An Interview With Kieran Powell
Don’t Assume Last Year’s Budget Allocation Strategy is the Right Allocation Strategy for a New Fiscal Year.
In an age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Ross.
Jennifer Ross is currently the Executive Director of Marketing Strategy and Consulting at 2X. As an accomplished B2B Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Executive Advisor, she brings over three decades of expertise to the dynamic realm of business-to-business marketing, aiding in pinpointing the capabilities, competencies, strategies, and operating models essential for 2X and its valued customers. Where she aims to facilitate exceptional experiences that enhance customer value and drive accelerated growth. Jennifer is a trailblazer in innovative strategies, her journey is marked by an unwavering commitment to excellence and thought leadership, shaping transformative approaches in B2B marketing. She is an influential author, thought leader, and sought-after keynote speaker on B2B marketing best practices. With a fervor for future-proofing marketing functions, she guides teams to navigate the ever-changing, complex B2B landscape.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
When I entered university, I chose to pursue a business degree with a focus on marketing. That was over three decades ago and I’ve never strayed from my marketing roots. Marketing is an organizational function that spans many disciplines such as product marketing, brand and demand, MarTech and operations, data and analytics, and customer experience; it’s a field where you can continue to learn and grow. I was fortunate enough to have opportunities to work across all of these disciplines, especially as a marketing leader in various industries including manufacturing, information technology, and professional services.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with many talented people at successful organizations along the way at both start-up to enterprise levels, which have shaped who I am as a marketer and a business leader today. One employer in particular that has had a huge impact on my career journey being SiriusDecision (now part of Forrester Research). There my role was a research and advisory leader for the B2B CMO practice, where I was exposed to other B2B organizations’ strategies and investments, and analyzed the successes and failures of approaches. I took that knowledge and turned it into best practices for B2B Marketers, which often included heavy research of industry trends to provide thoughtful leadership related to these commonalities.
I’m very lucky to have had that experience. It’s what led me to where I am today. As fast as the B2B marketing landscape changes, one thing remains consistent: in order to stay competitive and relevant, marketing leaders must constantly evaluate ways to optimize marketing performance at scale.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
In one of my very early marketing roles, I was given the responsibility of event planning for a new product launch of a corporate jet. Being early in my career and fresh out of college, when planning the food and beverage, I did what any “20-something” year-old would do– I ordered beer and wine. Along with some snacks that, looking back on it, probably would have been classified as “bar food.” Shortly after the event started, the sales reps were descending on me fast and furious demanding a full open bar with some actual food. Apparently people who buy $50 million dollar private jets expect caviar and shrimp– not pigs in a blanket. I quickly learned the importance of knowing your audience personas.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
The opportunity to work on something exciting that doubles in helping people, is the main reason why I joined the 2X team. I have a long history of helping marketing leaders develop their go-to-market strategies and structure high-performing teams by creating effective efficient marketing operating models.
I’ve been working on solving the marketing resource paradox that’s been more apparent in recent years. Macro-economic factors such as economic growth, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, technological advancements, regulatory changes, and global trade policies have significantly impacted businesses. These same factors influence business investment decisions, pricing, customer behavior, and market access, necessitating adaptive and informed marketing approaches to maintain competitiveness and achieve business objectives.
Ultimately the marketing resource paradox is often described as “do more with less,” and for most CMOs that means having more revenue impact with shrinking marketing budgets. The 2X mission is to provide solutions to this paradox with a marketing-as-a-service operating model. Currently, my exciting project is to help CMOs design and implement new operating models that will enable sustainable growth.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
I think there are two perspectives here.
- There is what you allocate a budget for that might be unique or unconventional
- And then there’s how, or in which way you allocate your budget across investment categories that might be unique or unconventional.
As a CMO advisor, I often get asked similar questions. Everyone wants the “silver bullet” to perform better. However, tactic and channel performance is short-lived. For sustainable growth, marketing needs a keen understanding of their ideal customer profile (ICP) and their target audiences. Then having a laser focus on those audiences. So many marketers lose their way chasing the next bright shiny channel or tactic for incremental “wins” in engagement.
That said, I have always allocated a portion of the marketing program budget to two areas that are not necessarily unconventional, but they are often overlooked.
- The first is for innovation — piloting and testing new tools, methodologies, data sources, or channels for engaging audiences.
I was involved in conducting CMO research studies as part of my role at SiriusDecisions and Forrester for many years. I can tell you that a lack of skills was consistently among the top challenges. Yet, researching marketing enablement revealed that the same organization had little to no budget allocation for upskilling their marketers. With the rate at which the technology landscape is evolving and B2B buyer behaviors are changing, investing in enablement and fostering a culture of learning is critical to marketing’s success.
- The second is for marketing enablement.
Enablement for me is also about empowering teams. In one of my previous leadership roles I allocated a budget for a StrenghsFinder workshop to drive engagement, collaboration and understanding across the team because soft skills are important too. A harmonious team is an engaged team, and an engaged team is a higher-performing team.
The way I have allocated the marketing budget is probably unconventional because I was an early adopter of another SiriusDecisions methodology on B2B marketing budget allocation. The methodology guides budget allocation to campaigns rather than to marketing teams, which is the traditional method.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
Innovation and continuous improvement are crucial for staying competitive and adaptive to evolving market trends. A good rule of thumb is to allocate roughly 15–20% of the marketing budget for innovation. Of course, the percentage may vary depending on the organization and other various factors such as the industry, company size, current market landscape, and overall business objectives.
A recent example for me, and most marketing leaders, is an allocation of funds for experimenting with AI tools, and or training on AI tools.
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
The method of allocating budgets to campaigns, as mentioned earlier, is inherently data-driven in its approach. Not all audiences are created equal, therefore allocating budgets to campaign audiences must take into account revenue goals, campaign program objectives, and analytics. Most organizations execute multiple campaigns but the revenue goals, and audience needs are not the same across all of them.
Data-driven decision-making has profoundly influenced our approach to allocating marketing budgets. It enables us to target our spending more effectively and achieve better ROI with the way we design our campaigns. By leveraging data analytics, we can assess the performance of different campaigns and understand which audiences are most responsive and profitable.
The use of buyer intent data is a great example of data-driven insights in action. Good intent data can tell us which of our target accounts is in the market for our solutions and give us an indication of where they are in the buying cycle. The ability to focus marketing efforts based on the intent data drives more efficient and effective go-to-market strategies.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
Ultimately, I am looking for the ROI at a campaign level. The definition of a campaign I use is that it is audience needs-based, and is made up of various programs such as a mix of channels, tactics, and content assets. Certainly, you need to look at tactic and channel performance. For example, suppose we notice that our email marketing campaign targeting mid-sized businesses in the technology sector has a significantly higher conversion rate and lower customer acquisition cost compared to our social media campaign targeting small businesses in retail.
By analyzing this data, we can make an informed decision to allocate a larger portion of our budget to the email campaign targeting mid-sized tech businesses, while either reducing the budget for the social media campaign or optimizing it to improve performance. But, determining the full impact requires looking across tactics and channels and the sequence and volume of interactions to make informed investment decisions.
A recent research study from 6Sense, conducted by my former colleague Kerry Cunningham, found that the average number of interactions marketing needs to facilitate with a buying group is as high as 1500 interactions across an average buying cycle of 11 months. You can’t look at a single channel in isolation. You must consider how the combination and sequence of channels and tactics is facilitating engagement.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
1. Understand the Growth Strategy and Ensure Marketing Priorities are Aligned to Growth Objectives.
Aligning marketing priorities with the company’s growth strategy ensures that marketing efforts directly support key business goals. For instance, if the primary objective is to secure Enterprise accounts, focusing on SMB leads can divert resources away from high-value targets. Aligning efforts this way ensures resources are used efficiently to drive desired outcomes, maximizing return on investment (ROI).
2. Align Budget Allocations to Campaign Efforts.
Allocating budgets by campaign rather than functional area ensures that funds are directed toward high-impact initiatives. This approach helps avoid investment shortages that can occur when budgets are spread thinly across many areas. Focusing on campaign efforts enables more strategic and effective use of funds, leading to better performance and results.
3. Don’t Assume Last Year’s Budget Allocation Strategy is the Right Allocation Strategy for a New Fiscal Year.
Each fiscal year presents new opportunities and challenges, requiring a fresh look at budget allocation. Sticking to last year’s strategy might not address current market dynamics or company goals. Re-evaluating the budget each year ensures that resources are allocated to the most critical and promising areas, optimizing the impact of marketing efforts.
4. Continuously Optimize Your Budget.
Regularly reviewing and adjusting the budget based on performance data ensures funds are being used effectively. This ongoing optimization helps identify underperforming areas and reallocates resources to high-performing campaigns. Continuous optimization leads to better results over time and ensures the marketing budget delivers maximum value.
5. Be Prepared to Defend Your Marketing Investments
Marketing leaders should be ready to justify their budget choices to the CFO, providing clear evidence of the value each investment brings. Understanding and articulating the ripple effects of reducing investments in specific areas helps protect critical initiatives from cuts. Being well-prepared ensures that marketing investments are seen as essential and strategic, rather than discretionary expenses.
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
When faced with the necessity to reduce headcount investment by 50% — a significant cut to an already under-resourced team — we navigated this challenge by shifting our focus from individual roles to the critical capabilities that drive our business priorities. This approach ensured that our decisions were holistic, considering the broader implications on our company’s growth strategy.
By partnering closely with the CFO, we aimed to achieve the necessary cost reductions in a way that minimized impact on both the business and the team members. Despite our efforts, not all decisions were within our control, and the final outcome did affect our ability to fully execute our growth strategy. It’s noteworthy that marketing, unlike many other B2B functions, often encounters external stakeholders who feel confident in making strategic judgments, sometimes overlooking the expert recommendations of the marketing professionals responsible for execution. In this instance, the pains the organization experienced from the reductions led to a ramp-back up of the roles but that didn’t make up for the loss of momentum in the market and decreased morale and productivity of the team.
I’m sharing this story because such scenarios occur all too often in the marketing domain. Marketing leaders possess deep domain expertise and a keen understanding of how to drive growth and engagement. It’s crucial for CEOs and CFOs to recognize this expertise and adopt a collaborative approach when making strategic decisions. By working together, leveraging each other’s strengths, and fostering open communication, we can achieve desired outcomes that support the company’s growth objectives while respecting the unique contributions of the marketing function.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
To cultivate lifelong curiosity by providing opportunities and resources that inspire people to explore, discover, and continuously learn new things, fostering a sense of wonder and intellectual growth in everyone– both in your professional and personal life.
Another, which is purely from a business perspective, is to focus on scalable solutions to maximize positive impact, ensuring that our efforts benefit the greatest number of individuals and communities.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out our 2X blog content on our website, or follow us on LinkedIn.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
CMO Perspectives: Jennifer Ross Of 2X On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.