Smart Ways to Use Your EOY Marketing Budget

The Gist

• Maximize unused funds. Invest your surplus marketing budget in AI training, tech integration or prepaid campaigns to enhance efficiency and ROI.

• Upgrade team skills. Use end-of-year funds to provide certifications and training, and keep your team sharp while improving workflows. 

• Enhance content and data. Close data gaps and expand content creation with unused budget to strengthen next year’s marketing campaigns and strategic efforts.

Often, marketers are so worried about overspending that they’ll squirrel away resources all year and end up in Q4 with the different, more egregious problem of underspending.

Keeping an eye on your budget is responsible and well-intentioned, but underspending is perhaps more dangerous than overspending. Not only will you have to explain to your CFO why you deserve the same budget as last year when you didn’t use it. You’ll also have to answer questions about marketing’s underperformance and reduced impact.

If you’re not using your marketing budget, expect the C-suite to ask questions like, “Did marketing do enough to support the business?” and “Are you unable to make smart investment decisions?” After all, just as you report to your CFO, the C-suite is under pressure to answer to the board about revenue and expenses.

The smart marketer manages on both sides of the coin, no more than 3% over or under budget. But, as marketers are wont to do, it’s likely you’ll enter Q4 in eight months or so with stockpiled dollars, and you’ll worry about run rates heading into the next budgeting cycle.

Here are six ways to use those unspent funds to better your department, meet your goals for the year and make your CFO and finance team happy.

Table of Contents

Provide In-House Training and Certification

While you don’t want to use your surplus marketing budget to increase headcount, you should consider using it to increase the knowledge and capabilities of your current in-house team. Upgrade or invest in their skills by paying for training and certifications that will create efficiencies and better workflows. The end of the year is the best time of year to do it, as everyone has a little more time and capacity. Helping your people also signals that you care about their development and advancement, which does wonders for end-of-year burnout and turnover.

It’s also smart to invest in AI training specifically. While you can (and probably should) offload deeper AI functions to a team of experts who maintain the organization’s big-picture, business-first mindset, offering your in-house team some fundamental AI training supports them in finding everyday workflow efficiencies. The training doesn’t even need to be done before the year is over. It can carry on into next year and better position your department to be successful, yet it will be paid for by this year’s marketing budget.

Related Article: 14 Marketing Certifications That Can Help You Earn a Better Salary

Lock in Prepaid Investments

Take advantage of end-of-year and holiday rates on prepaid investments like media buys to increase ad placements or programmatic buys. Similarly, you can prepay for customer surveys and customer research. You’re paying now to promote those surveys to your captive audience, but the body of work will continue into the next year.

Streamline Your Marketing Tech

Most marketers have swivel chair syndrome within their tech stacks, which is a lack of efficient integration methodology for disjointed (and often expensive) platforms and programs. Put those spare marketing dollars to work to hire a provider that can help integrate your technology, streamline workflows and automate data exchanges.

You can even bring on a marketing operations expert just for a brief time to help you find the quick wins that will result in better ROI. Or make a one-time investment in a program that will improve everything you do next year. For example, pull the trigger on a one-and-done upsell offer for predictive analytics. Deals on improving your marketing tech stack are often at their best in Q4, so it’s an ideal time to take advantage of holiday savings.

Close Data and Content Gaps

Fuel your programs for the next year by scaling up on content and addressing gaps in your data if there are missing attributes. I’ve never met a marketer who has all the content assets they need to support their campaigns, and one way to scale up quickly is by investing in a model that quickly adds writers to your team. You can also use those unspent funds on creative design resources like imagery or b-roll that will beef up your campaigns.

Refresh Your Brand Strategy

Along with adding content or design assets, your surplus marketing budget can go toward a brand refresh. If your company has extensively evolved, consider investing in a full-out refresh, but even if it remains relatively unchanged, lay out the extra budget for an audit to see what can easily be refreshed and repurposed. Updating your brand assets can provide a lift in image and search performance.

Related Article: Victoria’s Secret Rebrand: Insights & Lessons From a Billion-Dollar Loss

Strengthen Community Connections

Spend those unused dollars on high-value customer relationships, whether that’s sending holiday swag to strategic accounts as a thank-you or planning an executive round table or networking event. Plus, you’ll likely get end-of-year deals if you book venues and create assets now.

There are even more ways to spend that excess marketing budget before the year closes, like testing new strategies or pooling resources with partners to maximize impact.