How to Control Operating Cost in Your Business

In business, the operating cost matters a lot. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, and you probably agonised over every single penny you spent in the infancy of your business. However, as the operation grows, and you have to worry about more and more factors, it becomes progressively harder to keep tabs on the amount of money you spend. Here, I’ve listed our best tips on reducing your costs as you scale your business.

Get Vendors to Fight over You

Make sure that your vendors that sell similar products know about each other, without rubbing their noses in it too much. When one vendor really feels the presence of a close competitor, you’ll be amazed by how much your pricing can improve in a short space of time. Even if you’re planning to stay with a certain vendor, the very fact that they know you’re in contact with their rivals can be enough to spark a big drop in their pricing. Let’s say you were running a construction firm, and looking to shave down costs on a bulk order like your hardwood crane mats. Call up your current vendor, and let them know that while you’d prefer to stay with them, you absolutely need to reduce costs. There’s no need to mention competitors directly; they’ll get the message!

3 Ways Small Businesses Can Improve Employee Engagement

Employee engagement has an impact on everything from productivity to employee retention to morale. A variety of studies have found that highly engaged workplaces have 20% or higher productivity and profits per employee than those that don’t. Let’s look at three ways companies can improve their employee engagement.

1. Get Honest Feedback and Then Act on It

Companies must first determine the level of employee engagement instead of acting based on impressions and anecdotes. Data driven management decisions are not impossible in Human Resources, but they may not be possible if the people collecting the data are biased in how they collect the data or interpret it.

The solution is to outsource employee engagement surveys to third parties such as Insightlink (for more information about Insightlink and their services, click here) so that management doesn’t receive overly rosy reports or biased action plans. This can happen because employees are afraid to tell HR about problems out of fear it will get back to their managers, data collection may ignore high non-response rates in favor of the skewed positive image or use feedback as justification for its pre-existing desired actions instead of what employees want. When a third party runs anonymous surveys, you’ll get more honest information than if HR could come back to “talk” to submitters and more detailed, actionable advice.

How to Produce Great Promotional Videos for Your Business

Video is one of the most powerful ways to market to huge numbers of people. If you approach this marketing strategy in the right way, it has the potential to generate new business like no other marketing methods can. However, if you produce poor quality videos, it can affect your business’s reputation and it could cost you a lot of money in the long run. This is why you should be aware of the tips below, so that every promotional video you create from now on is a success.

Focus on High-quality Content

No matter what type of video you create, it has to contain high quality content. This is particularly true when it comes to promotional videos. These types of videos need to educate, entertain or provide value in some other way. If you don’t achieve this goal, your viewers won’t wait around for long and your video marketing efforts will achieve very little.

Research

To create higher quality videos, it’s essential to carry out extensive research on the topic or area your video addresses. This includes research on your own industry and your potential shoppers and customers who will be viewing your videos.