In today’s economy, many small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. With credit and money becoming even tighter, small business owners are looking for ways to be more efficient and effective. At the same time, marketing efforts that translate into profits are also important.
Save Money – Outsource
One of the ways in which small business owners can take a step forward is to take advantage of the many opportunities that are available to outsource many office tasks. By using virtual assistants and outsourcing business activities such as appointment scheduling, sales, website management and content writing, you can not only free up your time to focus on other necessary tasks, but you can save money on overhead.
Since you will not be providing office space for these employees, you will not have the expenses of employee taxes, additional office space or workers compensation. Additionally, you can often find contract workers for outsource work in locations around the world, where the cost of living and wages are lower than in the United States. By using global resources, you can have many office and business tasks performed extremely efficiently, for a lot less money.
Social Media and Marketing
Another newer business concept that is proving to be extremely economical and efficient is using social networking for marketing purposes. Social networking can be an extremely effective method of getting messages out about products and services with very little effort. With only a few keystrokes, your messages can be sent to literally thousands of potential customers.
By using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, you can not only increase your company visibility, but you can also improve your internet marketing efforts. One of the basic concepts in search engine optimization is that all of your efforts should be geared toward increasing and improving your search engine ranking.
Search engine ranking is extremely important because consumers not only research many services and products online before making purchasing decisions, but they also tend to only click on websites that fall on the first page of search results. With each message that you post to a social media site, you create a backlinks. If your message is then forwarded to other people through followers, then additional backlinks are created. The higher number of backlinks you have to your website, the higher your website will fall within search engine results.
While it can be daunting to run your own business in the current economy, there are ways to save money and be efficient. If you decide to outsource office tasks, consider investigating reputable websites such as oDesk, Freelancer and eLance to find qualified workers. By taking advantage of current technology and new methods of communication, you can stay afloat and increase your profits at the same time.