As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.”  And with economic downturns, companies face that necessity and are driven to improve efficiency and reduce costs (hopefully without sacrificing their brands in the process.)

With that in mind, here are 5 technologies that may be helpful for your business in a tight economy:

5. Pitchengine:  Pitchengine is a great way to publish your own press releases, for free, and have them indexed by search engines quickly. PR is valuable, but can be expensive and Pitchengine provides an inexpensive option for self-managed PR.  If you have to make cuts to your PR budget, Pitchengine can help you keep PR alive during the downturn.

4. GoToMeeting: GoToMeeting is a low-cost alternative to Webex, and is a no-brainer for any firm looking to reduce expenses.  Does EVERY meeting need to be face-to-face?  Is it really the best option to leave tomorrow for a same-day trip?  If you can, schedule meetings via web/teleconference using GotoMeeting.  It’s near impossible to find a flight for $49- GotoMeeting’s per month rate for 1 license.

3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn helps keep you connected until the next conference or tradeshow.  Get involved in groups, build your own group, request introductions through existing contacts.  Linkedin offers a free version with huge value to sales/marketing teams looking for ways to grow their network and find prospects.  Most importantly, it keeps you connected with contacts you’ve already made in between those face-to-face encounters. Get further involved for more top-of-mind awareness. Being more active and involved on LinkedIn will generate results.

2. Email management software: Ignore the obvious bias; adding this technology will improve your business- I guarantee it.  You will improve the response time on emails for sales and support, you will have better accountability and reporting and it’s simply more efficient than any other method we’ve seen.  BoldMail solves a real business problem and in a tight economy provides the big three – low cost, high efficiency, increased productivity.

1. Live Chat: Here’s the obvious point – you can have many quality chat interactions at one time and only one call.  No matter how you slice it, chat is inexpensive and helps you connect with more potential sales with less resources.  In this type of economic environment, if you want to capture more sales online, there is no faster way to do it than to add live chat to your website. Live chat improves conversion rates, helps reduce shopping cart abandonment, and will positively impact customer satisfaction.  Name 1 other technology that you can implement in minutes that will do all of that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Business Management, Customer Service, Email Management, Live Chat, Public Relations, Social Networking, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.