OMG! It’s the 4th Quarter Already
By Carrie Cousins
Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their October 2026 issue.
Holy smokes, Batman! Where did the year go?
It’s time to start planning for 2027.
You’ve probably already thought about budgets and revenue projections, but it is also time to think about marketing goals. (These can also be an essential part of your budget planning cycle.)
When it comes to forward planning for marketing, I like to group things into several buckets:
- Marketing needs (staffing, advertising, software, partners, and vendors)
- Marketing sponsorships (donations or funds used to support nonprofits or other organizations)
- Marketing wants (new tools, contract help, anything that you’d love to have but could potentially live without)
- Marketing emergencies (for anything unplanned or unexpected)
Then do the math. Each of these groups should get a percentage of your budget. Some budgets may not include sponsorships, depending on your corporate structure.
Marketing needs are by far the biggest part of your budget, with close to 80% of your spending. Start with hard costs, such as staff, agency fees (if you have partners), and software; then you know what you have left to play with for advertising.
If you have a sponsorship line item, this can be about 10% of your overall budget. Here’s the important part: Don’t just hand out funds without reason. Even with sponsorships, you should track return on marketing spend. What value does your business get from this relationship?
I like to group marketing wants and emergencies into that final 10%. Each quarter, anything that wasn’t used for a marketing emergency goes toward wants. What’s important here is to have a plan for the funds. For many of you, unused budget can vanish or even decrease available budget the following year, so plan ahead for marketing wants to make the best use of these funds.
With all of that in mind, do you still have budget left for this year that you need to spend? It might be the perfect time to think about website upgrades or preplanning advertising for 2027.
If you aren’t sure how to best maximize your marketing budget, a good partner can help. Start those conversations now to get the most out of your 2027 marketing and advertising plan!
Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.
