A CMO I talked to last week looked exhausted. Three months into her role at a Series B SaaS company, her CEO had already asked twice why pipeline numbers weren’t moving faster. “Can’t we just run more ads?” he kept saying. “What about buying a list and doing cold email?”
She’d been hired to build a sustainable demand engine. But the pressure to show immediate results was overwhelming. Every strategy meeting turned into a debate about this quarter’s pipeline gap. Long-term, or even mid-term, brand investments felt like a luxury she couldn’t afford.
I’ve watched this scene play out with at least a dozen clients over the past year. The pattern is always the same: leadership wants growth yesterday, naturally, marketing scrambles to deliver quick wins, and the strategic foundation that actually drives sustainable pipeline gets pushed aside.
👋 Hi, it’s Kaylee Edmondson and welcome to Looped In, the newsletter exploring demand gen and growth frameworks in B2B SaaS. I write this newsletter every Sunday, and wildly, a few thousand of you read it each week. I’m grateful.
Most of us are heading into Q4 this month which has me thinking:
What’s keeping us up at night?
What topics or strategies are we craving to learn more/less about?
What companies in the B2B space are catching your eye these days?
Shoot me a reply! I read every one.
Why Random Acts of Marketing 🐏 Feel So Tempting Right Now
The market has trained us to prioritize speed over strategy. When I was at Campaign Monitor, we had a $14M media budget. The pressure to show ROI on every dollar was intense. I get it.
But here’s what I see happening across dozens of companies: marketing teams are being asked to solve pipeline problems that took months or years to create, and they’re being given weeks to fix them. The math doesn’t work.
Random Acts of Marketing feel productive. Launch a webinar series. Buy some intent data. Spin up a new ad campaign. Test ABM to the top 50 accounts. Each tactic might generate a few leads. But none of them build the foundation you need for this predictable, scalable growth we all dream of.
The real cost isn’t the budget you spent on tactics that didn’t work. The cost is the strategic work you didn’t do while you were chasing quick wins.
The Reality Most Marketers Are Living
Let me paint you a picture from three different brands I worked with:
Company A (Series B, $18M ARR): CMO was told to cut marketing spend by 30% while increasing pipeline by 40%. The solution? Cut all brand and content investments, pour everything into performance marketing. Six months later, their cost per SQL had tripled and they’d burned through their addressable market on paid search.
Company B (Series C, $35M ARR): CEO read an article about signal-based marketing and wanted the team to implement it immediately. They spent two months building the tech stack without defining their ICP or understanding which signals actually mattered. They had all the tools and none of the strategy.
Company C (Series A, $8M ARR): Founder kept asking why they couldn’t “just do what [successful competitor] is doing.” The team spent quarters blindly copying the competitor tactics they could see from the outside without really even understanding if those tactics were successful.
The common thread? Leadership pressure to show immediate results without the patience to build, test, iterate, repeat.
When I dig into companies struggling with this problem, I usually find the same underlying issues:
1. Misaligned expectations on timing Leadership expects marketing tactics to work like turning on a faucet. But even the fastest marketing motions take 60-90 days to show real impact. Brand-building takes 12-18 months at best.
2. No shared definition of success Marketing is measuring campaign engagement. Sales is measuring pipeline created this quarter. The CEO is looking at closed-won deals. Nobody agrees on what winning looks like.
3. Lack of trust/confidence in the process When leadership doesn’t understand how demand gen actually works, every dip in weekly metrics feels like a crisis that requires immediate course correction.
What Actually Drives Sustainable Pipeline
I spent my first three years in demand gen thinking tactics were the answer. Better ads, smarter scoring, more sophisticated automation. I was wrong.
Sustainable pipeline comes from getting three things right:
Foundation: Clear ICP and positioning You need to know exactly who you serve best and why they should choose you. Not who you could theoretically sell to. Who you win with consistently. This work isn’t sexy. But skip it and every tactic you run will be inefficient.
Short-term: Signal-based activation Once you have your foundation, you can identify high-intent accounts and activate them with targeted campaigns. This is where most marketers want to start. But without the foundation, you’re just guessing which signals matter.
Long-term: Category presence The companies in your space that consistently hit their numbers have built category presence. When someone in your ICP thinks about the problem you solve, your brand comes to mind. This takes time. But it’s the difference between hunting for every deal and having qualified buyers come to you.
The mistake most teams make is trying to do #2 and #3 without #1.
Or focusing only on #2 because it shows results faster.
Finding Some Balance: A Framework, Not a Formula
After working through this with multiple clients, I’ve learned that the right balance between short-term activation and long-term building depends on several factors. The goal isn’t to prescribe a perfect ratio - it’s to make your choices explicit so leadership understands what they’re getting and what they’re trading off.
Here’s how I think through it with clients:
Your starting point depends on your pipeline health
If you’re staring at a 40% gap to quota with 60 days left in the quarter, you don’t have the luxury of a balanced portfolio. You need to go heavy on short-term activation. Maybe 85/15 or even 90/10.
But if you’re tracking ahead of plan with healthy pipeline coverage, that’s exactly when you should shift investment toward building your long-term position. Run 50/50 or even 40/60 for a quarter.
The mistake is staying in crisis mode forever. I see too many teams running 90/10, or even 100/0, quarter after quarter because they never create the breathing room to invest in the foundation.
Your sales cycle changes the equation
Enterprise deals with 12-month sales cycles need different investment patterns than SMB deals that close in 30 days.
With long sales cycles, your “short-term” tactics still take 6+ months to show up in closed-won revenue. You have more room to invest in longer-term plays because even your supposedly quick wins aren’t that quick.
With short sales cycles, you can run heavier toward short-term activation because you’ll see results fast enough to course-correct if something isn’t working.
Your market position matters
If you’re creating a new category or attacking an established player, you need sustained investment in building awareness and credibility. You might run 60/40 (short/long) even when pipeline is tight because you’re fighting for mindshare.
If you’re selling into a mature market where buyers know they need your category, you can lean heavier into activation (maybe 75/25) because the education work is largely done.
Your budget size affects the split
With a $2M annual budget, you can’t really run sophisticated brand campaigns. You might be 80/20 by necessity, not choice. Your long-term investments look like consistent content creation and organic social, not big pricey awareness plays.
With a $10M budget, you have enough scale to run more meaningful brand campaigns while still funding account-based plays. You might run 65/35.
Rather than a fixed ratio, here’s what I recommend:
Start with your pipeline coverage. Calculate how many opportunities you need in your pipeline to hit your revenue target. Factor in your close rate and average deal size. This tells you your short-term activation requirement.
Calculate your activation capacity. How many accounts can your sales team actually work in a quarter? If they can handle 50 new opportunities and you’re only generating 30, you have room to shift budget toward longer-term building. If you’re generating 80 and they can only work 50 effectively, you don’t need more activation right now. (Or your sales team needs to go hire more heads - either way.)
Set a floor for long-term investment. Regardless of your pipeline situation, there’s a minimum you need to invest to maintain momentum on long-term building. For most B2B SaaS companies, this is around 20-25% of budget. Below that, you’re not moving the needle on brand awareness or organic growth.
Review monthly, adjust quarterly. Your allocation should shift based on what’s working and what your pipeline needs. Don’t lock yourself into an annual budget split.
Instead of prescribing a ratio, ask these questions:
What’s our pipeline coverage right now? Do we need more opportunities or better conversion?
How quickly can our short-term tactics impact closed-won revenue given our sales cycle?
What’s the minimum investment needed to keep our long-term efforts from stalling out?
If we shift budget toward short-term activation, what specific future pipeline are we giving up?
Can our sales team effectively handle more opportunities right now?
The goal is making the allocation explicit and reviewing it regularly. Document your current split. Explain why you chose it. Show leadership the specific tradeoffs. Then revisit it every month as your pipeline situation evolves.
Presenting This to Your CEO and CFO
If you asked me, the hardest part isn’t figuring out the right strategy. It’s getting buy-in from leadership who are staring at a pipeline gap that needs to close in 60 days.
Here’s the conversation structure I’ve used that gets leadership on board:
Start with acknowledgment, not defense. “I see the pipeline gap. I understand we need to close it this quarter. Let me show you what I’m proposing.”
Show the current state honestly. Pull together your marketing efficiency metrics. Cost per SQL, SQL to Opportunity conversion, deal velocity. If the numbers are bad, own it. If they’re industry-average, show the benchmark. Get alignment on where you actually are.
Present the framework as a portfolio approach. Frame it the way a CFO thinks about investment allocation. “70% of our budget is going into tactics that will impact pipeline this quarter. Here’s exactly where and why. 30% is building the foundation for next quarter and beyond. Here’s what we’re measuring.”
Be specific about the investments. Don’t just say “performance marketing.” Break it down. “$X going to targeted LinkedIn campaigns to these 200 accounts showing buying signals. Expected return: Y SQLs based on current conversion rates. $X going to email nurture sequences for accounts that attended our webinar. Expected return: Y opportunities within 45 days.”
Make the tradeoff explicit. “If we need to move more budget to the short-term bucket, here’s what we’d cut from the long-term bucket and what that costs us 6 months from now.” Show them the math. Cutting your content program saves $X this quarter but we predict it reduces inbound pipeline by Y% in Q3. Get them to agree to that tradeoff if that’s what they’re requesting.
Propose check-ins, not one-time decisions. “Let’s review this allocation every month. If our short-term tactics are working better than expected, we can shift more to long-term. If we’re not hitting our numbers, we can adjust.”
The mistake I see marketers make in these conversations is being either too defensive or too accommodating. Don’t defend every dollar of brand spend as untouchable. But don’t roll over and agree to cut everything that won’t show results this quarter.
Your job is to make the tradeoffs clear so leadership can make informed decisions.
What to Do This Week
If you’re feeling the pressure to show results faster than you can build them sustainably, here’s what I’d recommend:
Get clear on your current allocation. Spend an hour categorizing your marketing investments into short-term (impact this quarter) and long-term (impact 6+ months out). What’s your actual ratio? Is it intentional?
Pull your data on pipeline sources. Look back 12 months. Where did your closed-won deals actually come from? This gives you ammunition for the conversation about what to protect.
Draft your version of the framework. Make the allocation explicit. Document what you’re investing in each bucket and what metrics you’re using to measure success.
Schedule the conversation with your CEO. Don’t wait for them to question your strategy. Proactively present your balanced approach and the tradeoffs. Invite them to pressure-test it with you.
Hope you have a great week ahead! It’s finally feeling like fall in Nashville. Going to get outside as much as possible this week to enjoy it. 🍂
Kaylee ✌
Yet again, another great post. Sadly, the Marketing universe needs far more people with this viewpoint. Keep being vocal.