Great post. The recession or downturn, depending on whether or not you are an economic purist or just someone feeling the pinch, is a great time for marketers to assess their approach to marketing.

When I joined my company two and a half years ago, they were doing a lot of very traditional marketing such as snail mail direct mail campaigns and a very static web site that was nothing more than an online version of the brochure.

I asked the team to throw all their preconceived notions out the window. We now have a site that is at least interactive with our target customer. All of our demand creation is electronic. And, we’re tapping into blogs and other social media to reach out to customers, business alliances, press, analysts and others.

In short, lead generation has doubled, quality of leads has improved, and we’ve slashed expenses.