This is the story of how I got into marketing auditing without a finance or accounting background.

How did I get here? I frequently ask myself this question.

How did someone with a decidedly non-finance background get interested in marketing auditing?

Someone who was kindly advised during her first semester as a finance major by her advisor that she should explore other paths in the business world.

Someone who allegedly turned down an opportunity to work as a broker in an international bank because she “didn’t like math.” In my defense, I have zero recollection of this encounter, but my parents swear it happened.

My First Corporate Job

It’s actually kind of funny that my first corporate job was working in the Banking department of what was, at the time, the largest legal claims administrator in the country. I reconciled over 300 bank accounts monthly for over 20 months.

Tracking money every month in a bank account to see where it goes proved to be a good training ground for when I transferred into the marketing department.

Once I was on the ground in the marketing department, I had a first-hand look at where the marketing money was going.

It was during this period that I discovered that 33% of every marketing dollar spent is completely wasted.

This is how I first started in the world of marketing auditing.

Zero-Based Budgeting

I had been in the marketing department for about eight months when we hired a new director. She had been an AVP of marketing at one of the top banks in the country. Under her leadership, the department moved to zero-based budgeting.

Every expenditure over $50 had to be approved in writing by either the CEO or President (we were a small business, with less than 500 employees, so this was an achievable goal). I was also put in charge of the CRM system and Google Analytics. I also managed the marketing and sales teams’ expenditures.

As second in the department, I was involved in every aspect of marketing for the organization, from branding to advertising to vendor management. We ran over 300 events a year. Every single expenditure was approved in writing.

This was extremely helpful in combating marketing waste.

Outlandish Requests

In many corporate marketing departments, you find legacy budgets. The rationale is, “We’ve always done this, so we will keep doing it.” Unfortunately, this method doesn’t take into account that marketing is dynamic, not static.

Markets change. Client needs and wants evolve. If you’re doing what you’ve always done, expecting the same results, eventually you’re going to get run over.

Using a zero-based budgeting system for sales and marketing moved away from that legacy mentality and allowed us to cut off outlandish requests for money that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks.

Some of the more ridiculous requests made by executives and the sales team included:

• Publishing a book as a collateral piece to give to clients with every employee listed.

Have you ever sat in a meeting where someone has an idea, and you know it’s an awful idea, but everyone around the table thinks it’s great? That’s what happened here.

Aside from giving every competitor a complete guide to talent poaching, the reprinting costs for employees coming and going would have been prohibitive.

Luckily, this was killed before it got off the ground.

• Overnighting NYC bagels to a client team working in Bahrain.

This was an insane request from a member of the sales team who discovered on a call with a client that they missed NY bagels.

There was no way to actually overnight bagels to Bahrain. They would have been stopped at customs, for who knew how long, as an “agricultural” product.

• Having a champagne basket waiting in the honeymoon suite of a client in Hong Kong.

This was killed for being incredibly creepy. No one wants to feel like a vendor (which we were) is stalking them on their honeymoon.

This is just a random sampling. I could go on and on.

Show Me the Money

While fielding these requests, I also saw how our money was being spent in real time. After we switched to Salesforce.com as a sales and marketing tool, we had a major problem getting the sales team to use it.

This is a common way companies waste marketing money. Companies invest thousands of dollars in SaaS and Mar Tech platforms only to have their employees refuse to use the tools. Our CEO came up with a way to combat this apathy from the sales team.

He had me set up reports on Salesforce.com for every salesperson in the company. Every Monday, he would automatically receive a report of the previous week’s activity.

I was always the first to know who was getting fired, as I would receive an email asking me to run a report on a given person’s activity for the last three months.

But these tactics cut down on waste because we were using the seats for which we had already paid.

And then there were the events…

The Black Hole of Event Marketing

When I start a marketing audit, one of the first things I look at is the event marketing budget. Event marketing is fraught with waste.

I once worked with a company that sent 23 people to an annual trade show. They were a corporate sponsor. They had a booth, hosted several dinners and events, and had people walking the trade show floor. Additionally, there were promotional giveaways and room drops.

A room drop is when you drop a promotional gift bag off at the hotel rooms of people you are trying to target.

They sent the entire sales team (including those headquartered in Europe and Asia) and half the executive team. The only person not there was a representative of the marketing department. That’s where the CEO drew the line. Sending a marketing coordinator.

Thousands of dollars were spent on the booth, collateral pieces, dinners, hotels, and travel. And after all that, all those people had to show when they returned to the office was 11 business cards. Seven of them were from a religious organization that was never going to be a client!

How to Lie With Statistics

Another way to combat marketing waste is to review the statistics. When I moved to Florida, I worked with a company that was producing all kinds of content. Over a million dollars a year was being spent on content production.

The marketing department was in transition, and the previous marketing director and AVP (now gone) had been telling the CEO how great the content they were producing was performing. They swore it was converting at extremely high rates.

Well, I came on the scene and started reviewing the content. I actually took the time to read the stuff.

All of it was awful. It was unreadable, overly academic, and made zero sense. And it was boring!

The target market was not academic. So, I went on a little fact-finding mission.

After 3 weeks of digging through Hubspot and the backend of their website, I was able to conclusively prove that less than 1 percent of the people interacting with these content pieces were actual or potential clients. Less than 1%!

You can read the case study here.

I have a ton of stories like this one.

The Small Business Paradox

It’s not just large and mid-size companies wasting marketing dollars.

When I moved into consulting and started working with small businesses. The marketing waste was even more apparent. I worked with one client who was losing money on every engagement because she never bothered to figure out what her expenses were before pricing jobs. She was running promotions and offering referral fees that were going to bankrupt her.

I know several small businesses that tried to save money by taking the “cheap” route, only to end up having to pay two to three times more later. If they had allocated the appropriate budget the first time, they could have saved a fortune.

Then there were social media ads. Whenever I talk to a small business running social media ads, the first thing I ask them about is their pipeline or funnel. When they look at me like I have three heads, I tell them to cancel the ads. Instead of a lead generation tool, they are paying for very expensive online billboards.

And That’s How I Ended Up in Marketing Auditing

So, this is the story of how a girl without an accounting or finance background ended up in marketing auditing.

In almost every area of an annual marketing budget, I can find waste that needs to be addressed, and those dollars reallocated into higher converting expenditures.

Follow our blog for more of my adventures in combating marketing waste!

Angela M. Insalaco is the Founder and President of Strategic Tactics Consulting Group, LLC (STCG). With over 20 years of experience, Angela helps businesses identify waste in their marketing budgets and reallocate those dollars into high-converting tactics.

Follow Angela on LinkedIn, and X for insights on optimizing marketing spend.

Copyright 2025 Strategic Tactics Consulting Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Written by Angela M. Insalaco