The company asks you to cut the marketing budget by 30% but keep lead volume as close as possible to current levels. What do you do?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Ranks spend by marginal or incremental return
- Cuts lowest-value segments first
- Protects high-intent and proven channels
- Improves conversion rate to compensate
- Sets expectations about trade-offs and long-term brand
Model answer
I would first rank every campaign, audience and keyword group by incremental cost per qualified lead, using recent data and any lift tests. Spend at the margin, like the top-up budget in saturated campaigns, weak placements, broad keywords and overlapping retargeting, usually brings the fewest extra leads, so that goes first. I would protect high-intent search, best-performing audiences and email, which is cheap. To offset volume loss, I would push conversion rate work, such as landing page tests, shorter forms and faster follow-up, because a higher conversion rate gives more leads from the same traffic. I would be honest with leadership that a 30% cut will likely reduce leads by maybe 10 to 15% and that heavy cuts to brand work may hurt pipeline in later quarters, and I would agree a checkpoint to review the impact.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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