The New Year Marketing Audit: What to Stop Before Starting Anything New

It's the first week of January. The new year energy is still fresh, your team is gearing up for 2026, and you're looking at a list of "new marketing initiatives" that somehow multiplied during planning season.

Your CEO forwarded you an article about AI-generated content. Someone in sales wants to know when you're launching that new webinar series. You still haven't figured out how to leverage and amplify evergreen content you created in 2025. And online resources keep pushing "10 marketing trends you can't ignore."

Here's what no one wants to say out loud: You don't need another initiative. You need to stop doing half the things you're already doing.

I've spent 20+ years in marketing, and I can tell you that one of the most strategic things I've ever done wasn't launching something new. It was killing something that didn't work anymore.

The real new year question isn't "What should we add?" It's "What should we stop?"

This isn't about being lazy or pessimistic. It's about being honest. You can't do new things well if you're still doing old things poorly. You can't optimize what you can’t or don’t measure. And you definitely can't expect your team to produce quality work when they're drowning in initiatives that made sense three years ago but haven't been audited since.

So, before you add another tactic to the pile, let's talk about the marketing audit your team actually needs. Not the comprehensive, consultant-led, three-month strategic review (though that has its place). The practical, first-quarter reality check that helps you figure out what's working, what's not, and what's just stealing resources.

Why February, not January?

Let's be honest: January is about getting back into the groove. Maybe you're trying to remember where you left off before the holidays. Maybe you're dealing with fiscal year-end or quarter-end reporting. Maybe you're just trying to get your team back to full capacity after two weeks of spotty coverage and out-of-office replies.

The last thing you need is an existential crisis about your marketing strategy.

February gives you breathing room. You've got actual year-end data to analyze. The dust has settled from whatever your January brings. And you're still early enough in the year to course-correct without feeling like you've already blown your shot at 2026.

This isn't procrastination. It's strategic timing.

Here's what you're going to do:

Audit everything you're currently doing through three lenses: Stop, Kill and Focus. Stop what's actively not working. Kill what's stealing resources for minimal return. And focus the bandwidth you free up on the things that actually deserve it.

I'll walk you through the framework, show you what this looks like in practice, and give you the tactical steps to actually do this without blowing up your team's morale or your stakeholders' confidence.

Because here's the thing: The best marketing strategy for 2026 might not be adding anything new. It might be doing less, better.

Let's figure out what that looks like for you.

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THE CASE FOR THE AUDIT

Every marketing team I've worked with has their version of this: the monthly report no one reads, the social media channel no one engages with, the quarterly deliverable that one person asks for out of habit. These things pile up. They become "just how we do things." And they slowly suffocate your team's capacity to do anything truly strategic.

The cost isn't just time and budget. It's opportunity cost. It's team morale. It's the innovation that never happens because everyone's too busy maintaining the status quo.

So, before you launch that new AI content initiative or redesign your website or start that podcast everyone's been talking about, let's figure out what you need to stop doing first.

THE FRAMEWORK: STOP, KILL, FOCUS

This isn't complicated. You're going to put everything you're currently doing into one of three buckets:

STOP — What's Actively Not Working

These are the easy ones. The campaigns that used to drive results but don't anymore. The content no one reads. The events no one attends. The initiatives where the data clearly shows “This isn't working.”

Things to audit:

• Content that gets created but never distributed (the blog posts gathering dust, the whitepapers no one downloads)

• Campaigns with declining engagement and zero attribution to pipeline or revenue

• "We've always done it" initiatives (the quarterly webinar that used to draw 100 people and now gets 8)

• Reporting that no one reads or acts on (you know the one — the 40-slide deck that gets sent monthly and opened once, maybe)

Questions to ask:

• Is anyone actually measuring this?

• If we stopped tomorrow, would anyone notice?

• Is this driving revenue, pipeline or measurable brand equity?

• What's the opportunity cost of continuing this?

The permission you need: It's okay to kill things that used to work but don't anymore. Markets change. Audiences change. What worked in 2019 doesn't necessarily work now. That's not failure — that's evolution.

KILL — What's Stealing Resources

This is harder. These are things that might technically be "working" but the return is so minimal that you're essentially lighting money and time on fire.

Things to audit:

• The blog posts that take 10 hours to produce and get 47 views (all internal)

• The social channels you're on because "you should be" but have zero engagement

• The monthly webinar series with 12 registrants and 4 attendees (two of whom are on your team)

• The quarterly deliverable that one person asks for religiously

Questions to ask:

• Who's actually using this? (Not "who said they would" — who IS)

• What's the ROI on time and money invested?

• Could we get the same result with significantly less effort?

• Are we doing this because it works or because it's become comfortable routine?

• What would happen if we just... stopped?

The hard truth: "Good enough" is often the enemy of "actually good." But sometimes "good enough for one person" is just a waste of everyone's time.

FOCUS — What Actually Deserves More Resources

This is the payoff. Once you've freed up capacity by stopping what doesn't work and killing what barely works, you can focus on what actually does.

This isn't about adding new things (not yet, anyway). It's about doing fewer things significantly better.

What to look for:

• Content or campaigns that are working but under-resourced (the thought leadership piece that drives inbound but you only produce once a quarter because "there's no time")

• Channels where you're seeing ROI but haven't scaled (the LinkedIn strategy that's working but you're only posting sporadically)

• Initiatives that could work better with consistent execution (the email nurture campaign that gets results when you remember to send it)

Suddenly the thing that was working got better. And the team had breathing room to think strategically instead of just executing an endless to-do list.

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HOW TO ACTUALLY DO THIS

Step 1: Inventory Everything You're Doing

The comprehensive approach: Get it all in one place...

• Content calendar (everything you produce: blogs, social, emails, newsletters, whitepapers, case studies)

• Campaign calendar (webinars, events, sponsorships, advertising)

• Standing meetings and recurring reports

• Distribution channels (where you're publishing, posting, promoting)

• Tool subscriptions (what you're paying for monthly/annually)

This will be painful. You'll realize you're doing way more than you thought. Good. That's the point.

The "I'm already overwhelmed" approach: If making a comprehensive list feels like one more thing you don't have time for, start smaller. Pick ONE area:

• Just your content (what are you writing/producing?)

• Just your recurring commitments (what happens every week/month/quarter?)

• Just your distribution channels (where are you posting/publishing?)

You can expand the audit later. The goal is to start somewhere, not to create a perfect spreadsheet that takes three weeks to build.

Step 2: Apply the Framework to Each Item

For everything on your list, ask:

• When did we start this?

• What was the original goal?

• Are we measuring it? (Really measuring it, not just "we should probably look at that sometime")

• What's the current ROI in time + money?

• Stop, Kill or Focus?

Be ruthless. If you can't articulate why you're still doing something or you can't point to data that shows it's working, it probably belongs in Stop or Kill.

Step 3: The "Stop and See" Test

Sometimes you don't know if something matters until you stop doing it.

Here's how it works:

• Stop producing it quietly (Don't announce it, just don't do it)

• See how long it takes anyone to notice

• See who notices (Is it the person who said they needed it? Someone else? No one?)

• Measure the response (Urgent? Casual? "Oh yeah, I forgot about those"?)

This works for:

• Regular reports that might be going unread

• Content that gets published but never shared or referenced

• "Just in case" materials that no one proactively asks for

• Social media channels with minimal engagement

The beauty of this approach: If no one notices for months, you have your answer. If someone notices immediately and has a legitimate business reason (backed by data or clear use case), you can restart it — or find a lower-effort alternative.

Step 4: Get Honest About Capacity

Now do the math:

• How many hours per week does your team actually have?

• What are they spending time on now? (Use your inventory from Step 1)

• What would you keep if you could only do 3 things? 5 things?

• Where's the biggest gap between effort and impact?

This is where reality hits. You cannot do 47 things well with a team of 2.5 people. You can do 5-7 things exceptionally well. Choose accordingly.

Step 5: Make the Cuts (and Communicate Them)

Internal communication matters:

• Position it as strategic focus, not failure: "We're streamlining our approach to focus on initiatives that drive measurable ROI"

• Use data: "Our analysis shows X drove Y results, while Z showed declining engagement over 6 quarters"

• Be clear about what you're focusing on instead: "This frees up 30 hours/month to optimize our thought leadership content, which has generated 40% of our qualified leads"

External communication (if needed):

• You probably don't need to announce most cuts externally (no one's reading that monthly newsletter anyway)

• For visible changes (events, regular publications), keep it simple: "We're focusing our resources on [what you're doing instead]"

• Frame it as evolution, not retreat

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WHAT GETS IN THE WAY

You'll hear objections. You'll feel resistance (including from yourself). Here are the most common ones:

"But the CEO likes that report." Does the CEO read that report? Or does the CEO like the idea of that report? Big difference. Ask. You might be surprised.

"We might need that content someday." You won't. And if you do, you can create it then. You're not deleting institutional knowledge — you're stopping active production of something no one's using now.

"What if we're wrong about stopping this?" Then you restart it. Pausing something isn't permanent. Killing something isn't irreversible. You're allowed to test and adjust.

"We already invested so much in building this." Sunk cost fallacy is real, and it's expensive. The question isn't "how much did we invest?" It's "is this still worth the ongoing investment?"

"But everyone else in our industry does this." Cool. Let them waste their resources. You're going to be strategic instead.

THE PAYOFF

Here's what actually happens when you audit, cut and focus:

Better work from your team. They have time to do things well instead of rushing through an impossible list. Quality goes up. Creativity returns. People stop leaving at 5 pm feeling like they accomplished nothing.

Clearer ROI. You're measuring what actually matters. You can point to results. Your stakeholders see impact, not just activity.

More flexibility for actual innovation. When something new comes up (and it will), you have capacity to evaluate it properly and execute it well if it makes sense. You're not just adding it to the pile.

Stakeholders see strategic thinking. You're not just "doing more stuff" — you're making deliberate choices about resource allocation. That's leadership.

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THE BOTTOM LINE

The best marketing strategy for 2026 might not be adding anything new. It might be stopping what doesn't work, killing what barely works, and focusing your freed-up resources on what actually deserves them.

You don't need permission to do this. You need courage to be honest about what's working and what's not.

So, take February. Do the audit. Make the cuts. Focus your energy.

One foot in front of the other — but make sure you're walking in the right direction.

Ready to start?

Pick one thing you're going to stop this quarter. Just one. See what happens.

If you need help figuring out what to cut or how to focus your marketing strategy, that's exactly what I help firms do. Let's talk.