How to secure your marketing budget: Lessons from Adobe Summit 2025

• Short-term focus: Immediate impact on revenue 

Marketing often needs to deliver quick results through targeted campaigns that sales teams use to engage leads and drive conversions. To succeed, marketing and sales must align on campaign objectives, ensuring that marketing efforts directly support sales conversations and revenue generation. 

Some short-term marketing efforts, such as onboarding and promotional campaigns, contribute to client engagement, but true client retention is a long-term goal. While marketing supports loyalty programs and satisfaction efforts, the real impact is seen over time through renewals, upsells, and reduced churn. 

Key short-term marketing contributions include generating high-quality leads for sales teams, aligning campaigns with sales strategies to improve conversion rates, and providing sales teams with data-driven insights to target high-potential leads. 

• Long-term focus: Sustainable business growth 

Marketing’s role extends beyond lead generation—it also strengthens customer success and retention, which are critical for long-term stability. Businesses that fail to invest in retention must constantly find new clients to replace those who leave, which is not sustainable. 

Long-term marketing contributions include strengthening customer loyalty through brand consistency and engagement, reducing churn through customer success initiatives and data-driven improvements and increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by driving renewals and upsells. 

1. Proving marketing’s direct revenue impact 

To secure marketing budgets, leaders must showcase how campaigns contribute to business growth. This means: 

• Demonstrating the link between marketing efforts and sales conversions. 

• Ensuring marketing strategies support corporate sales goals. 

• Using marketing operations (MOps) to provide data-driven insights that improve targeting and efficiency. 

2. Highlighting indirect contributions to business success 

Beyond revenue generation, marketing also enhances: 

• Client retention: Engaging existing customers with personalized content and communication. 

• Brand perception and loyalty: Strengthening brand identity to drive long-term relationships. 

• Operational efficiency: Streamlining go-to-market (GTM) strategies and optimizing resources. 

3. Aligning marketing with corporate goals and initiatives 

To gain leadership buy-in, marketing efforts should support broader company objectives, such as: 

• Reducing costs through technology and process optimization. 

• Expanding market share via innovative campaigns and acquisitions. 

• • Growing the customer base through targeted segmentation and data-driven strategies. 

Companies that want to secure their marketing budgets need to clearly demonstrate the impact of their efforts. One way to do this is by using data to show measurable results. Tracking key metrics such as conversion rates, customer retention, and revenue influenced by marketing campaigns helps build a strong case for continued investment. Aligning marketing strategies with sales objectives ensures that marketing contributes directly to lead quality and higher conversion rates. 

Another important step is improving collaboration between marketing and sales. When these teams work together, they can create more effective campaigns that support business growth. It is also essential to communicate marketing’s value to leadership. Instead of focusing on justifying costs, marketing teams should highlight how their efforts drive business success. By demonstrating clear returns on investment, they can shift the conversation from expenses to strategic contributions. 

However, there are challenges to consider. Measuring impact effectively requires businesses to invest in tools that provide clear insights into how marketing contributes to revenue. Without proper attribution, it can be difficult to prove marketing’s role in growth. Internal alignment between marketing, sales, and leadership is necessary to create a unified strategy. Removing barriers between departments ensures that all teams are working towards the same business goals, making marketing an integral part of the company’s long-term success.