The principle
A marketing budget contains money that reaches customers and money that does not. Cut in that order, exhaustively, before touching the first category.
Most local businesses can remove 20 to 40 percent of total marketing cost without reducing reach at all, because that much of it never reached anyone.
Cut one: uncategorized spend
Every audit turns up 5 to 15 percent of spend nobody can explain — a directory listing from 2022, a sponsorship that renewed itself, a tool bought for one project.
Cancel all of it. Nothing measurable happens, which is the point.
Cut two: software nobody opens
The three-question test: who opened it in the last thirty days, what decision did it change, and what breaks if it goes tomorrow. Anything failing all three is gone.
Keep systems of record. Be ruthless about anything whose main output is a chart.
Cut three: duplicated vendors
Two providers doing overlapping work, or three retainer minimums where one would do. Consolidation is usually the single largest available saving and it improves results rather than degrading them, because someone finally sees the whole picture.
Cut four: percentage-of-spend arrangements
Renegotiate to a flat fee or leave. In a tightening budget, a fee that scales with spend is the worst possible structure — and the provider has no reason to help you spend less.
Cut five: unproven channels and tests
Suspend, do not cancel. Tests are how you find next year’s efficiency, but they are the correct thing to pause when this quarter is the problem.
What you protect
Demand capture and your customer list. If you have worked the five cuts above and still need to reduce, take it from broad demand creation next — and understand you are borrowing from next quarter to pay for this one.
Never cut the channel that catches people actively trying to give you money.