When funds are limited, where should you spend your money?

  1. A logo that will work in multiple formats (horizontal and vertical) and will load easily to the web. Keep it simple and easy to read.
  2. Great photography. A picture says 1000 words, so make sure you have a few beautifully shot photographs of your offer in action.  They can be arty, so long as they remain obvious and relevant.  You will use these images to help populate your website, social media posts, print ads, business cards. Don’t skimp!  Unless you are a professional photographer, pay to find these images on sites like shutterstock or other stock photo websites.
  3. A great website, there are many options available.  In the past some of our clients have used rocketspark.com who provide pay-as-you go, templated websites that you can build yourself. Their templates are intuitive and very easy to use.
  4. A great accountant, this doesn’t mean one of the big firms.  Find someone who will provides monthly or bi-monthly financials so that you have numbers on hand when you need them.  A set of accounts at the end of the year only benefits the taxman. You need to know where you are at all year round.   
  5. Once you have all this in hand you can begin to think about advertising. Think big but try to spend small.  Your aim should be to drive as much traffic as possible where they BUY and or ENQUIRE about your services. You can use social media to promote your business too! Facebook makes it easy to target specific audiences and run campaigns for as little as $5. This is a fantastic way to get your brand out there for minimal investments. 

Advice for all those scaling-up

Determine what key roadblocks are in the way of doing more business and spend in these areas to get these things sorted.  Prioritise your spend.  If your people are ready and well-resourced to handle more sales and your processes are streamlined, so your customers won’t get frustrated doing business with you, then focus on creating new demand. Advertising is where you should spend first.  If not, get prepped to take new demand or you will lose customers as fast as you add them.

If you’re worried how you’re going to fund new business then your focus should be on improving your cashflow. Look at ways to increase profit per sale.  Do you need to add more staff of systems to improve efficiencies of each sale?  How much have you got tied up in stock or outstanding accounts?