Forbes - How to Significantly Trim Your Marketing Budget

This article originally appeared in Forbes (link)

The results were in. Despite crushing every KPI and producing great marketing and creative work, budgets were being cut.

The CEO had bet big producing too many units of a game console that dropped 45 days late in the Christmas selling season. In an industry where 60% of revenue is made between Halloween and Christmas, this was an irretrievable setback. Now my boss was telling me he needed me to cut $1-2 million dollars from my budget or lay off 15-20% of my department. Happy Monday.

My job was to oversee the teams and agencies producing all branded experiences and marketing for a global toy and app company shipping over 200 new products a year. These were great people who believed in our mission and were expert creators of ads, packaging, retail branding and thoughtful UX across a worldwide e-commerce ecosystem. It wasn’t an option to lose even one of them. We had to figure out where to get the money.

If you’re being asked to make significant cuts to your marketing budget, here are some strategies I used to cut over $1 million quickly: (read more)