When times are tough, marketing budgets are one of the first line items to come under scrutiny. CIM’s recent member exclusive webinar with data & analytics expert Gavin Llewellyn sought to help marketers prepare for difficult conversations with the finance team and protect their budgets. He showed attendees how to make a stronger case for marketing investment when every pound is being questioned.

Llewellyn is a Chartered Marketer with more than 20 years’ experience helping businesses improve their marketing strategy, performance, and results. He specialises in helping marketing leaders measure what matters, optimise what works, and confidentially align their activity with business outcomes. 

During his webinar, he emphasised the importance of building evidence to translate marketing activity into business value and shared lots of practical advice to protect your marketing budget, including a 30-day action plan that you can implement straight away. 

Keep reading to find out how you can transform the way you approach budget conversations going forward…   

The 2026 budget reality

Llewellyn began the webinar by discussing the 2026 budget reality, stating something most marketers will relate to: expectations of marketing teams are rising, but budgets are not expanding.

When budgets come under pressure, marketing leaders must justify their spend. To do this effectively, they need to shift the conversation with senior leaders away from activity and towards value. Crucially, they need to show the connection between marketing activity and business outcomes. These subtle shifts in the way the marketing team communicates with the board can transform how they see marketing’s value to the wider business. 

Creating a budget protection case

Protecting your marketing budget starts with translating your work into business terms that clearly demonstrate its value to leadership. When senior leaders are trying to decide to what to keep, what to change, and what to cut, a dashboard won’t save marketing.  That means your case must answer a simple question: what changed for the business because of this marketing spend?

Moving from showing evidence of what your work has done to clear recommendations, such as protecting, improving, testing, or stopping certain areas of spend will transform the way other leaders within a business see marketing.

Llewellyn said “The practical shift really goes from what metric can I show, to what decision does the metric support?”

Llewellyn elaborated on this by sharing the four pillars of a strong case for budget protection:

1. Value created 

Value shows how marketing contributes to revenue, profit, and customer value that the business actually cares about.

2. Efficiency improved 

Efficiency proves how well that value is being created, using metrics like acquisition cost, conversion rates, and payback.

3. Future demand built 

Future demand demonstrates how today’s brand and upper-funnel activity is building tomorrow’s pipeline and growth.

4. Risk reduced 

Risk reduction explains what you protect by maintaining spend, such as revenue at risk, competitive position, and future cost.

Marketing leaders must provide clear recommendations based on the evidence collected from these pillars, and they need to package this thinking into a narrative that decision-makers can absorb quickly. 
Llewellyn outlined exactly how to start making a case for protecting your marketing budget in a simple, 30-day action plan.

30-Day action plan

The 30-day action plan is split into four weeks, with each one having a different part of the budget conversation to focus on, so you are ready to present your case to protect your marketing budget by the end of the 30 days. 

Week one: Audit spend 

In the first week, the priority is to audit your spend. That means identifying your main budget areas and being crystal clear on the role each one is meant to play: are you creating demand, converting demand, supporting retention, or experimenting? 

Instead of just listing channels like “paid search,” “events,” or “social,” you define the job they are doing for the business. This gives you the structure you need later when you start deciding what to protect, improve, test, or stop. 

Week two: Gather evidence

Week two is about gathering evidence on the four pillars your budget case will rest: value created, efficiency improved, future demand built, and risk reduced. 

You won’t have perfect data in every box, but you’ll quickly see where your case is strong and where it’s thin. 

Week three: Make decisions 

In week three, you use the evidence collected in week two to make explicit recommendations for each budget line.

Which areas have a clear commercial role and strong evidence, and should therefore be protected? Which have a valid role but need to be improved? Which are promising but need to be tested on a smaller scale? And which lack a clear role or evidence, and should be paused or stopped. 

The discipline here is that every area of spend must end up with a recommendation, not just a report.

Week four: Prepare the conversation 

Week four is where you package all of this into a story you can take into a budget conversation. You’re not overwhelming senior stakeholders with dashboards; you’re giving them clear choices, backed by concise reasoning. 

Instead of building up to an answer, try adopting an “answer-first” approach. Start the discussion with the decision you’re recommending for a particular budget area and then bring in the most relevant evidence to support it, rather than talking about evidence first.

By the end of the 30 days, you haven’t rebuilt your entire measurement system, but you have a sharper view of where your marketing spend truly earns its place and a structured narrative that makes your budget far harder to cut carelessly. 

Final thoughts 

A budget protection case is not a long report; it is a clear story about why particular investments deserve to be kept, strengthened, or reshaped to help the businesses’ goals.
As Llewellyn put it, “Budget protection isn’t about defending everything; it’s about proving the value of what matters most.”

If you can walk into your next budget conversation with a focused 30-day plan, a clear answer first story, and the right evidence to back it up, you won’t just be protecting your budget, you’ll be demonstrating why your marketing investment is essential to sustainable business growth.