For many small business owners, whether they be a brick-and-mortar high street business or people offering small products or services from a laptop in their spare room, times are likely to be tough.

This is because of the current rise in the cost of living, and the inevitable squeeze on the purse strings of even the better-off people in society. So, if you have a niche product or service (especially one that might be considered a ‘luxury’), you might be worried about your future.

For this reason, you need to make sure that every person that comes your way, either through advertising or through cheaper, more organic methods, has the best chance of becoming a customer. You might not have the first idea of how to do this, but by using some tried and tested methods below, you may be able to see a light at the end of that very long tunnel.

Investing in SEO to Gain More Natural Traffic

If you weren’t already aware, SEO stands for search engine optimisation. SEO has the goal of making content on your website, or about your business, appear higher on search engines, like Google, when industry-specific searches are made.

If this sounds complicated, it is because it can be. Attempting to do something as in-depth as SEO for a niche business is not for the faint-hearted and wasting time and money doing it yourself is usually not to be advised. Instead, employing a specialist SEO Agency can be a good move.

This is especially true if it looks at your needs and those of the user to create engaging content and place yourself as an authority figure in your niche industry. Content like this can go a long way to making sure that, when people consider buying a product or service like the one you offer, yours is the name on the tip of their tongue.

Look at What You Are Paying for Your Overheads

As a small business, what you pay on rent and utilities is likely to be as big a chunk out of your bottom line as the cost of materials and your payroll. For this reason, you could spend time looking to see where you can save on utilities and rent.

With the cost of energy bills being a big concern, you can try to counteract this by perhaps moving to smaller premises due to cutting down your stockholding (again another cash-saving method). You could even consider doing away with your premises entirely and just choosing to use a service like Amazon FBA to run everything from your laptop. You can also look for better deals from your internet provider or the mobile phones that you use as part of the everyday running of your business.

Look at Your Supply Chain and Distribution Network

If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, you will have identified what your regular sales are likely to be and identified any pain points with getting your product to your customers in one piece and on time.

In the current financial climate, it is unfortunately time to be ruthless with what you do in these two areas, and undertake some tense negotiations with suppliers over prices. This might not be necessarily to decrease prices but to put on hold on any imminent price increases that might be on the cards. You will also need to look at how you get things to your customer, by either finding a partner who is willing to do a deal with you on shipping or possibly rejigging your packaging so that they fit within a smaller package size and can be sent for a cheaper rate. While doing this, though, any changes you make mustn’t impact the quality of service you offer to your customer. Otherwise, you will quickly find that these changes are a false economy because they could impact your sales.