Editor's note: Keith Malo is director of research services with Largo, Fla.-based Valpak Direct Marketing Systems Inc. John Widmer is Valpak’s audience research manager.

In its 2009 Annual Survey of Market Research Professionals, MarketResearchCareers.com found purchasers of marketing research services are expecting their 2009 budgets to decrease by 9.5 percent compared to 2008 - creating a watershed occurrence against 20 years of spending increases.

This same survey reported that “market research professionals are expecting 2009 to be a brutal year,” adding “80 percent of market research professionals (up from 64 percent in 2008) believe their job will be more difficult in 2009.”

Neither of these conclusions is surprising to present-day marketing research professionals.

Independent of economic conditions, corporate-based research professionals have a fiduciary obligation to be fiscally responsible stewards of their employer’s marketing research investments. Yet with a globally downturned economy, the accounting lens is more sharply focused on spending behavior enterprise-wide, and marketing research is not immune.

Employed by a well-known American brand that delivers monthly savings - in the form of coupons - to consumers, we’d like to think we know a thing or two about achieving savings and making a dollar stretch, and offer a few considerations to fellow marketing researchers.

Inventory all research

First, inventory all research team activities with the objective of removing any that do not add value. For example, consider syndicated data that may require downloading to Excel, only to need further manipulation for a PowerPoint sales presentation. Expending time to format Excel spreadsheets that will never see an external audience may not be a valuable exercise and may be worthy of elimination.

In developing primary research programs, be imaginative with design, yet don’t compromise integrity or program quality. Consider lowering n-sizes, as long as doing so still achieves an acceptable margin of error. For instance, you may be accustomed to obtaining exactly 1,000 interviews. Instead, identify a comfortable margin of error and reassess the sample size. You may find it only takes 875 interviews to reach a ±3 percent margin of error, potentially saving thousands of interviewing dollars. Or perhaps the 18 in-home observational sessions can be downsized to nine to provide the high-level directional information required.

Don’t overlook a complete change in methodology. If feasible and operationally possible, take a traditional telephone survey to an online platform, particularly one that uses a self-provisioned online survey tool like SurveyGizmo or Zoomerang; doing so can significantly reduce the financial outlay and keep critical information flowing.

If you have not viewed online survey applications as a legitimate option for your primary research toolkit, now is the time to reconsider. With research-trained staff, using this do-it-yourself approach can materialize cost savings that will extend the research budget. Over the past few years these tools have made improvements to offer greater functionality. Many standard online applications now support complex surveys with advanced skip logic, ranking questions, continuous-sum questions, pictures and video - all functions only previously available through expensive software platforms or partnerships with research firms specialized in Internet-based surveys.

Whether outsourced or in-house-managed, individual survey programs must remain focused on the most important information needed. Avoid survey-creep to manage costs and maintain respondent engagement. This can be a challenge in a period where more research projects get postponed and many stakeholders want their concerns addressed within the few projects that obtain approval. But don’t ignore opportunities to unite complementary - in content or operational terms - research projects into one program to achieve maximum efficiency.

Research suppliers are important to the in-house marketing research team’s success. Nevertheless, now is the time to secure the best terms for the enterprise’s research investment. Solicit multiple quotes and don’t be afraid to negotiate. Acquiring competitive bids keeps all parties honest and proves to the CFO that limited marketing research funding is being used intelligently. Of course the proposal process and contract-awarding should not come at the expense of compromising quality.

Whenever possible, leverage current resources. These assets may include team skills and talents, internal databases or tools such as online survey applications and statistical software packages. Once you have identified an opportunity, confirm the objectives and then think through cost-effective alternatives to accomplish your goals. For example, the organization may want to explore customer response to different policy changes. By partnering with program managers, the research team can utilize its talents to establish test-and-control scenarios and offer other program guidance and analysis. Or maybe there is an opportunity to data-mine traditionally unanalyzed customer data files to glean pertinent insights that may be further investigated using the customers’ e-mail addresses and the team’s online survey tool. Capitalizing on any of these alternative solutions, you may discover that with little to no research expense the organization’s needle can be influenced.

Competitive intelligence function

If your research team doesn’t manage the competitive intelligence function formally, now is the time to build it.

In these economically-challenged times, staying too insular and taking your eyes off the competition could prove catastrophic. Historically, downturned economies have ignited rivalry, inspired price wars and fueled other competitive actions. It is imperative to closely monitor the competition during these times, which is also an activity that can often be accomplished with little monetary investment.

Analyzing and assessing the other players in the market space does not require advanced espionage tools. There are several cost-effective and ethical ways to execute a reasonable competitive knowledge operation, including simple public-domain and Internet searches, skimming through the trades and dialogues with sales reps and others with daily life in the field who may observe the competition.

There are also several free Internet tools to help execute competitive intelligence investigations and yield a wealth of information, including:

•  company/trade Web sites to access annual reports, financial filings and personnel moves;

•  Google Alerts to receive e-mail notification whenever competitors are in the news;

•  WatchThatPage.com to stay informed of changes to important competitor Web pages;

•  online job boards (e.g., Monster, CareerBuilder) to identify the positions for which competitors are recruiting; and

•  free Web analytics services such as Compete.com to observe competitors’ Web traffic and actions.

For information, such as trending data or product launch announcements, that a competitor once had online but is no longer available, visit Archive.org to bring back that Web page you saw last year.

With this intelligence you can create meaningful debriefs to offer key stakeholders and sales channels comprehensive overviews of major competitor organizations. These competitive-intelligence reviews should incorporate any information on the organization’s recent and upcoming strategies, new and pending product launches, sales figures/projections and marketing collateral. Partner with sales and marketing leaders to develop marketing strategies to exploit the competitor’s weaknesses, combat their strengths and position your business as the stronger option in the marketplace.

Never easy

No matter the external economic environment, whether it’s good or bad, it is never easy to manage and lead a corporate marketing research function. Yet distressed economic climates accentuate the need for researchers to put on their creative hats to develop strategies and supporting programs to stretch the budget and still yield organizational results. By following some of the above suggestions, you and your department can emerge from these tough times stronger, more focused and with a higher internal profile.