4 Easy Cost-Saving Tips for Your Business During Crisis

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Since then, it has been causing global economic loss, risking lots of businesses to permanently close. 

But it’s not too late to salvage your business. Seek for every available opportunity and utilise them to stay afloat. 

In this article, you’ll learn some cost-saving strategies you can implement today to battle this crisis. 

4 Cost-Saving Tips to Salvage Your Business During Crisis

1. Cut down on your advertising

For many countries, shelter-in-place and other types of physical restrictions are in effect. As a result, it's changed the way people are interacting with businesses online. 

There's been a considerable surge in website traffic to sites such as Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube. 

Before this global crisis, an omnichannel strategy might have given you great results. However, the current world affairs dictate that you take a closer look at your advertising efforts. 

So, how do you cost-effectively market your business? 

One of the best approaches today is to whittle down your advertising channels for a narrower, more focused approach. 

For instance, the traffic has skyrocketed for Facebook and YouTube. It may be well worth your marketing spend to focus on these two channels to get the most exposure possible. 

An excellent type of advertising you can consider is CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-1,000 impressions) ads. You set a budget and only pay for the clicks or impressions you get. This allows you to have strict control over how much you spend on advertising per month.

2. Use branded links

Short links are one of the most sophisticated and effective branding techniques. Because they help in increasing the overall credibility of your message. 

You might have seen emails, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. including links such as bit.ly/2NeSGRS, tiny.cc/wk50xy, or some other cryptic short links. 

This is a missed branding opportunity. Users will neither resonate with these links nor will they remember them. As per a study by Rebrandly, branded links make for a great CTA in your social media messages and can increase clickthrough rate by up to 39%. 

Therefore, instead of using those cryptic links, share your content online in a more evocative way. 

For instance, if you’re a tech blogger, use a .tech domain or go with slightly generic ones such as .online and .site. Use different custom short links to promote various campaigns such as www.event.online/register or www.productname.store/sale.

3. Build on your existing sales funnel

You most likely have an existing sales funnel with prospects in various stages. Make the most of it by pursuing these people to move further down the funnel. 

This is not to say that you can't focus on acquisition. The objective now is to implement cost-saving initiatives, so you won't have to spend much to get more sales in. 

For example, instead of spending time and resources on top of the funnel marketing, focus on investing in prospects who are already in the funnel. If most of them are in the decision stage, you can create more case studies that show proven results from your previous customers. 

Nurturing doesn't stop at the purchase stage, either. When leads convert to customers, you must nurture them to increase customer lifetime value. Because it costs more to acquire new customers. 

If you improve your engagement with existing customers, you may earn their brand loyalty over time. Doing this doesn’t require a huge financial investment but it goes a long way in improving sales. 

A great way to keep previous customers around is to offer loyalty discounts. While in the beginning, it may seem like this strategy is impacting your bottom line; in the long run, this will help you retain customers and improve your profit.

4. Get customer feedback

One of the best and most creative ways to save money is to ask your customers what they’re looking for. If they tell you directly what they want, you'll be able to cut out wasted spend. 

For example, through the survey, you may find that there's an increased demand for a certain item. By stocking and promoting that item, not only will you attract similar customers but also keep the existing ones delighted. 

Also, it’ll save you additional advertising costs to identify which products are working and which ones aren’t. Simply survey customers’ preferences. 

Sustain your finances amid the crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing our global economy to its limits. There's almost certainly a recession on the horizon. 

However, this doesn't necessarily mean your business will succumb to permanent closure. So long as you make smart and cost-saving moves to adapt to the changing economy, your business can survive this crisis.