Why your budget tells the truth about your marketing strategy

I love it.

I think that's so cool.

I love the journey.

I love, like you said, you went and you found the end result that you were looking for.

You went back to the source and said, "Oh, wait a minute, maybe these two things don't line up how I originally thought they would." Now, when we're looking at it, obviously, when you're looking at marketing strategy, one of your points here is that looking at your budget is actually more indicative of your strategy, more than like the strategy document you may have created or any other kind of like thing that you may be focusing on internally, maybe even KPIs.

How does your marketing budget actually represent your actual strategy in like the most authentic, genuine way? How does that actually show off what you're really caring about?

Yeah.

You know, I think if you think of marketing groups or businesses, maybe in like three big buckets, you've got your startups, right? And as a startup, you're trying to find your ICP, you're trying to get those first sales.

You're really looking for, I don't know, the cost of gaining opportunities and just can you find those first buyers? Are they happy? Are they staying? Right? Like you've got that on- There.

So if your budget is really leaning toward ICP and persona exploration, that's gonna be telling to you.

You then, I think, have this giant...

Most of us are in this growth or growing, you know, budget phase.

This is where you think of things like pipeline efficiency, right? Optimization of your marketing spend, going to more channels.

Maybe you're entering new markets, and I think that was an aha moment for me.

You're probably also thinking a lot about net new, how do we get new clients, more clients, et cetera.

And so you're really looking at that efficiency dollar spend.

And then I think, you know, some of us are lucky enough to be the top of the market, right? We're, we're, we're defending our position, and I think your marketing budget shows that strategy of defense as well.

That's when you're starting to think, like, share of voice, total accessible market share, white space, how do we retain, how do we grow within our existing customer base? And if you slice and dice your budget by customer, that's when I d- when I said segment earlier, I did customers for small, medium, large.

I did net new for small, medium, large.

And, uh, I think that's really test- telling to say, you know, are you really working to grow and defend within the customer base you have, or are you acting like a growing company? And so I think sometimes growing companies can act like as, like growth companies or small startups.

I think sometimes growing companies can act like those defending their market share, but that's gonna give you, first and foremost, your strategy.

And then you peel it back to more, like, the tactical strategy.

Are you entering new markets? Have you found a new area that, holy cow, why is the return on marketing investment so great here? And is that a lever you can actually, like, pour more money into and replicate in other places? So I think that's what you start to find is it-- whether it's showing you where your strategy can go or your strategy is.

For me, that was an aha moment of, wow, we're saying that our most important group is our customers.

Are your dollars supporting that assertion, right? Or we're saying that, you know, uh, we really want to go up market or go more B2C.