Tips to Keep Small Businesses Afloat During Times of Economic Recession

Recession can have a severe impact on any business regardless of that business’s size. While we’ve been working to crawl out of the 2008 downturn, an inflammation of the old recession or an entirely new one could easily arise again. The worst hit, obviously, are likely going to be the “small fish”. Even if that’s you, sitting around and worrying about what might happen isn’t going to help you. There comes a time when one must take action if his or her company is going to survive.

Here are some tips that you can use to keep your small businesses afloat when the market is mean.

Shift your focus to profitable customers

When times get rough you cannot expect all of your clients to give you the same amount of business that they did when the economy was in good shape. And, when times are hard, you can’t afford to give your attention to clients who aren’t going to be giving you as much business as they did before. If your business is starting to have some problems, prioritize those companies that are managing to continue to do well and that are still giving you a good amount of business. Try to set up contracts with these businesses so that you will be guaranteed work for at least six months or more.

Attract more business regardless of margins

When everybody is losing business, nobody is going to fault you for taking on projects wherever you can get them, even if those projects are small or don’t pay as well as similar work has paid in the past. It is important, though, that you still take some care in choosing those projects because taking on anything and everything could damage your reputation, which will make it difficult for the higher paying clients to take you seriously when they can afford your services again. Yes, you want to pay your bills, but you also want to demonstrate that you have standards.

Use low cost marketing services

Ditch the expensive marketing channels and focus on things like SEO and other low cost internet marketing initiatives. Do not, no matter how tempting it might be, stop advertising your business. So, even if you can’t afford to buy mainstream ads like billboards or television commercials, you want to make sure that your web design, your SEO and your other online efforts are perfect. Every company can benefit from using an SEO service from time-to-time. You can be a big or small business and it should still be able to help you. True digital marketing services for large corporations are giving companies an idea on what is on offer to expand there businesses on and offline.

Look for more business-to-business deals

Always look for deals that allow you to buy or sell things in bulk. This way, if focusing on a few special clients isn’t helping your profit margin, you can make up the difference by selling a larger number of lower costing items. You can even attract scads of new customers by offering discounts on these already lower priced products, which makes it look like they’re saving even more money than they had anticipated. Try to think out of the box when it comes to these types of promotions and money making efforts. Believe it or not, recession is a great time to try new things because most of your competitors will likely be trying to “play it safe.”

Ramp down

This is the hardest part of saving your business from being eaten by the recession. Asking your employees to leave, especially if your company is very small and has cultivated a familial atmosphere, is always difficult. As cold as it may sound, though, you may have to let a few people go. Making things trickier, you can’t just fire people at random. You have to try to keep your employee pool balanced if you want to keep your business alive. Making sure your business energy expenditure is balanced as well is going to positively impact your business if controlled appropriately, I hear that to compare energy is the best way to find great energy deals for your business to allow it to grow in these financially challenging times.

There are, of course, a few things that you might want to think about if you can’t stomach the idea of reducing the size of your employee pool. If your business is badly in debt, for example, and you are having trouble continuing your services, you might think about filing bankruptcy. Filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy, is the fastest and easiest method for small companies to get a debt-free fresh start.

Vendor Negotiation

Recessions affect everybody, so when you think your vendors are cutting corners, say something. Small business owners have more power than you might think. In situations like these, try to find common ground. It is always better to communicate and look for a solution that helps you and your vendor stay afloat than to simply let your vendor take control of everything.

Staff Writer (2014 June 19) Tips to Keep Small Businesses Afloat During Times of Economic Recession. Retrieved on June 20, 2014 from inquisitr.com