Saving money in the running of a business is always a good thing. In the beginning you want to keep your costs as low as possible so you’ve got room to grow as quickly as possible. This could mean saving money on large office spaces by starting small and not employing people too much too soon. 

Outsourcing is rising in popularity. Whether you hire freelancers or agency workers, it’s now easier than ever to find someone with the right skills online that can help out your business for a fraction of the cost of an employee. So here are a few things you could outsource to save a few pennies:

Marketing

Either you could handle the marketing yourself or pass it to an agency who specialises in working with small businesses. Both are cheaper solutions than hiring out a marketing team but at least hiring an agency won’t leave all your time sucked into marketing.

Marketing is time consuming as you usually need to cover a few bases to make it work like SEO, social media, written content and any other promotional ideas. So doing it yourself isn’t always an option unless you have a lot of free time.

Accountancy services

Rather than paying an in-house team to cover your accounting, why not hire an accountancy firm to take care of matters for you. You’ll likely end up saving a lot of money as you won’t have to pay for salaries or employee benefits. It’s usually just a monthly fee.

Virtual assistant

Why hire out an admin department when you can hire virtual assistants who will take care of the same stuff but without the expense. This is a good idea if you’re not ready to get office space and would have nowhere to put your admin people if you did hire any. Virtual assistants can cover things like phone answering, scheduling meetings, going through emails or even marketing.

Who to hire: Freelancers or agencies?

If you want to outsource then the next decision you’ve got to make is whether the task is better suited to a freelancer or an agency.

Freelancers

Outsourcing your work to freelancers will bring a degree of flexibility that a lot of businesses have been missing out on. You can hire freelancers as and when needed for various things which is good if your business goes through busy and quiet periods. However, you’re putting all your work in the hands of just one person usually, so mistakes or unavailability of the freelancer could be factors to consider.

Agencies

Agencies will often have a team of people working on whatever you need whether it’s marketing or accounting. As it’s usually not just down to one person, you might be able to talk to someone else if one person is unavailable. However, agencies are usually more expensive than hiring freelancers so if cost is your main concern, an agency might not be for you.

Whichever you choose, it’s important to do as much research as possible. Take a look at examples of their previous work or testimonials from previous clients. Make sure they’re a right fit for your company and will help you grow.

Have you ever outsourced some of your work to agencies or freelancers? What would you most likely outsource? Let us know your thoughts.

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About The Author

Kara Copple

An experienced business and finance writer, sometimes moonlighting as a fiction writer and blogger.

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