Get to Yes: Selling Your B2B Marketing Budget to Leadership

Of course, benchmarks aren’t enough on their own. Leaders want to know how you’ll measure success.

Therefore, even if your program is new, setting key performance indicators (KPIs) builds confidence. It also shows that you’re not just thinking about tactics, but about measurable outcomes.

Wagner suggested being transparent about expectations when asking for more funding.

“You can say something like, ‘You need to have some blind faith in me for a year here. Understand I’m already asking for less than best practice,’” Wagner said.

“Use baseline data in your presentation if you have it, even if it’s relevant industry data on spend areas versus your own data,” she added. “Then, you can track for a full year, and come back next year and have an even more fruitful conversation.”

Staci Harvatin, chief of staff at SureCam, agreed, noting that clarity and measurability are essential when you’re asking leadership to take a leap with you.

“You may need to tighten up your story and your game plan for how you’re going to track the impact from the investments,” she said.

Setting KPIs early shows you’re thinking beyond spend – you’re planning for impact. In turn, that makes your marketing budget feel less like a gamble and more like a calculated step forward.