The 7 Worst Ways to Spend End-of-Year B2B Marketing Budget and What to Do Instead – TopRank® Marketing

It’s that time of year again. I’m not talking about the holidays, it’s Q4 marketing budget season when B2B marketers are planning for the new year.

With 2025 marketing budgets steady at just 7.7% of overall company revenue, and 59% of CMOs saying they don’t have enough budget to fully execute their strategy (Gartner), many marketing leaders have spent the year playing it safe. For many B2B brands that conservative approach has resulted in unspent budget in Q4.

Of course, this isn’t unique to marketing. For many B2B brands, Q4 is the season of sudden opportunity. By now, decision-makers know exactly what’s left in their budgets, and a familiar rule kicks in: use it or lose it. That urgency can turn stalled deals into surprise wins, push procurement into overdrive, and motivate buyers to commit before the calendar resets.

So where do those leftover funds go? Things like prepaid campaigns, team training, and tech upgrades. There’s no shortage of advice online about how to spend a year-end surplus.

But in moments like these with pressure to both spend and perform quickly, even seasoned marketers can make questionable choices. Desperation can spark creativity, but it can also produce campaigns that make you cringe by Q1. To help you avoid that situation, we’ve rounded up some of the worst ways B2B brands can spend their year-end marketing budget.

These cringeworthy moments start innocently enough. Someone says, “We’ve got budget left, let’s get creative.” What follows can range from somewhat questionable to full-blown marketing madness. These are the ideas that probably made sense in a conference room somewhere and for your entertainment, are rich with satire.

The Unlucky 7: Worst Ways to Spend Your End-of-Year B2B Marketing Budget

1. Celebrity Insights Webinar Series

What better way to boost engagement than by adding a little star power? Instead of hiring industry subject matter experts and creators, let’s bring in celebrity impersonators! Think “Elon Musk,” “Oprah,” and “Einstein”, to discuss innovation, leadership, and the future of our industry. It’s unexpected, entertaining, and sure to trend on social media… though probably for the wrong reasons. Attendees will leave confused but definitely talking and our budget will vanish into wigs, props, and vocal coaches.

2. The Year-End Event Sponsorship Blitz

Let’s dominate the industry conversation by sponsoring every conference, expo, and virtual summit left on the calendar. We’ll grab booths, banners, and branded coffee sleeves across multiple events, ensuring our logo is impossible to miss, even if our target audience has checked out for the month. With no time for proper follow-up or lead qualification, we’ll have an impressive presence and an empty pipeline by January.

3. Executive Influencer Leadership Retreat

Imagine it: ten CFOs, CMOs, and COOs flown to Aspen for a “Financial Foresight Summit.” A luxury resort, inspirational speakers, morning yoga, and networking by the fire. What could go wrong? It’s the perfect blend of executive pampering and thought leadership theater, minus the part where we connect it to revenue. It’s exclusive, expensive, and entirely unmeasurable – the holy trinity of bad end-of-year spending.

4. The Holiday ABM Gifting Campaign

Let’s surprise our top 1,000 accounts with a “Q4 Survival Kit” filled with branded holiday themed treasures: a USB-powered snowball, a desk-sized reindeer, and stress balls in our company colors. We’ll call it “holiday cheer with a business twist.” Sure, it’s fun, but we might spend more on shipping than we gain in goodwill and it’s hard to measure ROI on reindeer.

5. Broadcast Brand Awareness Campaign

To finish the year strong, let’s launch a regional TV and streaming ad campaign to build awareness. We’ll go wide to make sure someone, somewhere, might see our brand between weather forecasts and sports highlights. It’s big, bold, and beautifully untrackable. After all, nothing says “strategic” like spending the last of your budget on a 30-second spot your ICP never sees.

6. ProspectCoin: The B2B Engagement Crypto

Let’s prove our innovation credentials by creating a proprietary cryptocurrency: ProspectCoin! Our prospective clients can earn it for engaging with our campaigns. They can redeem it for branded merch or exclusive content NFTs. We’ll hire blockchain developers, launch a mini-site, and release a hype video with crypto influencers. It’ll be cutting-edge right up until everyone realizes it’s completely useless and LinkedIn turns it into a meme.

7. End-of-Year Appreciation Video Campaign

Let’s close the year with a heartfelt video tribute: slow-motion warehouse footage, piano music, and text overlays thanking “the heroes of logistics” and “the warriors of supply chain.” It’s emotional, dramatic, and totally disconnected from our actual offering. The production will be beautiful and beautifully irrelevant. But at least we’ll all feel good watching it.

As I mentioned, there’s a healthy dose of satire in these Q4 marketing budget ideas. At the same time, I am sure there are elements of many of these campaigns that might seem familiar from a marketing team brainstorm. Hopefully none of them made it into your B2B marketing mix (or budget spend).

A Better Q4 Marketing Budget Strategy

In times of uncertainty, how you spend at year-end matters more than ever. McKinsey’s recent research on B2B growth shows that the companies winning in tough conditions aren’t the ones spending faster, they’re the ones spending smarter. High performers use Q4 to tighten focus, redirect budget toward the right accounts, and align marketing with sales to close what’s closeable. They invest in trust and visibility where timing and intent overlap.

With that perspective on spending smarter with outcomes in mind, here are 6 end of year B2B marketing budget spend ideas inspired by the Best Answer Marketing framework.:

1. Customer Question Acceleration Workshop

Use end-of-year budget to run a focused, two-week sprint combining customer data, sales insights, and search analytics to pinpoint the top 10 questions your buyers will be asking in Q1. Then, commission fast-turn content: blogs, videos, LinkedIn posts, etc to answer them before competitors do. It’s a quick lift that generates content ready to launch in January, fuels SEO visibility, and gives sales fresh, relevant assets for early pipeline activity. (BAM Pillar: Data Informed)

2. Account Momentum Sprint

Turn “use it or lose it” into “use it to close it.” Host a cross-functional sprint between sales, marketing, and customer success focused on accelerating deals already in late-stage pipeline. Use this cross-department collaboration to inform the build of a MOFU/BOFU focused microsite, refresh decision-stage content, or launch targeted retargeting ads for high-probability accounts. This short-term, team-wide alignment can unlock quick wins and build habits that carry into next year’s go-to-market efforts. (BAM Pillar: Integrated Strategy)

3. Expert Voices on Demand

Activate credibility, fast. Use your remaining funds to produce a short series of thought leadership videos on LinkedIn featuring credible voices: industry experts, partners, or satisfied customers. Have them discuss current and specific buyer challenges. Distribute these across social and sales channels to increase engagement on relevant BOFU topics during Q4-Q1 buying cycles. These assets can build trust while also laying the groundwork for ongoing authority content next year. (BAM Pillar: Trust Engine)

4. Best Answer Content Refresh

Take your top-performing content for the year and make it work harder. Most content is never seen buy your TAM. Refresh data, update visuals, embed short-form video intros, and optimize for AI search and citation. Convert text and image content into explainer videos. Repurpose shorts from video podcast episodes into new narrative driven videos. Republish and promote before Q1 to re-engage audiences already familiar with your brand. This approach can create quick visibility and engagement with more experiential content . It’s an efficient way to turn existing assets into new opportunities. (BAM Pillar: Experiential Content)

5. Optimize Discovery Winners

Use Q4 budget to optimize the channels already showing traction. Pay to boost high-performing organic posts, sponsor key influencer collaborations, and refresh paid campaigns on platforms where your audience is most active going into Q1. Pair this with opportunistic SEO and AI Overview optimizations to make your best content more discoverable across search and chat-based engines.Above all, ensure the messages and narratives across these channels are coordinated. (BAM Pillar: Multi-Channel Discovery)

6. Marketing Performance Tune-Up

Great marketing isn’t so great if it’s not being measured properly. Use remaining Q4 budget to unify your data sources – web analytics, CRM, campaign reporting, and pipeline tracking – into a single, connected view of performance. Bringing these pieces together reveals immediate optimization opportunities you might be missing and sets your brand up for smarter measurement in the new year. A unified analytics platform doesn’t just report on activity; it exposes what’s really driving brand visibility, demand, and revenue across the full funnel. (BAM Pillar: Full Funnel Analytics)

The end of the year doesn’t have to be a budget burn. It can be a launchpad. The difference between waste and momentum comes down to intention. Instead of rushing into speculative spend, focus on actions that build credibility, accelerate near-term opportunities, and strengthen your foundation for 2026. By investing in data-informed, integrated marketing efforts that create trusted, best-answer content experiences wherever buyers are actively looking, you turn Q4 from simple to smart. Skip the types of ideas roasted in the “unlucky 7” and make your own luck with smarter moves that pay off long after the New Year starts.