Looking ahead toward a potential recession, B2B organizations will aim to conserve budget across marketing. In response, marketing leaders will look to identify realistic savings.

Whether you’re preparing for a recession, trying to improve profitability, or implementing a growth strategy of improved productivity, marketing operations leaders can leverage the following six operational tips and accompanying resources to help the organization save money, reduce wasteful spend, and align spending to company objectives for growth.

1. Realign marketing goals to growth opportunities

Prioritize existing opportunities for growth and refine your strategy accordingly. For clients, The Forrester Marketing Strategy Compass Template is a useful tool for revisiting goals and adjusting the actions marketing will take to pursue them. It’s important to align with other marketing functional leaders and other revenue-engine functions, such as sales and product, as you adjust your goals.

2. Redirect spending according to an up-to-date marketing plan

Continue to focus on core capabilities and balance long-term and short-term opportunities:

  • Adjust your marketing plan on a page to identify markets that should be harvested, paused, or exited. The goal is to intentionally redirect spend from those markets to growth markets.
  • Focus on what marketing will intentionally do and not do against updated goals and objectives. Documenting these decisions helps to clarify what’s expected from marketing. Intentionally redirect spend from the “will not do” list to the “will do” list. For example, marketing will fund, plan, and execute user conference in Q4 and will not run any other launch events.
  • Complete a keep, modify, create, or drop exercise for key marketing activities. Document and assess current and proposed marketing actions against executional readiness and goal alignment. Intentionally redirect spend from the drop list to the create or modify lists. During persona planning, determine persona preferences for tactic types; intentionally shift spend away from those interaction types they do not prefer.

3. Reprioritize program family focus

Rethink program families — reputation, demand, customer engagement, and enablement — to align with the needs of the markets you’re targeting. (If you’re a client, use Forrester’s Campaign Framework.) Use caution to not over-rotate the program family balance to demand only objectives. Align product launches to campaigns, and embed launches that address feature improvements and gaps into existing campaigns rather than creating new campaigns for each launch.

Leverage the Campaign Framework to prioritize program families — reputation, demand, customer engagement, and enablement — to align with the needs of the markets you’re targeting. Use caution to not over-rotate the program family balance to demand only objectives. Align product launches to campaigns, embedding tier 2+ product launches into existing campaigns rather than creating new campaigns for each launch.

4. Reallocate marketing investment and budget to reduce waste

Use the Strategic Budget Allocation Process to do the following:

  • Prioritize, shift, pause, or reduce investments. Review planned spend and renegotiate or pause contracts that no longer align with this year’s plan (see item 2 above). Also, eliminate tactics that are not directed at your target (e.g., tactics associated to seeding vs. accelerating demand).
  • Identify wasteful or duplicative spending. Review line items across budget owners and look for duplicative spend or programs and tactics out of alignment with campaigns or marketing planning. Don’t cut across the board (i.e., 9% reduction across the board, pausing all marketing, or delaying all new technology investment). Be more strategic about cost reduction.
  • Allocate resources differently. Upskill and leverage current talent based on key actions identified in your marketing plan. Use agencies, outsourcing, or automation where appropriate.

5. Review and document marketing processes

Audit and document marketing processes and automation to support a distributed workforce.

  • Complete business process audits to reduce waste. Review your waterfall stages and service level agreements to improve conversion and velocity as well as reduce waste. Assess your content engine to improve utilization and reduce internal touch points, and audit your campaign implementation process to reduce touch points for approvals.
  • Consider introducing or expanding agile marketing as a process methodology to drive quick wins.

6. Complete a marketing technology audit

Review your current martech stack to assess how well adopted it is and whether the full capability is being used. Consider consolidation options based on business needs and supporting marketing goals.

  • Complete a technology assessment and identify potential consolidation opportunities based on duplication.
  • Cleanse your data and append your database for the markets you’re targeting.

Review your current martech stack to assess how well adopted it is and whether the full capability is being used. Consider consolidation options based on business needs and supporting marketing goals.

Forrester clients can schedule guidance sessions to talk about their specific challenges. If you’re not a client and would like to learn more, please reach out.