Every marketer (especially those in lean teams with lean budgets) eventually has to defend the budget to someone who sees it as a cost, not an investment, usually the founder who has been there since day 1. The mistake most of us make is arguing efficiency when the room wants outcomes, or talking about long-term outcomes when the room just wants to know why the number went up. This is especially tricky when you are caught off guard and the people arguing with you have their minds made up.
Two conversations, not one
I’ve sat through both versions. One is “we spent this, here’s what we got, is it working.” That’s an efficiency conversation. The other is “we’re worried about growth, what’s the plan to fix it.” That’s an outcomes conversation. They sound similar in theory, but they need completely different answers, and figuring out which one you’re actually in, before you speak, is the whole skill.
This isn’t the piece about finding savings in the budget. I’ve written that one already. This is defending the spend that’s actually working, when others in the room want to cut it.
The room that wanted to cut everything slow
In a past role, the founders wanted to pull back hard on SEO, brand and awareness spend. The logic made sense on paper: performance media showed an immediate return, and SEO and brand didn’t, at least not on the same weekly dashboard when reviewing the metrics. When cash is tight, “immediate return” wins every argument by default, and I understood exactly their point of view, but it was short sighted
and I had to make that case without sounding like I was defending my own turf.
The 3-5% argument
The number that actually changed the minds in the room: in my experience, roughly 3-5% of your market is ever in-market and ready to buy right now. The rest, the other 95%, isn’t lost. It’s latent demand. It’s the person who isn’t looking today but will be in six months, and who buys from whoever they already recognise when that moment arrives.
Performance media is built to win the 3-5%. It’s very good at that job. But if that’s the only budget left, you’re only ever fighting for the same small slice everyone else is fighting for too, and you’ve got nothing built for the 95% who’ll be in-market next quarter.
Performance media wins the 3-5% who are ready today. Brand is how you win the 95% who aren’t ready yet.
Brand spend compounds. It doesn’t show up on this week’s dashboard because it isn’t supposed to. It shows up as a lower cost of acquisition next quarter, higher repeat purchase and higher consideration, especially in competitive markets, because more of the market already knows who you are before performance media even gets a chance to bid on them.
Reading the room before you open your mouth
The founders weren’t wrong to worry. Cash pressure is real and performance media genuinely does show its working faster. The mistake would have been meeting that worry with an efficiency argument (cost per click, CTR, the usual performance metrics) when what they actually needed was an outcomes argument: here’s what happens to the business if we only ever fund the 3-5% and starve the rest. You are robbing tomorrow, to pay today and you get stuck in the performance media loop.
Read which conversation you’re in before you open your mouth. If the room is anxious about outcomes, don’t hand them an efficiency slide. If the room wants efficiency, don’t lecture them about long-term brand value. Getting that wrong is how a genuinely good budget gets cut for the wrong reasons.
How to tell which conversation you’re actually in
There’s a sign, and it’s usually in the first sentence someone says to open the meeting. “Why did this cost so much” is an efficiency question, and they wanta a number back: cost per acquisition, cost per click, spend against plan. “Are we going to hit the number this quarter” is an outcomes question, and a cost breakdown doesn’t answer it at all. It just makes you look like you’ve misunderstood what’s actually being asked.
I’ve made this mistake myself, more than once. Early in my career I’d walk into a budget review with a beautifully detailed efficiency deck, cost per lead broken down by channel, and get blindsided by a founder who didn’t care about any of it because their real question was whether the plan actually got them to their revenue target. The deck wasn’t wrong. I was answering the question that nobody was asking and missing the one they cared most about.
Defending spend versus finding savings
It’s worth separating this from the OPEX conversation, because they get lumped together and they’re not the same skill. Finding savings means going through the budget and asking what can be cut or done more efficiently without losing output. That’s a valuable exercise and I’d recommend any lean marketer do it regularly.
Defending spend is different. It’s the conversation where something is genuinely working, the founder or board just can’t see it on the timeframe they’re looking at, and the risk is losing a budget line that’s earning its keep simply because its return doesn’t show up on the same dashboard as performance media. Those two situations call for opposite instincts. One wants you looking for what to cut. The other wants you holding the line on what to keep, with a number specific enough that holding the line doesn’t sound like turf protection.
It’s worth being honest that you won’t win every one of these. Sometimes cash pressure is severe enough that the business genuinely can’t afford to fund the 95% right now, and the right call really is to concentrate on the 3-5% until the immediate pressure eases. Defending the spend isn’t about refusing to ever cut brand and SEO. It’s about making sure the decision gets made with the actual trade-off on the table, rather than by default because brand’s return doesn’t fit neatly into this week’s dashboard.
Dom O'Brien
CMO at MATE and author of The Startup Marketing Playbook. Fifteen years building lean marketing teams that punch above their weight.
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