I was watching an interview with Donald Trump the other night and he asserted that he believes that the current economic climate is the perfect opportunity for “the new entrepreneur” to rise to the top. I certainly hope he is right. I am not a brand new entrepreneur, but my company is extremely entrepreneurial. The old is being peeled away, and companies are reinventing themselves and how they communicate. We are no exception. Not that long ago, we took a drastic step in eliminating an explicit sales role from our team. This resulted in the distinctive positioning of our production and creative personnel as the first touch for every client. We’ve been developing a new approach to marketing, too.

Traditional advertising – print ads, trade shows, sales pitches on the phone, and so forth – are no longer the norm… and they are often outside the reach of entrepreneurial budgets. IDC CMO Advisory’s 2009 Barometer study, “almost 70% of technology marketers indicate that they’ll be increasing their program investment in digital marketing in 2009, while 72% of companies will be decreasing their in-person events spend and 60% decreasing their advertising spend (print, broadcast and corporate sponsorships).” The study notes the three essential, fundamental marketing tools are still your website, email, and search engine marketing.

But there’s Marketing 2.0: a broad new range of opportunities to engage and differentiate your organization in the marketplace. This means reaching people via the format that best speaks to them, with a sense of timeliness, and personalization never before possible. For example, you may need to create a white paper and/or a webcast and/or a microsite and/or a video overview of the same content because different types of people will have different engagement preferences. The  Marketing 2.0 blog has some great pragmatic approaches to this.

We have been working with our clients on Marketing 2.0 for quite some time, and we’re incorporating it alongside traditional tactics in The WOW Factory’s marketing mix. We’re webcasting. We’re on LinkedIn and Facebook, and we’re getting on board with Twitter. We send very targeted direct mail. We have an email newsletter and this blog. We’re in the process of updating our website again to add more, valuable content. We engage in search engine optimization and marketing. And, of course, we’re networking with colleagues and clients: good old-fashioned word of mouth is still the best marketing you can get.

Many of you are doing even more up-to-the minute and edgier offerings in Marketing 2.0, and might even feel the LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are already old news. We’d love to hear what you are doing and seeing success with. Podcasting? Vimeo or YouTube? Digg? Ning communities? Facebook or LinkedIn? Tell us your pain and your successes.