Last post we talked about why handing out marketing budgets isn’t a good idea. It is counter intuitive, but giving someone on the team a blanket “budget” to some extent provides an entitlement to spend the money.  Read the post for more info.

The second deadly marketing sin with budgets is the “use it or lose” mentality that some companies have.   Need proof why this is bad?

My marketing team today got carpet bombed in email by a major technical publisher – someone called Pamela (although she was emailing from some account called BAAblasts@xxxxxxx.com). So the email wasn’t really from Pamela, rather it was from BAAblasts- whatever that is.

BAAblasts wanted to let me know that I could spend some budget with her so I wouldn’t lose it in 2015.  She has all kinds of options.

Send this to your CFO next time he tells you that you must “use or lose” your budget.