By Gresham Hill, President

Aldi Rocks

Hiring a designer, photographer, or me as your consultant almost always comes down to cost. At least in today’s slow economy. In the past, company leaders could hire me over the phone with no paperwork. However, today, budgets are tight, and almost everyone has to get approval before they can invest in a new cost (even if I’m going to make them more money). I get this. And since I focus on non-profit organizations who have the least money of all, I’ve done my best to keep our costs the lowest they can be without sacrificing quality and effectiveness.

I’m inspired by other companies that cut costs but maintain good quality. One of my favorite companies who does this is Aldi. If you do not have an Aldi Grocery Store, I pray you get one. This is shopping for the cheapest of the cheap. This group cuts cost so much that you have to put a quarter in just to get your shopping cart (don’t worry, you get it back when you return the cart). This prevents carts from getting stolen and it saves the company the cost of sending an employee into the parking lot twice a day to bring the carts to the store. They also charge for their shopping bags. Either you buy one of theirs or just bring your own. It’s another small way they keep costs down.

For a marketing company like mine, we do a lot of special things to keep costs down. One thing we do is work from home. In fact, none of our designers or video directors have an office. Why pay $800 per month for an office when you can do all of your editing from home? It does not hurt quality and our designers love it. We also cut expenses using an old Wal-Mart method: we negotiate a “best rate” for all of our designers that is a good 20-50% below their market rate. This makes us cheaper than most which saves our clients money. You’d be surprised but our designers love this because we take care of contracts, invoicing, and other project management duties that are a distraction for most “creative types”. Not to mention, they are guaranteed good work that challenges them and supports a worthy organization.

From a quality perspective, volume drives our costs down. Whereas an in-demand freelancer raises his prices as they get busier, we actually lower them as we are able to reach economies of scale. Also, since we take the weight of bookkeeping, contracting, and project management off of our creative people, they end up being more focused on a clients project which reduces the billable hours and improves quality.

There are many smaller ways we keep costs low but for the most part, we produced measurable returns on our projects. And when the income for our clients exceeds their costs, they keep coming back.