What I cut (and why) from my marketing budget this year

Welcome to Evidently—the bi-weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits (and get honest about my misses) as a first-time VP of Marketing.

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Budgeting as a VP of Marketing isn’t just about managing numbers—it’s about making the right trade-offs.

Last year, budgeting felt straightforward: leadership handed me a number, and I managed carefully to stay within it, tracking expenses monthly and quarterly.

Easy enough, but was it strategic? Debatable.

This year, we took a zero-based budgeting approach. Instead of rolling over last year's budget, I had to rebuild from scratch, justifying every dollar. This forced a much tougher look at where we were actually seeing impact.

What got cut (and why)

The first step was a ruthless audit. I reviewed every marketing expense from FY2025 and asked myself some challenging questions:

• Did this investment genuinely move the needle?

• Would I confidently spend money on this again?

The answers made certain cuts obvious:

Event sponsorships underperformed as expected. We saw minimal direct pipeline results. To hedge, we strategically attended select events primarily to capture months' worth of high-value content. That approach yielded solid ROI—but this year, standalone sponsorships are out.

Outsourced content and demand gen initially made sense for a full-time marketing team of one. Now, these roles have been brought in-house—with Jillian leading content and Austin as our new Senior Growth Marketing Manager.

New tools and agencies were tested. Some were smart bets, but not all panned out. We cut the ones that didn't deliver fast.

Where we’re doubling down

Budgeting at a startup requires constant negotiation. Every dollar you claim means another team sacrifices elsewhere.

My original plan accounted for multiple roles across product marketing, ABM, customer marketing, and marketing operations. Then leadership laid down the hammer: no new hires until we consistently hit quarterly pipeline and booking targets.

With hiring off the table, I pivoted quickly—trading headcount budget for flexibility in programs and agencies.

We chose to double down on:

• Proven demand channels: Shifting spend toward channels consistently driving high-quality pipeline.

• Strategic internal leverage: Prioritizing essential, high-impact hires like our new Director of GTM Operations, while temporarily outsourcing less critical roles.

Re: Director of GTM Operations, that was the one thing our VP of Sales Heather and I weren’t willing to budge on hiring-wise.

We'd been working with an exceptional—but limited—RevOps freelancer for about 18 months. Even with their help, we found ourselves repeatedly pulled into RevOps tasks we weren't best suited for and away from strategic priorities.

We argued that bringing this role in-house was essential to freeing us up and aligning GTM efforts across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success.

Our co-founders weren't fully convinced at first, but the conversation changed when they met our standout candidate—someone Heather had successfully worked with before.

He demonstrated during his interview that he was more than a "dashboard and reporting" hire. He was someone who could proactively help us generate more pipeline, optimize sales operations, and keep teams strategically aligned. The deal was sealed.

Pitching “big bets” to leadership

Rather than just showing a budget spreadsheet filled with numbers, I proactively pitched a few high-impact marketing bets. Each pitch included:

• Clear concept descriptions

• Pipeline impact and ROI potential

• Resource requirements and anticipated outcomes

These were incorporated into the unified Sales & Marketing plan Heather and I worked on together. Our leadership team appreciated the collaborative approach.

There was definitely some sticker shock at the bigger budget requests we made for higher pipeline and bookings targets. But referencing industry benchmarks (e.g. Insight Partners' Sales & Marketing expense benchmarks at 40-50%) helped validate our asks.

What’s next

We secured approval for our V1 Stretch budget for the first half of the year. We'll closely monitor leading and lagging indicators for each initiative, pivot quickly if necessary, and reassess after six months.

This was my first time going through a zero-based budgeting process and I’ll admit—it was challenging and uncomfortable. But ultimately, it clarified priorities, sharpened our strategy, and aligned our marketing investments more closely with our three broader company goals for the year:

1. Increasing qualified pipeline

2. Improving win rates

3. Retaining and expanding our customer base

No bet we’re making comes with a guaranteed ROI.

But by continuously measuring, collaborating, and iterating, we're making smarter decisions that’ll hopefully drive bigger impact.

Stuff I’m digging this week

• ChatGPT’s 4.5 model for writing—I’ve been using the new ChatGPT 4.5 model for writing and presentations. The writing quality is noticeably stronger (as long as you spend time on the inputs). I’ve started using prompts that highlight “what’s in it for Sales and CS?” so it’s clear why our work matters in their worlds.

• How Ramp made a Super Bowl ad in 7 days—Ramp has been one of the cool kids in B2B for a while now. Kyle Lacy sent me this breakdown of Ramp’s insane 7-day sprint to produce a Super Bowl ad. The turnaround was ridiculous, and the end result was badass. 

• Conversion lift testing from LinkedIn—I saw this in my LinkedIn feed this morning and immediately Slacked Austin about this. Like Pranav said, this will be huge for moving beyond last-touch and view-through metrics to understand the lift from running LinkedIn ads.

Opinions are cheap. Proof is gold.

To gate or not to gate…that is the question most marketers debate at least once a year. Ask Prelude’s Chris Singlemann for his take though—like I did on The Proof Point—and the answer remains simple: ungated. As he sees it, you can’t build trust (especially in cybersecurity) without transparency.

My biggest takeaways:

• Ungated content removes friction and earns buyer trust. Chris gave examples of how his team leans into this mindset with case-based product demos, interactive videos, and more.

• If you don’t have the website traffic for retargeting, try thought leader ads. They’re a great way to get your authentic POV out there and build up your retargeting audience.

• More tech and tools aren’t gonna fix our marketing attribution struggles. Chris spoke about learning how to do more with what we do have, while also getting comfortable with the fact that we’re never going to know everything. 

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or head over to YouTube.

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