The bad economy isn’t bad for everyone. In fact, if you’re in the discount world, these are probably some good times for you. After all, the first thing that people do in a down economy is to start looking for ways to trim their budgets. And if you’re Walmart, Great Clips or Costco, those are the first places people turn to.

Speaking of watching your budget, if you’re a marketer and you’re trying to manage your ROI, one of the things you’re probably doing is to focus on highly-measurable forms of marketing including direct response.

If that’s the case, you might be interested in checking out some of the articles on The 60 Second Marketer website that focus on highly-measurable forms of advertising. These include “7 1/2 Rules of Email Marketing: A 60 Second Guide” and “The New Direct Response Television: A Roadmap for the 21st Century” both of which include great tools and tips on how to get the most bang for your marketing dollar.

Which brings us full circle to our main point — if you’re a consumer looking for ways to manage your budget, you can turn to Walmart, Great Clips and Costco. If you’re a marketer looking for ways to manage your budget, you can turn to direct response marketing.

Several marketing-oriented organizations in Atlanta, Georgia, including the AMA, the Ad Club, the AIMA, BMA, PMA and the PRSA, have joined forces to create the second annual Atlanta Integrated Marketing Summit.

Last year, the event drew 300 professionals to a summit that offered marketing, advertising, publicity and PR executives the latest thinking on integrated marketing, presented by high-profile marketing gurus.

Recently, Paul Gigante, Founder and Creative Director of Gigante Vaz Partners, sat down with Linda Lindsey, President-Elect of the Business Marketing Association, Atlanta Chapter, and an active part of this year’s AIMS event, to discuss the future of marketing, PR and communications. Here are excerpts from Linda’s interview:

AIMS:  What is the next big thing in interactive marketing?

Paul:  Of course, there are quite a few, but mobile strikes us as an area which is very promising. The speed with which people are adopting the iPhone and other new devices represents a tremendous wave.  These devices are essentially portable web devices.  With the increase in the ability to deliver more robust interaction through these devices, we will see them become more of a marketing tool.

AIMS:  In difficult economic times, where can a marketer get the most bang for their buck?

Paul:  It depends on the specific audiences and needs of the marketer of course.  But broadly speaking, Search Engine Optimization as part of a wider Search Engine Marketing program or SEM is a relatively inexpensive and very effective thing to do.  There’s nothing more important for a marketer than being in front of the people who are already looking for you, so it always pays to optimize your site to increase organic (FREE) listings on search engines.   Nirvana here is that when someone searches a key word you want a click from, you come up in the first three organic listings.

AIMS:  What is the best investment a company can make with regard to marketing?

Paul:  The best investment you can make in marketing is time.  Time and attention from the top levels of management is crucial to the success of your programs.

AIMS:  What is the most important business lesson you’ve learned and how did you learn it?

Paul:  All business is personal.  Success comes when you focus on the individual career needs of the people you do business with, rather than just on how good your work is.

AIMS:  What is the “one” thing a marketing candidate should have on their resume?

Paul:  An active cultural life.

AIMS:  Traditionally, B to B marketing has been 2 to 5 years behind B to C marketing, do you think technology is closing that gap?

Paul:  First, B to B has long been oriented toward ROI evaluations with regard to marketing, something that consumer brands have been less interested in historically.  So I don’t know if they are “behind”.  That being said, good clients and their marketing agencies are closing the technology gap in terms of involving users.  Once you realize that business people are people too, you realize you can do more B to C types of things to reach them.  We’ve been doing that with great success for a long time.

To hear Paul’s ideas on integrated marketing, register for the Atlanta Integrated Marketing Summit by visiting their site: www.atlantamarketingsummit.com.  To learn more about Paul Gigante or Gigante Vaz Partners, visit www.gigantevaz.com.