Businesses are always looking for ways to save money, but it’s important to pick the right places to cut back. Reducing employee benefits or salaries or cutting back on the quality of your products or services might reduce your costs in the short run, but in the long run, you may struggle to retain customers or quality staff. It’s cheaper to keep current clients and workers than to find new ones, so changes that are poorly thought out could end up negating even short-term gains. Below are a few better ways for your business to reduce spending.

Low-Cost Marketing

Look at ways to spend less money on your marketing, whether that’s including advertising in products you sell or ship to customers, improving your SEO for your website, or introducing loyalty programs that focus on perks that don’t cost you much or anything, like a first look at sales. Effective social media engagement can also be a great way to raise your profile without spending money. If you have the type of business that people review online, thank those who give you good reviews and see if you can solve the problems of dissatisfied customers. Even if you can’t help the specific people who leave the negative reviews, others will see your engagement, and this is positive.

Consolidate

Fewer platforms for various elements of your business can streamline your operations and save you money. If you have a fleet, putting fleet management, compliance and driver safety on one platform can make you more efficient. It’s easier to track costs, maintenance and driver performance and look at ways that you can improve. You may also be able to consolidate other departments in your business, such as accounting and human resources. Empower your employees to collaborate on finding money-saving solutions within their areas. They may have more specific insights into what would reduce spending than owners or supervisors do.

Consider Telecommuting

Though not appropriate or possible for every type of business, switching to remote work can save a great deal of money, reducing overhead for things like office space and equipment cost. There are still many creative team building activities that you can implement if you switch to remote but fear a loss of collaboration. An alternative to having a fully remote workforce, which can have disadvantages, is to take the hot desk approach, having different employees come in on different days but not providing individual workspaces. You could also look at ways to make elements of your work remote. For example, do your employees need to travel to every off-site meeting, or can they be done by video conferencing software?

Telecommuting is not the answer to everything. While many workers find themselves more productive working at home, others are dealing with even more distractions. Some employees and employers also feel that working offsite can inhibit teamwork or the creativity that can arise from people working together in the same environment. If you’re considering making the switch to a workforce that is at least partially remote, talk to your employees about their preferences and concerns. If some prefer to stay in the office while others do not, this could be a compromise that still saves money while keeping everyone happy.