If you’re responsible for a marketing budget, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve spent some quality time with a spreadsheet lately.
Last week, I talked about why building a 2027 marketing budget requires looking at more than what you spent last year. If you haven’t read that one, you can find it here. But I’m not going to make that argument again.
This week, we’re opening the spreadsheet.
Before somebody puts the final stamp of approval on your 2027 marketing budget, there are some things worth examining that may not be obvious from looking at the totals. Because a budget can add up perfectly and still contain duplicated expenses, wasted money, underperforming resources, unfunded priorities and investments that are compensating for problems somewhere else.
So before you approve yours, take a hard look at these seven things.
1. Results: What Did This Actually Produce?
Start with the meaningful expenditures from 2026 and ask a simple question: What did we get for this?
That doesn’t mean you need to calculate a perfectly attributable ROI for every dollar. Marketing doesn’t work that neatly. A trade show, an SEO program, a website improvement and a paid campaign don’t necessarily produce value in the same way.
But you should be able to articulate what success looked like.
Maybe it was qualified leads or sales opportunities. Maybe it was increased organic visibility, better conversion rates, more engagement from the right audience, stronger customer retention or increased awareness in a market you’re trying to penetrate.
The metric will vary. The important thing is that there’s a reason the expenditure exists.
Go through the meaningful line items and put an outcome next to each one. If nobody can reasonably explain what you received in exchange for the money, flag it. That doesn’t automatically mean you should cut it. It means it deserves a closer look before you fund it again.
2. Overlap: Where Are You Paying Twice for the Same Thing?
This is one of those things that’s easy to miss because the duplicate expenses don’t always sit next to each other on the spreadsheet.
Your agency may include something in its retainer that an internal employee is also spending time doing. Your SEO company and content company may have overlapping responsibilities. Two software platforms may provide many of the same capabilities. Different departments may even be paying separately for different tools designed to accomplish essentially the same thing.
None of those expenses necessarily looks wrong by itself.
The duplication only becomes obvious when you stop looking at what you’re buying and start looking at what you’re paying each resource to accomplish.
Take your significant vendors, platforms and internal marketing resources and write down what each one actually does. If you start seeing the same answers more than once, figure out whether there’s a legitimate reason for the overlap.
You may be surprised how much money is hiding there.
3. Leaks: Are You Spending Money to Compensate for Something That’s Broken?
This is one of the biggest problems we find when we look at a company’s overall digital marketing ecosystem.
They’re spending more on paid search because organic visibility is weak. They’re buying more traffic because the website isn’t converting the traffic they already have. They’re generating more leads because something in the sales process isn’t converting enough of those leads into customers. They’re creating more content because the content they already have isn’t being found. They’re buying new technology because nobody ever properly implemented the technology they bought two years ago.
On the spreadsheet, the proposed solution often looks perfectly reasonable: We need more.
But if there’s a hole in the bucket, pouring more water into it isn’t much of a strategy.
Look at the places where you’re planning to increase spending and ask another question: Are we investing in a real opportunity, or are we spending more money to compensate for a weakness somewhere else?
Sometimes fixing one underlying problem makes several other parts of the marketing budget perform better without increasing any of them.
4. Gaps: What’s Important but Barely Funded, or Not Funded at All?
Now make a list of things that aren’t adequately represented in the budget.
Maybe your analytics aren’t giving you the information you need. Maybe the website hasn’t had meaningful UX work in years. Maybe nobody owns conversion optimization. Maybe your content program has never been properly funded. Maybe your CRM has capabilities you’re not using. Maybe accessibility or compliance needs attention. Maybe you need to understand how your brand is appearing in AI-driven search and discovery.
The answer will be different for every company.
And here’s the important part: don’t automatically add all of those things to the budget.
Put them on a separate list first.
A gap doesn’t necessarily mean you need more money. By the time you’re finished with the rest of this exercise, you may have found money somewhere else that can be moved into something that matters more.
5. Performance: Who or What Isn’t Delivering Enough Value for What You’re Paying?
This is where the exercise can get a little uncomfortable.
Look at your agencies and vendors. Are they still bringing ideas and expertise to the relationship, or have they become order-takers completing the same list of tasks every month?
Look at your technology. Are you using enough of the capabilities you’re paying for to justify the cost?
Look at your media. Are there channels consuming a disproportionate share of the budget compared with the value they’re producing?
And look internally, too. Are talented, expensive people spending hours doing things that could be automated, outsourced or handled more efficiently by someone else?
There’s a useful way to remove some of the emotion from this:
If we weren’t already paying for this, and we were making the purchasing decision today knowing everything we know now, would we still buy it at this price?
If the answer is no, don’t ignore that just because the expense is already part of the budget.
6. Cuts: What Can You Stop Doing?
Most budget conversations revolve around how much to increase something, how much to reduce it, or how to find room for something new.
Sometimes the right budget is zero.
Maybe it’s a campaign that’s run its course. Software nobody really uses. A report that takes hours to produce and nobody reads. Content you’re creating because the calendar says you need to publish something every Tuesday. An event you’ve attended for ten years even though nobody can remember the last meaningful opportunity that came from it.
Make a “stop doing” list.
Then put a dollar amount next to it.
And here’s the hard part: don’t immediately spend the money you’ve just freed up.
Put it in a pool. Once you’ve completed the entire exercise, you can decide whether some of it should fund the gaps you’ve identified, address one of the leaks you’ve found, support a new opportunity or simply come out of the marketing budget altogether.
There’s no prize for spending every dollar you spent last year.
7. Resources: What Should You Own, and Where Do You Need Help?
Now you’re finally ready to have the resource conversation.
By this point, you should have a much clearer idea of what’s producing value, what’s duplicated, where money is leaking, what’s missing, what’s underperforming and what you can stop doing.
Some of what remains should absolutely be owned by your internal team. Some may be better handled by technology. Some requires specialized expertise that doesn’t make sense to keep on staff. And some may require an outside marketing partner.
Figure out the problem first. Then decide what kind of resource is best equipped to solve it.
That order matters more than you might think.
Because if this exercise tells you that you need outside help, there’s a pretty good chance somebody’s next sentence is going to be, “Okay. Let’s put together an RFP.”
Hold that thought.
We’ll get to that next week.
Now Look at the Budget Again
If you’ve actually worked through these seven areas, the spreadsheet should look different now.
Instead of arguing about whether a particular line item should increase by 5 percent, you may be having conversations like:
“Here’s $40,000 we’re spending on things that overlap.”
“Here’s a conversion problem that’s making our paid media more expensive than it needs to be.”
“Here’s something we’ve been paying for every year that nobody would buy again today.”
“Here’s an important gap we’ve never funded properly.”
“And here’s $60,000 worth of things we could simply stop doing.”
Now you’re not just adjusting a spreadsheet.
You’re analyzing a marketing budget.
Want Us to Do This With You?
There’s real value in going through this exercise internally. There’s also value in having somebody who isn’t attached to the existing budget, vendors, tools or sacred cows take a look at it with you.
So for companies working through their 2027 planning right now, Trivera is offering a complimentary 2027 Marketing Budget Analysis with our team.
Bring us the budget you’re considering. If it’s useful, bring your 2026 budget and whatever performance information you have. Tell us what you’re trying to accomplish, what’s working and what’s frustrating you.
We’ll help you examine the same things we’ve covered here: results, overlap, leaks, gaps, performance, opportunities to eliminate spending, and where internal or outside resources make the most sense.
And just to be clear, we’re not offering to tell you how much of your budget you should spend with Trivera.
We’re offering to help you determine whether your overall marketing budget makes sense.
We’re a marketing agency, so obviously if we uncover something where we believe Trivera can help, we’ll tell you. But the analysis should be valuable whether you ultimately hire us for anything or not.
What This Means for You
Before you approve your 2027 marketing budget, don’t just approve the total. Make sure you can defend what’s underneath it.
Every expenditure doesn’t need perfect attribution, but it should have a purpose. Every vendor doesn’t need to be the cheapest, but it should provide value. Every new priority doesn’t necessarily require new money if you’ve got old money sitting somewhere it no longer belongs.
And before you add more money to the budget, find the money you’re wasting first.
If you’d like another set of experienced eyes to help you do that, that’s exactly what our complimentary 2027 Marketing Budget Analysis is for.
And if the analysis tells you that what you really need in 2027 is a new marketing partner, don’t start writing that RFP just yet.
Next week, we’re going to talk about why.