Marketing can save you time and money 🙌
Something really sneaky happens to business owners all the time!
As our businesses grow, you tend to invest in software - SaaS (software as a service). This means that you subscribe to use software on a monthly or yearly basis from a company.
For example, if you have a Squarespace website, you are most likely subscribed to use Squarespace software on a yearly basis. Most of the software I use is purchased this way - my website, CRM, etc.
Later on, you realize some of the software you are using wasn't necessary to your business - somebody probably talked you into it. Sadly, it was probably someone who was 1) a sales person or 2) a colleague who doesn’t have the same income or expenses as you.
It’s usually not until six months or a year later, you realize, “Oh, I didn't need that”. It’s painful because no one likes to admit to money that’s been wasted.
As a marketing strategist and coach, one of my favorite things to do is to find out what types of software my clients are using and see where we can cut costs. I’ve saved many clients hundreds of dollars - here’s some examples below:
One common place this shows up is with social media schedulers such as Hootsuite. I worked with one client who was paying $50/mo for this software and not using it. Luckily, I knew alternatives that were FREE and saved them $600/year.
Another space I’ve helped multiple clients is reduce their web hosting cost. One client had paid for an SSL certificate, a security protocol that can be helpful for some businesses. This company had purchased multiple SSL accounts for multiple web hosting accounts and in reality, they only needed one account! The extra SSL accounts were costing them over $200/year. Luckily I was able to advise them and help them cancel and stop the other accounts.
Another client had committed to a bunch of different softwares such as social media schedulers and more. I helped them realize they could schedule social media in the native versions and save hundreds of dollars a year as well.
There’s also this common problem, many times businesses are sold the software that does it all! Some SAAS software tried to solve multiple problems at once: invoice, time tracking, questionnaires, CRMs and much more. I’ve fallen for these as well, the trick is to test out and really make sure and ask yourself, what do I really need? Sometimes the solution is using a few different software tools that are low-cost and in the end, they are cheaper than the mega-software, trying to solve all of your problems.
Recently I had a client who was selling 1 product and was working with GoDaddy (oh GoDaddy, most of you know I’m not a fan!). They convinced my client to commit to their web hosting and build a single web page and they charged them over $1000. My client didn’t need that at all! Instead, they could have gone a number of other paths such as building a website on Square, etc, which is FREE - which I’ll be writing about in a future newsletter so stay tuned.
In this case, I wished my client would have consulted with me BEFORE speaking with GoDaddy and I could have saved them over $1000/year and the headache of working with GoDaddy. In the end, they wasted a lot of their time working with GoDaddy’s team (which wasn’t great).
Want to save money or prevent spending a ton on your marketing? I love to do a marketing audit for my client on all of their software to see what's really working and what you're paying for.
I can also review how much you are paying your virtual assistant, web designer, or agency. Sadly, I've seen that happen all the time - someone like yourself is promised lots of content, social media posts and more and the freelancer or agency doesn’t deliver.
What’s stopping you from saving money? Let me know and let's talk!