Get ready: we’ve officially entered the busiest season of the year. Like every fourth quarter you’ve endured, the next several weeks will be a frantic sprint to the finish line, filled with final check-ins on yearly goals, last-minute strategy tweaks, and no shortage of holidays.
For marketers, it also means making sure you’re allocating every remaining cent of your inbound marketing budget toward something worthwhile.
Whether you have remaining ‘use it or lose it’ budget to burn before the year ends or you’re hoping to stretch the last of your funds to drive maximum value now and in the new year, determining where to invest your money isn’t always easy.
To help, here are five ways to strategically spend your remaining Q4 marketing budget and get the most bang for your buck.
If it’s been a while since you’ve explored new tools and software, you may consider checking out your options. There are virtually endless solutions designed to help lighten the loads across various departments and improve outcomes. AI and machine learning have made leaps and bounds in recent years, making automation more accessible and useful than ever before.
For example, the new HubSpot AI portfolio — which extends across the platform — has introduced generative AI tools to help marketing, sales and service teams draft content, develop reports, and more. Meanwhile, in the new HubSpot Sales Hub, sales teams can access advanced lead reports to see how their reps are engaging with high-quality leads. At the same time, marketers can use these reports to see the impact of the leads associated with their efforts.
This is an excellent time to upgrade your marketing tech because, by beginning the implementation process now, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running in Q1.
Even though sales may slow as the year's end approaches, Q4 is still one of the busiest times for nearly everyone else — thanks in part to the holidays, vacations and time spent tying up loose ends on year-long projects. That means marketing teams are stretched thin, and adding another internal initiative isn’t always feasible. Consider outsourcing content marketing to an inbound marketing agency.
By amassing a surplus of content for Q1, you can free up internal resources for more-pressing goals in the interim. If you don’t have any immediate needs, brainstorm a few evergreen themes for content assets that you could store away for a rainy day.
While these content assets can come in the form of blogs and digital guides, let’s not forget about email. The beginning of the year can be an ideal time to kick off that monthly newsletter you’ve considered in the past, or create nurture emails to continue the conversation with prospects. In either case, emails are a great way to further promote the content assets that a third-party helps strategize and create.
Of course, content isn’t the only thing you can outsource to make your life easier in Q4. An agency can also help you strategize, produce and market compelling videos.
Maybe you recently interviewed a customer who had big results to share since implementing your solution. Turning that story into a product experience video for your website and social media channels would be a natural next step. Getting the video script and scheduling knocked out before the end of the year lets you move full speed ahead come Q1.
Considering other types of videos, maybe you’ve undergone a rebrand in the past year as you’ve expanded your solutions and your audience. You could help people get to know the new you through an engaging brand story video.
At the end of the day, the videos you choose to outsource should all tie back to your key objectives for the year — whether that’s to share more customer stories or your brand story.
Speaking of brand awareness, as well as lead generation, let’s talk about Google ads. Strategically spending Q4 market budget on search engine marketing or paid media can help you get in front of the right audience now and stay top of mind entering 2024.
Sometimes, this can be a matter of launching new demand generation initiatives. If you’ve rolled out a new case study, it could be ideal material to use in a retargeting campaign. Or if there’s a new industry you want to zero in on in the new year, you could invest dollars in promoting a website industry page with tailored messaging.
Other times, demand generation is more about increasing the success of initiatives already in motion. For example, pinpoint which active campaigns are generating the best results and determine whether it’s worthwhile to increase spending to expand your reach. Additionally, consider whether you have any high-performing Q4 campaigns from last year that you could pull out, brush off, update and relaunch. Of course, there’s always a point of diminishing returns when it comes to digital ads, so make sure you’re spending wisely and optimizing for success.
The new year can feel like a clean slate. Having an agency audit your existing website forms and contact database can help you declutter in preparation for 2024.
An audit could reveal you’re using a wide variety of forms across your website — several of which include unnecessary or outdated form fields. Consolidating these forms not only creates a better user experience that drives follow through; the standardization also supports simplified data management and data accuracy.
While a form audit can help keep your contact database cleaner for the future, there are additional steps you can take to improve the current condition of your database. Scan for any duplicate contact and company records or duplicate properties and consolidate them. Remove any contacts with a hard bounce from your database — and continue to perform this maintenance throughout the year.
We’re in the home stretch of 2023, but there’s still plenty of time to make an impact and exceed your business goals for the quarter and the year. By leveraging these five suggestions, you can ensure your remaining Q4 marking budget doesn’t go to waste.
We realize this is a lot to do on your own, and it can help to have someone who can guide your team through these steps. Schedule a consultation so we can talk through your remaining budget — we love providing smart recommendations toward finishing the year strong!
