Small Budget = Big Expectations. Always. | E102 with Lucy Blenkinsopp

Why do tiny marketing budgets come with sky-high expectations? 💸 In this episode, we’re joined by Lucy Blenkinsopp, marketing lead at Version 1, to talk about how to do more with less—without burning out or BS-ing the board. From choosing fewer, higher-ROI channels to proving marginal gains and building a real case for budget, we get practical about what actually moves the needle when cash is tight.

We get into:
 ✅ Fewer channels, done better: double down on what works and drop the FOMO
 ✅ Test–learn–report: micro-pilots, clear hypotheses, and sharing results every quarter
 ✅ Create 25%, distribute 75%: repurpose relentlessly and let AI speed production
 ✅ CRM hygiene: turn it every 12 weeks, go “intent fishing,” revive stalled opps
 ✅ Measure marginal ROI: track incremental wins instead of waiting on full-cycle proof
 ✅ Budget storytelling: pipeline-to-spend ratios, define your attribution terms, post-it metrics
 ✅ CFO as ally: model scenarios together and set expectations early (not in Q4)
 ✅ Sales x Marketing: capture anecdotes from the field to complete the data picture
 ✅ Spoof-video sanity check: memorable ≠ relevant—know your ICP and the line

If you’re being asked to deliver a miracle on a shoestring—or to “just get more pipeline” with lunch money—this one’s for you.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

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Hi everybody. And welcome to Belayment on Marketing with your favorite ranty marketers, Emma and Ruta. Ranty Anties. I love it. I love it. New title for us. And today we are going to be talking about small budgets and the really annoying part of having a small marketing budget is the huge expectations that go with it. And we are joined... by the awesome Lucy. Please introduce yourself. Thanks guys, thanks for having me, long time fan of the podcast. So it's such a pleasure to be on. my name is Lucy Blenkinsall. I lead marketing for our private sector division at version one. We are a technology company specializing in uh digital transformation and AI services. Wonderful. So before we dig into small budgets, and also I think there's like a direct relationship between how small your budget is and how big the expectations are. Smaller the budget, the bigger the expectations, but that's, get into that. We do have to ask you Lucy for your marketing confession. So something that you've royally effed up, that you're proud to share with us. Yes, mean, I mean, there is quite a bad catalogue when you kind of think back over everything. So I've been in marketing for 15 years. And, you know, there's one that just really sticks in my mind. And I think it was from quite early on in my career, it would have been about 13 years ago and was working for quite a large company and we were organizing like an internal conference. And event apps were kind of quite new and fresh and had just kind of come in and we thought, let's do like one of these kind of trendy event apps for our internal conference and why not give it to the most junior inexperienced person on the team to manage, you know, which was me. And I kind of, you know, got the app organized, got sorted and it was a conference that was overseas. So, you know, I don't know what happened. Basically, the app was set up and it just started firing all these alerts to people at the beginning of the conference. So instead of like the planned at 9 a.m. it's breakfast time, come and get your pancakes. It started firing it at like 6 a.m. and you know, all of these alerts. And I still remember just the sinking feeling in my tummy of just like, wow, I've really. this up and my boss is like looming over me and I don't know if it was just the time difference or just the complete I mean maybe these apps just weren't as slick as they are now but yeah definitely not something that I have rushed to repeat and it definitely did teach me you know how important the little details are and also you know maybe don't give the most junior person in your team a job that has... yeah! give the app to her? Yeah. yeah, so I mean that, that, mean it's still, I can laugh about it now. Exactly. but you know what? at least everyone would have been like mega alert. they'd have been like wow. yeah, they knew that the app existed after that. you know. Yeah. So, um, thank you for your confession. Hope that's warmed you up nicely, Lucy. Um, so the thing is, so obviously we, and Ruchio obviously has alluded to this a little bit already, but a lot of us now are suffering from having small marketing budgets. I mean, some of us always had them depending on which industry you work in. Um, but it's now the kind of norm. that we don't necessarily have the resource and the budget to do some of the stuff that we really need to be able to do. So what's happened? How have we got into this situation where marketing has ended up with such a tiny little budget? Yeah, and I think, you know, I think we all read, we all read the reports that say, you know, seven to 12 % of revenue should be spent on marketing. But I think, you know, I'm sure that is definitely true for some organizations, but I don't think it's the reality that most of us are actually living in. And sometimes it just feels good to say that out loud when you kind of think, am I the only one? Like, no, you're absolutely not. I think like there's maybe like an external factor and an internal factor. So the external factor is, you like from where I sit, we are still in this post-COVID world where budgets went down. during COVID and they just haven't rebuilt to where they were before. And now, you know, in 2025, going into 2026, we are working in this just tougher, wider macroeconomic environment where there is just not a lot of money to spare for lots of different departments in an organization. And then I think the internal factor is there is just this heavy ROI scrutiny on absolutely everything. that marketing and other teams do. So it's just all about measurable returns and I think that, you know, within marketing, well, I think anyway that marketing is an art as well as a science and there's only, you know, you have to just measure what you can and... But then on top of that, you have to tell the right story. And I think maybe that's what, like as marketers, can be more difficult to do. But that's what we really need to do internally. We have to have the data and then we have to have the story on top of it to really fight that ROI scrutiny. Because there's just this big shift, I think, from the kind of strategic to the tactical. know, C-suites don't necessarily want to invest in the longer term brand. and building and that is it's just you know it costs more it's a lot harder to prove the ROI and then say a trade show or a round table or something along those lines that's kind of how I see it what do you guys think Yep. I'm, I'm definitely on the skeptical side of this because I feel like, um, my brain goes straight to, obviously there's a lot of stuff that you've mentioned already Lucy, but my brain goes straight to the shareholders want more return. They're not getting the return because businesses are not performing and they're like, how do we squeeze every drop out of this? So my, um, my instant reaction to this conversation is it's the big bad, uh, people who want their, want their returns. Yeah. It is true. And I think also like if you're not in that kind of a company where you're actually making profit and you're kind of far along, VC funding has also massively decreased. And unless you're some like weird AI startup, you probably aren't getting money anymore. So I think that as well has tightened the budgets for sure. if you had a small marketing function before and you didn't kind of make a in your company, then you'll be the first to feel the cut right. I feel like marketing teams that have always driven revenue like heavily, like a big chunk of their company's revenue, they're probably doing better. But if you never got there, then it's a hard time. you know, you say that though, but just to throw in some insight here, like that's not what I've seen. I see people who are still driving revenue through inbound and are still not getting the right budget. I mean, we can get into that a little bit later, but they still don't have the budget that actually, because there's just a lack of, I guess there's a lack of trust in what marketing delivers, even though it's quite clear. But I can give you some insight into that later. uh it. I mean, guess what I'm saying is I'm hoping that they haven't had their budgets cut as hard. Is, I think, what I'm trying to say. I'm doing a face like it's not great Okay, that's fair. So budgets are tight. know budgets are tight and even if they're not, I think this question still stands. So what should we be prioritising when it comes to a limited budget and limited resources that are kind of more limited than we wish they were? Yeah, so I think the first one is to look at your channels. I saw something recent, I think it was LinkedIn that came out with a report that basically said, you know, for B2B sales cycles, you're looking at 200 plus days, 70 plus touch points, and you should focus on four key channels. And I think that, you know, re-scoping to those high ROI channels is probably one of the best things that you can do. I just think like fewer channels done well. done consistently will get you to where you need to be. And also like don't follow the crowd. Like I think if you kind of look too much externally and you see what kind of other marketers are doing, you can get distracted and you think, well, maybe we need to, you know, drop however many K on that trade show or whatever it might be. I think you have to really look at what has worked for your company and what the differentiators are for your organization to you know, make that to make the difference. I also think that uh you know, we need to get better at this kind of rapid like test, learn, report. And so you might have your kind of big campaigns that are running alongside and that is great, but you have to really foster this kind of culture of marketing innovation with it. And maybe it's just you as a one person marketer, but also within your team. like get really comfortable running like micro scale. pilots, whether it's you know, an email on LinkedIn or whatever, and you might only need to, you you could do it for free if you're just doing it on your own channels. Or you know, if you're doing it on LinkedIn, like set a certain amount that you are comfortable with, I guess losing and you know, run these tests often. And then I think the most important thing is reporting that back in your business, which I think that's the one we kind of forget about but. I think it's just so important to over communicate to your stakeholders that you are constantly kind of looking at ways to improve, move the needle, know, get try to find those little ROI cracks that you can do. The other thing that I just always think about that is so boring, but is just repurposing your content. like, think it was, I think it was like five years ago, my manager at the time, he gave me such good constructive feedback that was basically, you're spending way too much time. creating content and nowhere near enough time distributing the content and he had kind of, mean don't know if he got this from anywhere but he had just said you should spend 25 % of the budget and effort creating the content and 75 % on actually distributing it and it's just a lesson that I find myself having to learn like again and again but and I think like AI can be so useful for this so maybe you have a blog and just like asking AI to give you ideas for how it could be repurposed. Like it's just such a quick win that you've got the original content there. Because I think we all, if we're working on a piece of content or internally within an organization, we see a piece of content often, we overestimate how much or how familiar are. or prospects are going to be with that content and our organization. But I think the cool time truth is that, you know, they don't, if they think about us at all, it is in very fleeting moments. I think that that's, we all need to kind of like, Sadly, but yes. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like probably B2C it might be slightly different. You know, some people do really align themselves with a brand but in B2B they really don't do that. I am, I... So I think that that's just something we all just really need to keep in mind. Like you can really make content like go and go before you need to. in doubt, they didn't see your blog post. They just didn't. Like, just... And if they did and they see it again, my god, you will be okay. Like, and they will be fine. It's okay. isn't it? Yeah, I know. And like, I think the other thing as well is to... like track marginal ROI as opposed to the kind of overall campaign ROI or you know just overall ROI generally because that is going to be longer it's maybe just a little bit it's just harder I think to prove but if you're kind of tracking the marginal ROI per activity you're really looking at the incremental gains and again like bringing that story telling that story internally again will just really help. can carve out that narrative that that's what your focus area is and that you're constantly looking at that. for anyone listening do you want to do you guys want to talk about what how you would do that because i think that's a really practical piece of advice here so rather than that overall roi how would you look at marginal roi what would you do Yeah, so I think so for me what I tend to use for that is hub like I use HubSpot and LinkedIn if I'm tracking that and the thing that I'm looking at is just like the CPA so that the cost per acquisition so for example like the say you're doing an ad or you're like saying in mail ad or something like that you're looking at like the clicks and the conversion from that specific in mail campaign or on HubSpot for example maybe you're running like a newsletter, like a customer newsletter or prospect newsletter, you're looking at the clicks specifically from that email newsletter getting sent out coming to your website and the conversions from there, as opposed to kind of, you know, like a three to six month period of different activity and different touch points. yeah i think that's it isn't it but what i the only thing i would caveat that with is that that is probably for the marketing team right but the bigger narrative and this is where maybe it gets quite difficult for a lot of us because what we don't necessarily want to do is put heat on specific channels with like the senior leadership team so how would you how would you navigate that lucy that like balance between i want to look at the nitty gritty which tells me what to do versus what i need to show the senior leadership team so that they don't go well i didn't see an incremental change in that for a while so why are we doing it hard one curveball Ask me the question again. Let me just like ask the question again. Let me think about it. when, when we as marketers are looking at, there's a set of metrics that we're looking at. that's all like marginal, the marginal gain stuff, which I'm totally on board with. think that's really helpful for us. But then when senior leaders see that kind of data, they get into the nitty gritty and they might, might start commenting or feeling like they can comment on like, don't do that thing. Cause I didn't see any change or whatever. But realistically, we know sometimes it's a longer game. How do you, how do you balance that? Yeah, well then I think you know have to kind of you have to know the story generally of like within your organizations roughly how many touch points does it take to convert a customer or to convert a prospect to a customer? Like you know for most of us it probably is between 50 and 100 touch points and so I think we need to arm the C-suite with that kind of information to say that you can get a lot of insights from sending out a newsletter or sending out, by running one event, you can see intent there, but we shouldn't be expecting a lot of bottom line action off the back of one activity. to layered, know, aligned to the number of touch points that we can see takes to convert a customer or that we can at least guesstimate. Because a lot of us, you know, a lot of us are still kind of guesstimating for how many touch points it should take. But you have to keep, I think it's a bit like, you know, we overestimate how much our customers think of us. We sometimes overestimate how much our C-suite and our leaders kind of remember what say from a marketing perspective. So we need to keep kind of hammering home the message of it takes X amount of touch points or X amount of channels or you know X amount of time to kind of get to converting a customer. And then I guess if you're talking about ads, for example, they might not lead to conversions, but you can say like, hey, it's really cheap for us to reengage our audience. And that's building up our touch points with these ads rather than it being like, you know, they have to make revenue on their own back. Because again, that's depending on the business you're in, but usually not the case for our listeners because they're B2B. Before we move on to the next point, I really, really, really want to just... rewind back to your point about experimentation, because I thought it was brilliant. And that's because I've seen a lot of teams, one, deprioritize experimentations when time, like when there is time and resource restrictions. But two, I've also seen teams that are afraid of it because their budget is so tight and because, you know, they've figured out kind of how to squeeze the most out of it. So they don't want to touch anything else because they don't want to F anything up, right? So Can you talk to us a little bit more about like how you look at that part of your job and maybe how you keep it prioritized and what kind of, I don't know, rhythm you have with experimentation, just like some practical points people can take away. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, when budgets are super tight and you do want to do more experimentation, you have to go back to your own channels as opposed to your external channels. So I would say that would be the first natural place to start. And so for me, that's your email, your CRM, your website, your nurture flows, those would kind of be your best places to start. And email is just like a really, you know, it's a really simple one. If you're looking at say, customers, prospects, and you want to look at, it can be even things like you... maybe you decrease the length of your newsletter by 75%. Instead of sending three articles because you feel like maybe three is the right thing to do, maybe you just double down on one article. even things like, you know, I'll remove, I'll remove like all links from an email so that it's just kind of pure like red in the email. And even things like changing your subject lines dramatically, like that can, that can have a real impact and, know, using, using AI to really help like challenge your thinking around subject lines, content can be really, can be really, really useful. So I think like email is a really is a good win there. And even like CRM. So I don't necessarily think this is kind of a big like, like innovation thing, but I think turning over your CRM like every 12 weeks at a minimum is something that marketers can do. I mean, you're kind of straying into rev ops a little bit, but like, you know, there's you might be in an organization where maybe you don't have any rev ops, but yeah. You know, turning over your CRM every 12 weeks, looking for cracks is something that I don't think enough of us do because it's really boring and it's really manual em and you kind of have to do it yourself and you have to do it like quite often. But going like opportunity fishing and going intent fishing is I see it as really like low hanging fruit, like seeing kind of where prospects have kind of come into the funnel and with your organization but maybe fallen out of it for whatever reason but if you actually go hunting through your CRM you can find a lot of answers there and you are really like digging into the intent of why they were engaging with you in the first place and you know looking at ways that you can re-engage so you know things like that like I think that you can even do like build in every like 12 weeks I've worked in teams as well where they will like gamify you know like pilots and innovation so you know ask your team to put put it to your team to kind of come to you with ideas and you know the best idea gets to report back to senior leadership and and all this kind of thing get little like prizes and and that kind of thing i think can really like encourage people and you know get like get get them going that like that that kind of thing Awesome, yeah. I've got a of a mental model that I use when I've gone into clients where we've had this, either we're just doing things for the sake of doing it, because we think these are the things we should be doing, or we're not clear on what actually performs. So we've got to experiment because we don't know. So my mental model is, and this is probably because I came from the charity sector, but my mental model is... start with the like, um okay, do I know what works? That's the first question. And if you, if the answer to that is kind of like a little workflow, the answer to that is no, I've now got to figure out what works. So what I do is I start off with all the things like you were talking about, Lucy, all the things that I can influence that don't cost any money. And I'm only prepared to spend money on things once I see some of those kinds of incremental improvements that you were talking about. trust me, like people get frustrated with this because they're like, um it's taking too long or like it's been a couple of weeks i haven't seen any changes but it's that kind of stuff that actually gives you the answer to that initial question which is do i know what works because that's the risk and it's when you've got that small budget as well it's like the risk is you could spend the small budget that you've got on a lot of stuff that doesn't work and that's fine but if i could actually siphon off some of that money and start with the like what can i do free to figure out what works and then start slowly introducing spend into that category. Like maybe it is, I start spending on ads or maybe it's to start with, try some free ones, not free ones, I try some very low cost ones and then I see how that goes. You know, it's those sorts of things that are the way that you kind of work it back to figuring out and answering that bigger question, which is do I know what works? Because ultimately you walk into a boardroom. that's the that's what people want to know the answer to. do you actually know what is working and do you know where to put the money? um and so i feel like if you can kind of work from that model you can then play around with some of the stuff that lucy's lucy's talking about. is important to know what's not working right. Know what you don't want to be doing and like actually go into the boardroom and being like, hey, we tried all of these things and they just tanked and they were really crap. Let's not do that again. I think that's just as valuable as, as knowing what works. you Yeah, I agree, 100%. So speaking of the boardroom, do you want to say the next, do you want to do the next? Speaking of the boardroom, how do we build a case for some budget? Because often we have kind of barely enough to do anything, barely enough to prove any ROI. like, how do we get that? It feels like a chicken and egg problem. Chicken and egg? No. Yeah, chicken and egg. Yeah, chicken and egg, yes, absolutely. I think, it might have even been on this podcast that you guys were talking about that as marketers, we might have a plan on a page, but with the C-suite, you basically need to fit in on a post-it note. What you should, I don't know if it was maybe you guys that were talking about it, but I think you really need to dig in to what the CFO and the CFO really care about. And I know as marketers, we love all the kind of little. nitty gritty metrics, probably for the most part that those aren't going to have a place in the boardroom. I think a key one that I always come back to is just revenue or pipeline to marketing spend ratio. And that makes it kind of super tangible for a C-suite person. And I think as well, you need to kind of nail. you need to nail the metrics that you want to communicate. So there are just so many words of like marketing supported revenue, marketing attributed, marketing generated, marketing influenced, and they all kind of mean similar things, but also very different things. So I think it's important like you as a marketing leader. team work out what you want to kind of be known for within the organization and then that is the metric that you just continually keep you know putting back to the to the C-suite. think the second thing, we've talked about it already, but just the importance of leveraging the quick wins. And it's so important with organizations like Lime that we've got long sales cycles. yeah, running pilots like we've talked about. And even within 12 weeks, can organize and run a round table and that kind of thing. So you can still do the media things within a quarter and have stuff to show for it. And actually, Alice de Coursey talks about this a lot in her book, Diary of a First Time CMO, which is really good. you know, for anybody interested in kind of getting good at like scaling pilots, like she's got some really good advice in that book. Yeah. Yes. I'm so sorry. That's how... was the promise? No, not at all. Yeah. Also, think marketing and sales, you have to work super, super closely with your sales team so you can attribute marketing input fairly because you can have all the data and you can read all the data, but sometimes it's like speaking to your sales team that you can hear those anecdotal bits that they might share. decision-makers saw our case study or they saw that video on LinkedIn and they thought that was really interesting they saw that PR interview and You kind of really need to like you need those little bits to piece everything together So, you know don't just don't just kind of look at your data all day like you have to get out and speak to your sales team as well and I think like the big one like at the moment certainly is highlight your efficiencies through AI. So you obviously want to be highlighting your pipeline wins to the C-suite, but. Highlight how much quicker and more efficiently you as a marketing person or marketing team are moving because of AI so, know like reducing your cost per content asset by 70 % or whatever it is like that I think that really tells the right story to the C-suite that you that you are very focused on kind of productivity and And that kind of thing. I think that's that's a massive. I think that's a massive that is actually quite quick and simple for marketers to articulate. Yeah, I agree with that. actually haven't thought about the trying to articulate how more efficient you've made almost made your, your content, your production processes or whatever that might be through AI. I think that's a really, and I think that is going to become really important. I think one of the other things that I think about when it comes to asking for budget, now this is kind of go back, I'm going to allude back to the previous story of some of the things that I've seen over the last few years with clients and, and, and getting the, and getting budgets is quite often. What happens is the budget is just set. Mm-hmm. And then, um, and then what happens is you go back and you say, well, this doesn't align to our ROI or this doesn't align to the metrics that I've got. So when, yeah, exactly. It's just basically pulled out of thin air. Cause we've decided this is what, how much money we want to spend. How do you tackle, how do you, cause this is the real hardest one for most marketers. I think, how do you tackle those kinds of conversations? Cause for me. that kind of tells me, that tells me a lot, it tells me that I'm at a company that isn't necessarily that data focused. So where do you, where do you start with that kind of stuff? We can all have a go at this one. Yeah, I think that's so key that you don't, when you're talking, know, when you're kind of going through those budget conversations, don't just agree to what the C-suite is telling you to spend on marketing. Because, yeah, maybe the, probably the likelihood is they've actually never worked in marketing. So they really don't have the wider context. So don't let them kind of, you know, Overestimate what marketing kind of should be achieving or underestimate as well. I think you need to I think it goes back to like telling the story using like using the data so if the C-suite say You know here is X amount of money for you to spend on marketing and you I think you need to say okay So for this amount of money and for this size of the team Here is what we will deliver and here is what the company will get back in return And like I said, do not overestimate that to make yourself kind of look... Never overestimate it to make yourself look good, but just really spelling out to say, you know, for that amount of money, here's what you will get back. If that's what you're comfortable with, you know, okay. But if we spent this amount of money and used it in X and Y different ways, this is what we will get back. And this is what I would be recommending. because you have to bring them on that journey because they're probably thinking like, that's loads for marketing. you guys will be absolutely fine with that, but they couldn't actually quote to you how much a camping costs or an event or, you know, anything along those lines. So it's just so important to kind of really explain and for them to be comfortable with the outputs of that. right? If you're like, oh, you're going to give me 400k? Okay, we're going to make 500k in revenue, whatever the number is, right? They're going to be like, oh, well, like, shouldn't it be blah, blah, blah? You're like, nope, according to XYZ. It's this. If you don't like that number, that's cool. We can totally talk about it. But you know, if you're going to throw numbers at me, like I will, I will tell you what they're going to look like in the end. yeah, I'm like, you know, I think that's where the third party data can be quite helpful, you know, because sometimes with third party data, I'm a bit like, you know, it's, I don't, it's not something that I definitely want to use all the time. But for those kind of conversations, you know, the likes of like Gartner, Forrester, it can, it can really help to just frame, know, frame the ROI conversation, like at the beginning. Yeah, agreed. Emma, what's your, any additional takes on this? Yeah. I mean, you know, I've done this many times. I've done this whole, the whole like, I've talked about it quite a on this podcast going in and being like, Oh, what's that? You want to make a million pounds and you expect that to come from marketing, but you've given us the 30,000 pound marketing budget, which is insane. I've actually seen that with my own eyes. Um, insane. And I was like, Oh, right. So your ROI is like what? A hundred? It's like insane. Um, so. So I think yeah, I think a dose of reality is good. I think it is important also to try and if you are in marketing leaderships uh align some of the metrics that you are talking about to and ensure that people understand their business metrics. So like for example, people talk about marketing ROI and they go that's marketing's problem, you know, but it's not actually it's the business's issue because it's the amount of spend, you know, and that is kind of like it's the revenue team or the growth team, whatever you want to kind of call yourself, that's your, that's a number for you guys to worry about in the same way that conversion rates are a number for all of you to worry about, those sorts of things. So I think that kind of education is important. That's not straightforward. It's not overnight, but I think, yeah, use the data, show people a model. sit down with your CFO and say can i work this back with you? what do these numbers look like for you? and very often when you do do that you see a little light bulb go shit because they realise it's like.. it's numbers on a spreadsheet but it's.. it's.. it's real. um so i think that's.. that's definitely the way i would do it but i would.. i would probably be quite tactical and like tackle each person and what they care about first. then go into the big meeting room and say to everybody because then at least you've got everybody's kind of had a little bit of chance to digest what you're about to say rather than just mic dropping and walking out which is I've also done that and that doesn't go as well No, but it's really fun. it is really fun but it doesn't but but very often they fire you and they still spend 30 grand on their marketing budgets so i wonder why be the marketing team. I'd add two things to this conversation. So one is set expectations about how you want to do the budgeting. So let's say you've, you know, you've been promoted or you've been hired in, or you just want to change how you do the process. Like talk about it early, early, like six months out from when you even need to be doing this to be like, Hey, you know, I think it'd be more useful to do our budgets in this way. I want to do it collaboratively or whatever, whatever the situation is. Cause ideally you are talking to your leadership about what the sales targets are, what percentage of that comes from marketing and then working it backwards, not them just telling you number. But the other thing I would say is as well is just make sure you do your budget early. So like you should know what your budget is and what your numbers are and what your ROI is way, way, way before you asked about it. um Because if you get in there early, you can then again, hopefully have more of a collaborative conversation of being like, going to your CFO and being like, hey, I've done my numbers for next year. You know, it's looking like this. Can we talk through it, et cetera. So just get in there early instead of waiting for that meeting to even be put in your diary or that conversation to be brought up with you. Because it's much, I feel like you're then on the back foot anyway, because the other person is expecting to talk to you about it, not for you to talk to them about it. So I would say that as well. Yeah. And also I think the thing is as well, if you've not managed a budget before and you're like, oh God, I think this is where the CFO is your friend because you say, I haven't done this before or I'm in the middle of working this out. Can we have a couple of sessions where we sit down and work out, you know, what the model's going to be and then work with that person to figure it out. You know, I think a lot of people get very... worried about going to those people and saying i need help working this out but like in a really good working relationship between you know marketing sales and finance that's what that is it's like i would sit down with the cfo once month do like talk through our reconciliation talk through our budget talk through what i'm thinking you know all those sorts of things and with a good cfo that conversation should very much be welcomed um and if it's not I think you might have to go up to the top dog to say, need to be having these conversations with finance. em So yeah, you can ask for it. It's all good. Yeah, yeah, think that's a really good point, isn't it? It's like, yeah, just the over... We have to be comfortable kind of over-communicating in a way and, you know, just building those relationships. Absolutely, they're critical. Right, so Lucy, before we let you go, I think this has been a very practical session for everybody. Do reach out to Lucy and us if you ever have any budget related questions, we're here for you. So before we let you go, any marketing gossip for us? Anything you're either loving or hating at the moment? One thing that I just can't make my mind up about is or are spoof videos. I think like, just, don't know if it's just that time of year, like we're just seeing more and more, but I, do you know, who said this really? Like Passion Fruit, you've probably seen some of theirs. They are really into these like spoofy videos. I mean, their Pride and Prejudice one is so. bang on that I like it just I can just imagine like the persona of like the millennial woman who studied English lit at A level and now works in marketing. just I was just like I just was like that is just like me on a persona board you know so like that one I just thought was amazing but like but even like I just see even like mega companies you know the likes of kind of like Blackstone you know they're like it's like biggest, know, they do their holiday video every year and it's such a massive production and they have like people look, like everyone across the organization, like, so I see, you know, those are like, those are examples that I think work really well. And I think like the memorability, the emotional recall is like. Magic, but then what scares me is like the margin for error is like, you know You just it's so close to being like I'm not like this is no guys. No, no, no We've we've gone like too far for this and I've even seen some companies hire actors to be in their spoo You know, and I'm like, I don't know about About this like it just maybe it's just within b2b as well. We're just not We're still kind of, you know, sometimes we're cool with it, sometimes we're not, but like, yeah, those like, spoofing videos, I just haven't completely made my mind up about them yet. And I think from a budget perspective as well, like, you know. Yeah, I'm with you there, I think, because I make them sometimes as well. And I'm like, there's a fine line between insulting people, being funny and being, and it being relevant to your audience. And I think sometimes there is, I think, especially with the big corporate, sometimes it's completely fricking irrelevant. Your ICP do not care about this at all. Like they're not interested. They're very busy. They're doing other things. i'm with you i'm like sometimes yes sometimes no like i also think it depends what it is so like when people were doing spoof videos and jokes about the uh astronomer ceo in hrd like we did we did one little thing the day it happened and then we left it because we we do it we recognize we move on we make a little joke but equally there were some people who really went in on it like and i was like no you No, you need to know where the line is! with the lady in that video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking back at it, we all had a really good giggle about it and had loads of fun because this shit never happens right in B2B. But literally that was fucking tragic. Like, looking back at it now, I'm like, oof, that was the worst day for many, many, people ever. Yeah. Yeah. So those things they do kind of like... oh right? It might be completely fine in the moment when you've done it, but like a year or two later, you might look back at it you're like, oh, this did not age well. Yeah. Yeah. comedy, all comedy has its moments where it doesn't age well. So, you know. true. It's true. But you know, thing I'm also really loving on LinkedIn, and I think, like, I don't know if it's just because the algorithm is kind of forcing it, but I'm really liking how, like, marketing leaders are kind of saying, this is what has worked for me in the last, like, three to six months. And like, some of them are actually getting like, really granular. and you actually feel like this is really like it's really useful insights that people are sharing like just like the vulnerability so yeah I'm really loving I'm that more of that please on LinkedIn yeah. more honesty, more transparency around what actually works um and how they.. yes! and how they handle people. i love those. i love it when someone's like.. as cfo thought i was talking shit and then this is the stuff that i did to actually like fix things with them and then tags them in the post. i'm like this is.. this is terrific. Yeah. Well, Lucy, it's been wonderful chatting to you. Again, if anyone has questions, please connect with Lucy. Ask us. We love a little widget chat. It's a guilty pleasure. And thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me guys really enjoyed it. See you everyone on the next episode.