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When starting any business, it’s common to overspend in the first year or two. We’re expecting great things to happen and can hardly envisage tough times that might be ahead.

While other staff are focused on their individual roles and keeping clients happy, someone must have an eye to the cost of running the business itself. Because even if top line sales are promising, if money is leaving the business bank account faster than it’s coming in, this is a major problem for a new company that has little, if any, access to business credit.

Here are 3 ways to run your SEO agency more economically to improve its chances of surviving long enough to find business success.

 

Reduce the Utility Costs

With the cost of gas usage, there’s usually room to get better deals. You want to not only see how many providers there are to the business premises, but also confirm whether there’s any difference in their pricing – and there usually is.

For British Gas business pricing, use a comparison service like Utility Bidder to check the differences in costs. This avoids you having to hunt around to locate who serves your area and have long negotiations over the phone.

 

Decline, Defer and Weigh Up the Utility of the Purchase

Staff will no doubt come up with many ideas for things they need. This might be an upgrade to the latest version of a software package, boosting to the top tier of a SaaS SEO online app, a faster PC, new furniture, a new chair, and so on.

Many people who work in SEO agencies are young. Often, it’s their first job out of university. This puts them in a “kid in a candy store” mentality, to coin an Americanism. Whatever nice, new shiny object that’s business related, they want it. It’s your job to understand what the item is, how it relates to what they’re doing, and whether it adds enough utility to make it worth the cost.

Think about what the cost of upgrading to the latest software package will be. It will increase the business expenses that month and for the year, but will it add to the top-line sales or the bottom-line profits? If charging rates won’t climb as a result, then it’s not paying for itself.

 

Buy Second-hand, Where Possible

Avoid making new business purchases unless it’s absolutely necessarily. Run every purchase through a filter to verify whether it’s a need, a want or a desire. Even having such a system will caution staff to not suggest new purchases that won’t pass the sniff test.

When deciding that a certain purchase makes sense, look to see if there’s a less expensive version or if one is available second-hand. It will depend on what it is whether buying second-hand is sensible.

While it’s important that the SEO agency grows, expanding without managing costs well doesn’t make the company any more valuable. It’s important to remember that in the push for yearly growth.