Written by Jeremy Unruh

Many companies are under extreme pressure to make budget cuts and trim expenses in an effort to stay afloat during the current economic storm that has been looming over our heads for the last 18 months. Often times, there are two major budgets that can be effected by such turmoil.

The first place many businesses look to trim on costs is the IT budget. This is a tricky area to cut, as most companies have a substantial amount of the IT budget tied to fixed costs. However, many organizations are rapidly turning toward outsourcing IT services to experienced vendors in an effort to give their employees time to focus efforts on new and existing projects. This doesn’t mean sending jobs across seas to India in search of cheap labor. This simply means adding an experienced vendor specializing in application managed services in order to drive profit margin and increase revenue. This is smart business as it is a safe and cost effective way to ensure the health of the entire IT stack while freeing up internal resources.

The second budget many companies look to trim in a time of economic uncertainty is the marketing budget.  Now depending on the size of an organization, there are obvious cuts that can be made without putting to much thought into it. Usually the first to go are the high cost media outlets such as TV commercials, video, radio, and print ads. The reason that newspapers are going out of business and the most recent Superbowl had to sell discounted commercial spots is because the ROI isn’t what it was in the 90’s.  Companies marketing to both B2B and B2C are strictly cutting budgets in these areas because there are other media outlets that can be just as effective in driving awareness and creating leads.  Advertising on websites such as Linkedin, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc… are effective ways for companies to market to in an effort to drive more web traffic, spark interest and capture more leads. This does take time and is not going to show a profit gain over night. It will, however, help with corporate branding and is a cheap way to do some market research as to the pains your customers truly face.

Another affordable alternative is to devise mass email campaigns. Email is a relatively cheap and effective way to drive web traffic and with an intelligently devised message can result in sparking a positive response from the intended recipient. That being said it can also spark a negative response however, if your product or service can help increase revenue in this economy, companies are far more receptive to hear your sales pitch knowing it will benefit their organization.  In the long run, companies need effective IT and Marketing strategies in order to make it out of this recession alive. The companies who are smart and organized about their decisions in these areas and make the proper adjustments will rise above the competition when things finally turn around.