When the economy gets tough, marketing gets reactive.
Tech and telco CMOs are feeling it acutely right now. Budgets are shrinking. Teams are leaner. At the same time, the remit has widened: broader business priorities, larger buying committees, longer cycles, and an increasingly invisible “dark funnel” shaping deals before your team even touches them.
The result? A perfect storm of pressure: do more, with less. We call this the “CMO Paradox”.
The temptation is to crank up the activity; more campaigns, across more channels… just make more noise. But in this environment, the risk isn’t just underperformance. It’s completely unravelling. Without strong foundations, all the tactical activity in the world won’t create sustainable growth.
That’s why fundamentals matter more than ever.
The new pressure, the same playbook
Over the last few months, I’ve been speaking to tech and telco CMOs every single week about this very challenge. They are all feeling the pressure, but they all say the same thing. The building blocks of strong marketing haven’t changed; they’ve just been overshadowed by the rush to deliver “more.” But almost every single one of them said that when times get tough, they go right back to basics to sharpen their output.
- Knowing that customer understanding goes deeper than demographics. Exactly who is your ICP? What keeps them awake at night? Where are they under pressure? If you don’t know, you can’t be relevant.
- Focusing on strategies that connect directly to commercial objectives. Marketing isn’t about activity volume; it’s about creating measurable value aligned to pipeline, retention, and growth. So why wouldn’t you be laser-focused on these outcomes?
- Prioritising tight, intentional channel choices. Because spreading resources thinly across too many platforms rarely works. Focus where you can move the needle, and only look to diversify into new channels when you’ve nailed the ones that perform.
- Develop robust, insight-led briefs. If there isn’t a clear “why,” and data to back it up; then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. Seriously evaluate every single brief your team writes before it goes anywhere outside of the team.
These aren’t new ideas. But in the current climate, the CMOs who are flying cite them as non-negotiable. And beyond these, there are fundamentals that have become even more critical.
The fundamentals that matter most right now
1. Protect and balance your brand investment
The pressure to cut brand spend in a downturn is common, but can be deeply damaging. Companies that maintain or grow brand visibility during tough times emerge stronger, faster (BCG). Brand is the foundation that ensures your performance spend has impact, not just clicks. Over-indexing on short-term performance also undermines long-term growth. A thoughtful mix of brand-building and performance marketing ensures both immediate wins and sustained momentum (BCG).
2. Audit your spend for efficiency
Too much marketing budget is wasted in duplicated effort — multiple agencies, overlapping tools, legacy channels. By auditing “non-working” spend, CMOs can free up as much as 20–30% of budget to reinvest strategically (BCG).
3. Prove marketing’s revenue impact
The accountability era is here. If you can’t link marketing activity to pipeline and revenue, you’re exposed. According to DemandGen, CMOs who fail to demonstrate commercial impact risk cuts — or worse (DemandGen Report).
4. Allocate resource to transformation
Gartner notes that nearly 40% of marketing budgets are already earmarked for change and transformation, even as budgets fall (Gartner). It’s a signal: CMOs can’t afford to just “survive.” They need to transform how they operate. Many of the most successful CMOs I’ve spoken to ringfence 10-20% of their budget for test and learn; channels, messages, strategies. The key thing here is to keep on top of the data and fail fast.
The fundamentals haven’t changed. But the stakes have
Marketing leaders don’t need more advice on “doing more with less.” They need to be reminded of what doesn’t change when everything else does: the marketing fundamentals.
Because right now, the fundamentals are what protect CMOs from being dragged into short-term reactive cycles that waste time, budget, and credibility. They’re what secure C-suite confidence. And they’re what position marketing as a driver of resilience and growth, even when the economy is unstable.
So maybe it isn’t just about doing less. It’s about doing what works… and stopping what doesn’t.
Strong foundations, smart execution
At onebite, we work with B2B marketing leaders under pressure to reset their foundations, strip out inefficiency, and focus on the fundamentals that create momentum.
If your strategy feels stretched thin, or your team is being asked to deliver more than seems possible, it’s the perfect time to pause and reset. The fundamentals haven’t gone anywhere. But without them, results will.
Ready to bring focus back to what really drives growth? Let’s talk.
Kiri Craig, Managing Partner
Kiri has been working in marketing agencies for almost 20 years, and in that time she has worked across a range of B2B and B2C sectors, from large enterprise clients to SMEs.
For the last decade, Kiri has been focused solely on B2B marketing, and as Managing Partner of onebite, Kiri draws on this experience to feed into B2B demand generation strategies for our clients and prospects, and to oversee onebite’s delivery.
At onebite, she’s curated a team of B2B demand generation specialists from the best talent on the market, helping our tech and telco clients launch, refine and amplify their brands to generate long-term revenue growth. Kiri’s passion and drive to deliver exceptional work for our clients is evident to everyone who meets her.
