Maverick of Marketing: How B2B Marketers Can Validate Asking for More Budget

With the 2022 budget season heating up, Shannon Maverick, host of Maverick of Marketing, talked to an expert in marketing about his take on how marketers can validate asking for more budget. Scott Todaro, the CMO at Plannuh, Inc. Todaro brought his near thirty years of experience along with him on this journey to navigate the uncertain jungle of marketing budgets.

 Todaro saw a discrepancy between the tools marketers use today to validate their programs’ effectiveness and the language CFOs understand. And with CFOs dangling the purse strings, a marketing team must show the true ROI and value of their activities.

“What you need to do is be able to say is, ‘I spent this much, and we got this much value back,’” Todaro said. “And when you can say that, then they will give you money.”

 Todaro noted that the game is not the same as when he came out of business school in 1992. Then, 27 percent of all CEOs had a marketing background. Today the number is down to three percent.

 “And here’s what’s happened,” Todaro said. “Heads of marketing knew the product, knew the audience better than anyone. They did focus groups. They did surveys. They really did the research to understand the buyer.” Today, It’s a different story.

 “In B2B, a lot of times now the head of marketing’s responsible for lead generation to support the sales team,” Todaro said. “The sales team’s now taken over things like pricing and packaging, or the product team has taken over pricing and packaging.”

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