What to Keep, Cut, and Add to Your Marketing in 2027

The keep-cut-add framework is one of the most practical tools for annual marketing planning. It forces a clear-eyed look at what you're currently doing before you decide what to do next. It's also the fastest way to find budget hiding inside your existing spend that could be doing more work somewhere else.

Here's how to run it — and what we're seeing Fort Worth businesses prioritize heading into 2027.

What to keep

Keep anything that is working and that you understand. The bar is both parts: it has to be producing results, and you have to know why. A channel that's performing well but that you can't explain is a channel you can't optimize or defend when results shift.

The most common things worth keeping: email marketing programs with solid engagement and conversion data, content and SEO investments that are building measurable organic traffic, paid search campaigns with clear return on ad spend, and referral or partnership programs that are generating qualified leads.

The rule on keeping: don't keep something just because you've always done it. Tenure is not a performance metric.

What to cut

Cut anything you can't connect to a business outcome. This is harder than it sounds because some marketing activity — brand awareness, thought leadership, community presence — takes time to compound and doesn't produce a clean conversion event. The question isn't whether it produced a sale. The question is whether there's any plausible mechanism by which it contributes to your business, and whether the investment is proportionate to that contribution.

Common candidates for cutting: broad brand awareness advertising that isn't tied to measurable local outcomes, social media presence on platforms where your audience doesn't actually engage, print or sponsorship spend that's renewed out of habit rather than performance, and vendor relationships that have delivered mediocre results for more than two consecutive quarters without a clear recovery plan.

Cutting is uncomfortable. Do it anyway. Budget recovered from underperforming activities is the cleanest source of investment for what actually works.

What to add

Add things that address specific gaps in your current marketing — not things that sound interesting or that you've been meaning to try. The gap-first approach keeps new investments connected to business outcomes rather than novelty.

What we're seeing Fort Worth businesses add heading into 2027: structured content marketing programs for businesses that have been purely reliant on paid media; AI-assisted marketing operations, particularly for content production and lead nurturing; and video, specifically short-form educational content that supports both social and search.

For businesses in professional services, healthcare, and financial services: the biggest add opportunity right now is digital presence infrastructure. Local SEO, Google Business Profile management, review acquisition, and structured content are areas where the competition is still relatively thin and the returns are meaningful.

How to run the conversation

The keep-cut-add framework works best as a structured conversation, not a solo exercise. Bring in whoever is closest to the data — your marketing lead, your agency, your analytics — and work through each channel and tactic deliberately. Give each one a clear verdict. Then build the 2027 plan from the keep and add columns, funded in part by what you cut.

If you'd like to run this exercise with outside perspective — particularly useful when you want a read on your marketing that isn't filtered through internal politics — that's a conversation we have with clients every fall. Reach out if you'd like to start there.