order to save money. Unfortunately, those same businesses were still investing in things like staff appreciation parties, outings, and similar things.

That thought process makes no sense.

Up economy or down economy, the last thing that you’ll want to do to slash expenses is fire people. Doing that would decrease morale, increase workloads and leave your remaining team members searching for another place of employment.

Instead, start looking at “nice to have” things that don’t really move the needle for your company, things like staff picnics, and trim those down.

5. Experiment With Telecommuting

Chances are, one of your biggest business expenses is your office lease. Given how expensive real estate is today, many business owners are starting to shirk their brick-and-mortar locations and move their teams to the internet.

If all of your team’s work is typically done on computers then you’re already halfway ready to migrate online. What you have to do next is invest in communication tools like Slack and you’ll be good to go.

We recommend trialing working remotely as a cost savings ideas option by making Fridays (for example) a telecommute day and then expanding to more days if things are going well.

6. Work With More College Graduates

As business owners, we always want the best and the brightest people working for us. Unfortunately, we seldom want to or are prepared to pay for that high-earning talent.

If your job post asking of 6+ years of experience is landing prospects that you can’t afford, think about working with smart college graduates that need a little bit of breaking in.

College graduates work for much cheaper than people that have been working for a few years and with a bit of mentorship, you’ll get more than your money’s worth out of them.

7. Negotiate With and Dump Vendors

Your snack guy, the person that delivers your paper, the kid that picks up your garbage cans… All of those people can be negotiated with.

Getting your vendors to shave a few dollars off of your rate can mean thousands of dollars worth of savings at the end of the year. And if your vendor isn’t willing to budge, dump them!

There are plenty of places that advertise the cheapest place to buy printer ink online and save money or the cheapest place to get quality snack services that will accept your business at a lowered rate.

8. Pay Attention to Corporate Culture

It can be fun to cut back on things but if you cut back on too much, you might end up losing money.

Remember, one of the most costly things that business owners deal with is employee turnover. If your corporate culture becomes all about pinching pennies and not enough about giving your team what they need to feel good about their jobs, you’re going to end up with a revolving door of team members.

Wrapping Up Cost Savings Ideas for the Small Business Owner

2019 is about halfway done and there’s still a lot of opportunities to increase your bottom line before the new decade rolls around. We hope that our cost savings ideas have inspired you to consider making helpful changes to your organization.

For business inspiration, check out more great content on lateet.com today!