Overcoming Limited Resources When Building a Marketing Program

There’s no avoiding it, marketing teams are getting squeezed.

Budgets are shrinking——just 7.7% of company revenue, according to Gartner.

It leaves only 24% of CMOs feeling equipped to execute their strategies, yet CEOs keep asking for better results.

But hear this: working yourself into the ground STILL. ISN’T. THE ANSWER.

To bridge the gap between available resources and your bosses’ expectations, you’ll need to be smarter.

Use what you already have to make a compelling case when you need more to make great ideas happen.

Here are three strategies for overcoming limited resources and securing buy-in from stakeholders:

When budgets are tight, inaction costs more than action. 

Use data to back this up, and you’ll build a strong case for more investment.

For example, one of our clients faced mounting workloads during a Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation.

His small team was responsible for day-to-day email production while simultaneously onboarding the new system.

By warning leadership of the potential consequences (project delays, decreased quality, employee turnover) he made a compelling case for bringing in Smart Panda Labs.

With our support, the project stayed on track, quality didn’t falter, and the team avoided burnout. A win for all involved.

When budgets are tight, leadership needs to know how investing in more support or tools will directly impact the bottom line.

For you, that means reframing challenges as opportunities to drive measurable business outcomes.

For example, one marketing team we partnered with lacked the technical expertise to execute their digital initiatives.

Instead of focusing on limitations, they pitched specific skills gaps as opportunities to maximize their strategy and achieve more for the business.

That forward-thinking positivity helped secure the budget to bring in expert support (ours). 

The subsequent boost in performance proved that thoughtful, strategic investments could deliver tangible ROI. 

It also strengthened leadership’s trust, making future resource requests a whole lot easier.

Experimentation is the ultimate resource multiplier. 

It lets you make the most of what you have, prove what’s possible, and build an undeniable case for scaling up.

It’s similar to how we gain new clients’ trust when designing post-click experiences:

This iterative approach is the closest thing to guaranteed ROI, and more than enough to persuade most decision-makers to approve extra resources or ramp up winning initiatives.

Seeing results on a small scale makes it easier for them to say, “Yes, here’s what you need. Now go deliver for us.”

For example, we took an iterative approach to addressing stagnant conversion rates on a client’s website. By running A/B tests on checkout page elements — button placements, form fields, image choices etc. — we increased conversions in a key product category and delivered improvements worth more than $1M in incremental revenue.

This structured process delivered tangible results and earned trust by proving the value of data-driven experimentation.

By showing what was possible with existing resources, we could secure buy-in to scale the changes across the site, unlocking even greater growth opportunities and cementing a fruitful relationship.

Times might be tough, but you don’t need a huge team or budget to make waves.

Resourceful marketers shine in difficult circumstances by:

And with the right support, you can too.

– Shamir

Smart Panda Labs helps B2C enterprise companies drive more revenue with less ad spend by planning, building and managing post-click digital experiences.

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