Owning More Than the Budget
Marketing has always been a creative discipline. But if it wants to be seen as a strategic one, it has to earn its credibility. Not just in the brand brief, but on the balance sheet.
Too often, marketing is viewed purely as a cost center - a budget line to trim when things get tight. And frankly, it’s not completely an unfair assessment. Because for decades, many marketing teams haven’t been asked (or empowered) to own more than execution.
But that’s no longer enough. Especially in today’s environment of economic pressure, performance obsession, and C-suite scrutiny. Marketing leaders can’t just defend spend, they need to direct it. And that starts with understanding the P&L.
Own the right lines, and know how they connect
We often talk about “owning the P&L,” but that doesn’t mean marketing has to own every line. What it does mean is understanding how the most important ones connect to your work:
Top-line Revenue: How are your efforts impacting pipeline? Demand gen? Cross-sell? Pricing elasticity?
COGS and Margin: Are you driving demand for high-margin offers or burning budget on low-yield channels?
Operational Costs: Are inefficiencies in campaigns, tech stacks, or vendor spend quietly draining resources?
Owning the P&L means seeing beyond media and Martech. It’s about knowing where marketing influences the levers of growth. And where it might be eroding them.
Zooming in: The Marketing P&L
There’s also a case for building a true Marketing P&L - a strategic internal model that looks beyond campaign budgets and start/end dates. It’s a disciplined view of what you’re investing in and what you expect it to return:
Program and channel-level ROI
Team and resource cost allocation
Asset performance across the funnel
Acquisition vs. retention cost ratios
This becomes your strategic dashboard, helping tie intent to investment to outcome. And when marketing can speak to these numbers fluently, it not only earns a seat at the table, it drives the conversation.
Zooming out: Seeing the full business picture
In many organizations, the best strategic marketing insight doesn’t come from the brand tracker - it comes from the business P&L. That’s where you see margin compression. Product stagnation. Regional underperformance. Sales velocity shifts. And that’s where marketing leaders can spot the strategic signals others miss.
When you have access to that level of financial visibility, you can start asking better questions:
What’s selling well, and why?
What products are underperforming, and is it an awareness, pricing, or experience issue?
How are fixed and variable costs shifting, and what does that mean for campaign prioritization?
Can marketing influence throughput or utilization in ways that reduce operational drag?
A Simple Real-World Example
Earlier in my career, I was head of marketing and a part of the executive leadership team at a regional restaurant group, and served on the Food & Beverage committee.
With full visibility into the corporate P&L, I could see what was selling, what wasn’t, and where margins were strongest. But I also had insight from the field - feedback from both customers and operators, which added real context to the numbers.
That visibility allowed me to partner with Operations to help adjust menu items, pricing, and build campaigns around high-margin items. It wasn’t just about promotion, it was about aligning the message to margin, and marketing to what moved the business forward.
Strategic marketers connect dots others don’t
Marketing strategy is business strategy. It should align around what matters most: sustainable growth, financial alignment, and disciplined execution. And that starts by looking at the numbers.
If marketing doesn’t understand where the money is going, and why, it’s not strategy. It’s just spend.
→ For additional insight, read our full Perspective: Marketing and the P&L: Why Strategic Marketers Need to Think Like Capital Allocators
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