Illustration of business spending

3 Rules for Business Spending

If you’re like most small businesses, the pandemic has taken a bite out of your budget due to lost sales.  In a previous blog post, we talked about 10 ways to increase revenue. If you can increase revenue, you’ll have more operating capital to sink into the things that could really make a difference for your company. With that in mind, we’re going to focus on 3 rules for business spending.

1.  Focus on value, not price

Don’t make purchase decisions in accordance with price alone. A high-priced item may be worth the extra expenditure if it is the best solution to a business problem.  For instance, our EZnet Scheduler® appointment scheduling software is not a “free for life” scheduling tool that comes with very limited features, nor is it the lowest priced.  By the same token, it also isn’t the highest priced, either.

Starting at an affordable $22.87 per month, EZnet Scheduler enables you to do some pretty cool things.  For example, you can schedule complex, overlapping appointments and manage resources. And you can take the hassle out of appointment scheduling by automating the entire process, from scheduling to confirmation to notifications and reminders.  EZnet Scheduler does all the work so you don’t have to.

And then we make it easy for your customers to pay you via credit card right within the scheduler.  How valuable are those features for your business?  They’re not free, but they’re an incredible value for the price.

2.  Invest in search engine optimization (SEO)

One of the first steps in acquiring new customers and thereby increasing revenue is to enable them to find you.  According to WPforms, 47% of consumers visit a company’s website before purchasing products and services.  That means that almost HALF of all potential customers for your business are looking for you online. But they may not know the name of your company. As a result, they will use keywords to search for companies in your industry.  If your SEO isn’t up to snuff, you will not be found.

Here’s a startling statistic about online search behavior:  According to WebFX, only 25 percent of users go to the second page of search results. To look at it another way, 75 percent of internet users visit websites of only those companies that appear on the first page of search results.

In other words, if you’re on the second page of results, you will not be found. This is why you need to invest in SEO—search engine optimization.

In simple terms, SEO is the process of optimizing your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results (preferably on the first page of results), the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.

3.  Purchase cybersecurity liability insurance

You have business insurance to protect your physical office space, health insurance so your workers can get well when they’re sick, and auto insurance for your company vehicles. But what happens when your company’s technology infrastructure is attacked?

Since 2020, malware has increased by 358% overall and ransomware has increased by 435%. Moreover, Google has registered over 2 million phishing sites as of January 2021 — this is up from 1.7 million in January 2020, which equates to a 27% increase.

If you’re a small business, don’t think you’re immune.

According to Fundera, 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses. In fact, there was a 424% increase in new small business cyber breaches in 2020.  And 60% of small businesses that are victims of a cyberattack go out of business within six months.

What’s the financial impact of cyberattacks?  Cybercrime costs small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) more than $2.2 million a year!

What this all means is that small businesses need to invest in cybersecurity liability insurance, which can cover the costs associated with getting your business back up and running if you’re the victim of a cyberattack.

Cyber liability insurance covers financial losses that result from data breaches and other cyber events.  Most small businesses pay an annual premium of $2,000 or less for a cyber liability policy and coverage for costs of a breach typically include:

  1. Data restoration;
  2. Loss of income and extra expenses and cyber extortion (the cost of paying ransom to the hacker);
  3. Notification costs (for instance, informing customers and vendors that your data has been breached); and
  4. Crisis management expenses.

 

 

 

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