Make the list first
Every marketing vendor, contractor, agency, and tool with a recurring charge. Monthly cost next to each. Most owners are surprised by both the count and the total — that surprise is the point of the exercise.
The six questions
What specifically does this vendor produce? A deliverable, not an activity.
What would happen in ninety days if they stopped? If the honest answer is "not much," you have your answer.
Does anyone else on this list do part of the same job? Overlap is the most common form of waste.
Can they see the whole picture, or only their channel? Single-channel vendors cannot optimize against your total.
When did they last recommend something that reduced their own revenue? Rare, and telling.
What does leaving cost — notice, data, accounts?
What usually gets cut
A social vendor doing what a consolidated provider already covers. A reporting tool aggregating dashboards nobody reads. A directory or listing service duplicating your own profile management. And one contractor whose scope quietly shrank to a monthly report.
Typical outcome: two vendors removed, 20 to 30 percent of marketing overhead recovered, and no reduction in what reaches a customer.
What to do with the savings
Media. Not another tool. The entire point of removing overhead is to move it to the part of the budget that produces customers.