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Numbers Don’t Win Your Digital Budget. Your Story Does. (Digital Reset Foundations Episode 514)

Photo of woman presenting budget ideas to executives to illustrate the idea of winning your digital budget next year.

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Don’t we all love building budgets for next year? Or, even better, selling our budgets into the C-suite?

OK, seriously, it’s not as bad as you might think.

Your job every budget season is twofold:

  1. Build a budget that supports your business’s core objectives.
  2. Sell and market that vision to the decision-makers in your organization.

You’re a marketer. You’re used to identifying audiences and telling them what they need to know. That’s how you do your job during budget season too.

Your numbers need to be solid. They also need a story that connects them to the priorities your executives already care about. It could be about driving revenue growth. It could be about reducing costs. It could be about improving time to market or creating better customer experiences, or building a stronger brand, or attracting and retain great people. But it’s got to be a story that captures their interests.

Yes, AI makes it easier to put together your reports, forecasts, and presentations. That situation has changed. You know what hasn’t? Executive time and attention remain as scarce as ever. And boards and investors are also asking your company’s leaders how they’re using AI to reduce costs and drive revenue, which adds even more pressure to the budget conversation.

One of the best pieces of business advice I’ve ever heard is this: Make it easy for decision-makers in your organization to say “yes.” That’s what this episode is all about it.

In Digital Reset Foundations Episode 514, Tim Peter walks you through a practical process for doing just that. You’ll learn how to understand your audience, connect digital investments to business priorities, tell a compelling story, support that story with sound numbers, and lower the risk decision-makers feel when you ask them to commit.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why budget season is a marketing exercise as much as a financial one
  • Why you should think in terms of priorities instead of projects
  • How to identify the priorities that matter to your decision-makers
  • How to connect digital investment with revenue growth, cost reduction, time to market, talent, and customer experience
  • Why a compelling story gives your numbers meaning
  • How to account for people, technology, brand value, and other intangibles
  • Why reversible decisions make it easier for executives to approve an investment
  • How AI has increased pressure on marketing teams to do more with less
  • What it takes to make your digital budget an easy “yes”

Key Data Points

  • Your digital budget should support the organization’s larger priorities, including revenue growth, cost reduction, faster time to market, and better decision-making.
  • Measurement exists to reduce uncertainty and help leaders make better decisions.
  • Avinash Kaushik’s 10/90 rule argues that organizations should invest far more in the people who turn analytics into action than in the analytics tools themselves.
  • Digital investments should account for people, training, automation, technology, brand value, customer experience, and other qualitative measures.
  • Reversible decisions reduce perceived risk because they give leaders a clear opportunity to learn, adjust, or stop.
  • The strongest business case combines a relevant story, credible numbers, and a clear connection to the organization’s priorities.

Digital Reset Framework: Make It Easy to Say Yes

A successful digital budget begins with the people who will approve it. Understand what they care about, where they’re trying to take the organization, and how your proposed investments contribute to those goals.

Then build the story. Paint a clear picture of where you’re trying to go, why it matters, and what changes for the business when you succeed. Your numbers support that story. They demonstrate that you understand the investment, the likely return, the risks, and the resources required to deliver.

Finally, make the decision feel manageable. Identify which commitments are reversible, where leaders can change course, and what you’ll learn along the way. The goal is to give decision-makers the confidence and clarity they need to say “yes.”

What You Should Do Now

1. Start With the Decision-Makers

Identify who will approve your budget and what matters most to them. Connect your proposal to the outcomes they already care about, such as revenue, costs, speed, customer experience, talent, or long-term growth.

2. Think Priorities, Not Projects

Translate every platform, system, campaign, or infrastructure request into a business priority. A new CMS matters because it can improve time to market. Better analytics matter because they can reduce uncertainty. Stronger integrations matter because they can help your team serve customers more effectively.

3. Build the Story, Then Support It With Numbers

Show leaders where you’re trying to go and why the destination matters. Use sound financials, customer examples, operational evidence, and measures of intangible value to make the story credible.

4. Lower the Risk of Saying Yes

Explain which decisions are reversible and where you can test, learn, and adjust. For larger commitments that are difficult to reverse, make sure your story and numbers line up even more clearly.

Resources Mentioned

Related Episodes

Buy the Book: Digital Reset

Ready to build marketing that creates demand beyond Big Tech’s platforms? Get Tim Peter’s book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, on Amazon.

See Tim Peter in Action

Watch Tim Peter join Rutgers Business School for a conversation about Digital Reset and how businesses can build direct customer relationships beyond Big Tech.

Want Tim to help your team turn customer data into experiences people remember? Learn more about Tim Peter’s speaking, workshops, and consulting.

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If this episode made you think about someone who is building or defending next year’s budget, send them a link. Make it easier for them to get to “yes.”

Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com

Technical Details for Digital Reset

The new introduction was recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface. The original episode was recorded using a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4.

Running time: 22:57

Transcript: Numbers Don’t Win Your Digital Budget. Your Story Does.

Don’t we all love building budgets for next year? Or, even better, selling our budgets into the C-suite?

Actually, it’s not as bad as you think.

As I’ll discuss in this week’s Foundations episode, your job every budget season is twofold:

One, build a budget that supports your business’s core objectives.

And two, sell and market that vision to the decision-makers in your organization.

You’re a marketer. You’re used to identifying audiences and telling them what they need to know. That’s how you do your job during budget season, and it’s the core of this week’s Foundations episode.

One of the best pieces of business advice I’ve ever heard is this: Make it easy for decision-makers in your organization to say “yes.”

And that’s what I want to try to help you do here.

Now, some things have changed since this episode was first written, most notably the emergence of AI.

AI makes it easier to put together reports and forecasts and presentations. What it hasn’t done is reduce the demands on executives’ time or their attention. If anything, it’s put more pressure on those folks.

One reason marketing teams are being asked to do more with less is because boards and investors are asking leaders how they’re using AI to reduce costs. It happens with every new technology innovation… and it will happen with every tech innovation that comes along in the future too. That’s kind of just how it works.

Keep that in mind as you give this one a listen.

One other quick note before we get started. This episode comes from an earlier point in the Digital Reset archive, before I was recording video along with the podcast. So, after this introduction, the rest of today’s episode will be audio-only.

But the argument you’re about to hear has only become more relevant, especially as marketing leaders like you begin making your case for next year’s budget.

I’m Tim Peter. This is Digital Reset Foundations, episode 514. Let’s dive in.

Why Budget Season Matters

People are starting to think about how we get the budget for next year around where we want to invest in growing our digital capabilities and growing our businesses overall.

There’s really no better time to get started than now, right? You’re going to be thinking about these questions in a big way within a handful of weeks at most. Doing the groundwork now is really important.

It’s also really important to realize that without sufficient budget to do what you want to do, you can’t do what you want to do.

I actually think budget is kind of an exciting time because it allows you to start thinking about where you want to be in the longer term. Yes, it might be a little weird, but I actually do find this topic exciting and incredibly important. That’s why I think it’s worth thinking about.

I want to be really clear. There are going to be differences between industries and obviously lots of differences between companies in terms of how you go about budgeting your spending on digital. We could be talking about infrastructure, operating expenses, or capital expense versus OpEx. We’re not going to get too far into the nitty-gritty of that.

I’m happy to have a discussion with any of you. Drop me a line at tim@timpeter.com or call (201) 305-0055 if you want to have that discussion.

There are some fundamental things that stay constant regardless of the business you’re in and regardless of the industry you’re in. That’s what I want to talk about today.

Building the Business Case for Digital Infrastructure

Tops among these is that many people I know in digital have a tough time building a business case, especially for infrastructure and the things upon which we build.

We could be talking about a content management system, a digital asset management platform, content distribution platforms, connectivity, or analytics suites. Those are all things that can be tough to make a case for.

I think as we talk through this, you’ll see it’s actually not as hard as you might think. Don’t misunderstand, it’s always somewhat hard, and in certain organizations it can be harder. But if you follow a fairly simple process, you can make it easier and less painful than it often is.

Know Your Audience

The first step is to know your audience.

Who are you talking to? Who are the decision-makers in this process? How do you make it easy for those decision-makers to say yes?

You might report to the CEO, the president of your company, or the owner if you’re a smaller business. You might be speaking to somebody in a middle-management role who is your boss, depending on where you are in your career.

You have to think about what makes it easy for those individuals to say yes.

Start by knowing their priorities.

Think Priorities, Not Projects

McKinsey has a great point that I think people overlook when we talk about digital: Think priorities, not projects.

The company has some place it’s trying to get to. The company’s leadership, your boss, or whomever you’re talking to has things they are trying to accomplish.

What do those folks care about? Where are you trying to go as an organization overall? How does your digital team contribute to that? How does your investment in digital contribute to that?

Are you looking at revenue growth? Are you looking at cost reduction? What’s most important to the people you need to convince?

Let me give you a couple of thoughts about how you can help convince them.

First, think in terms of what you can do to improve your time to market. That helps with revenue because you get things in front of your customers sooner and get a quicker return on spend. Whatever dollars you put out there, you start getting them back faster.

It also helps with cost reduction because you tend to spend less on projects and initiatives that take less time. When you’re thinking about infrastructure, ask whether this investment improves your time to market. That can help you make the case.

Think about how it helps you attract or retain employees too. People want to work for companies that share their values. They want to work for companies that look like they’re moving in a positive direction.

If you’re investing in your digital platforms and in things that make you more responsive to customers, you can begin to tell a story about a company that sees a future. This is a company trying to build an exciting future. This is a company that cares about delivering on its priorities. The investment illustrates that fact.

Admittedly, if you’re putting in a new CMS, that can be a tougher sell. It’s still a sign that the company makes investments in things that matter, that you’re a digitally oriented company, and that you’re thinking about the future.

If you’re investing in APIs that open your data, insights, and information to additional partners, that shows an even greater commitment. It says you’re thinking about the long-term future of the organization and how you can better partner into a larger ecosystem.

There are all kinds of things you can do in terms of telling that story.

Particularly when we’re talking about infrastructure, think in terms of better insights that drive revenue growth, cost reduction, or both. Are you investing in things that help you get better data about what’s working and especially better data to inform better decisions?

As Douglas Hubbard says in his classic book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business, the point of any measurement is to reduce uncertainty so you can make better decisions. That’s all you’re really trying to do here.

Think in terms of how you’re helping senior leaders or the decision-makers on your budget make better decisions more quickly. Make sure you include that in your messaging to them.

With regard to the cost-reduction versus revenue-generation story, you have to think about what matters to your audience and to the decision-makers.

My experience with clients, other companies, and lots of research shows that digital has the biggest return when it’s used to drive innovation and business-model reinvention. You may want to include some revenue story, even if you’re thinking primarily in terms of a cost-reduction play.

The Washington Post provides an example. The company had considered selling the division behind its content management system platform. Their thinking reportedly shifted because they believed they could make more money selling the platform to other businesses than they would from their news division in the long term.

Maybe they were saying that to pump up the price of the division. But the fact that the platform was making tens of millions of dollars per year, with projections that it could become a nine-figure company fairly quickly, strongly suggested they were seeing significant returns from business-model reinvention.

Tell the Story

Once you know your audience and the priorities of the organization, where you’re trying to go, and why that matters for the business, start thinking in terms of the story you’re going to tell.

I know that might sound weird when we’re talking about a budget. We’re going to get to the numbers. I promise we’re going to get to the numbers.

People aren’t swayed by numbers. They’re swayed by stories.

Can you paint a picture of where you’re trying to go, why it matters to your business, and how it aligns with the overarching objectives of the organization?

Again, you’re trying to make it easy for people to say yes. What can you do that will demonstrate that story in a meaningful way?

We once worked with a client that was embarking on a major internationalization effort. They wanted to expand around the globe. They had a business presence in many countries, but their digital presence in those countries was a bit weaker, to be perfectly candid.

We looked at the economics of various countries and drew customer success stories from people who were struggling to work with the company because of its lack of investment. We wove those into the narrative of how this would affect people economically, as well as how it would affect the perception of the business.

That really resonated with senior leaders who wanted to show they were good partners in the countries where they operated. It helped get the budget approved.

We also connected this with infrastructure investment. We had to make changes to their digital platforms to deal with internationalization, including different character sets, longer words, and the translation operation.

We used that opportunity to invest in greater accessibility. Many of the things you’re doing for people who are visually impaired or hearing impaired are, in some ways, like supporting another language.

We married those two ideas together and were able to get funding for the overall initiative at the same time. Why? Because it supported what the company was trying to do anyway, which was expand globally more effectively. It became part of the narrative.

Know Your Numbers

I’ve talked about knowing your audience and telling the story. Of course, you also have to know your numbers.

I’ll tell you a funny story from my own past. It’s a little embarrassing, but it’s one of those things that happens.

My team and I built this massive spreadsheet to make the case for some work we were planning to do. We knew it had the ability to drive about a 10% improvement in overall revenue. This was a major investment with a major return in terms of what it could do for the company.

We had a typo in the spreadsheet. We were so focused on the details that we missed the bigger picture. The typo didn’t show a 10% improvement. It showed a 100% improvement, which was kind of a silly mistake to make.

I was sitting down with my boss, who was the CEO, and walking him through the report. He asked to see the spreadsheet and said, “I just want to make sure I understand this. You’re saying this will return as much money as we intend to make as a company next year again?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m going to bet there’s a typo in there somewhere. Let me take that back, get it reviewed, and we’ll come back to it.”

He was a pretty cool guy. It was kind of funny.

You need to make sure you have your numbers totally solid.

Invest in People as Well as Technology

One thing to think about in those numbers is how you’re investing in people as well as technology.

There’s an old rule of thumb Avinash Kaushik came up with years ago regarding analytics, which he called the 10/90 rule. For every $10 invested in analytics, make sure you’re spending $90 on the people who can do something with those analytics.

Don’t take that as gospel. If you’re using something like Google Analytics and spending zero dollars on the tool, 90 times zero is still zero. Think of the rule as aspirational.

You should also think about how difficult people in digital can be to find. Make sure you’re investing in people. Consider whether some of that investment can go toward training people within your organization. Can you democratize the knowledge so people can self-serve or do some of the work on their own? Can you automate? What additional people do you need?

That should be built into the budget. You need a story about where you’re going to find the people and how you’re going to close the gaps.

Account for Intangibles

When you’re thinking about numbers, don’t forget intangibles such as brand value and customer experience. You need to consider qualitative measures alongside quantitative ones.

If you’re unsure how to measure those things, check out Douglas Hubbard’s book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. I’m a big fan of the book. It offers some great insights into identifying and assessing those measures.

Make Decisions Reversible

The last thing you want to think about in terms of your budget is which decisions are reversible.

One reason Agile is so popular is that it lets you start something and stop if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out. Can you invest a little to learn a lot?

You want to make it easy for people to say yes. Give them an out later if you can. That won’t always be the case, but keep it in your back pocket for the places where it does exist.

For decisions that are difficult to reverse, make sure your story and your numbers line up even better because you’re asking for a bigger commitment.

You have to think in those terms: What are we trying to get done here, and how do we tell this story the right way?

How to Make Your Digital Budget an Easy Yes

How do we budget for digital and invest in it in a way that we know is going to work?

Know your audience.

Know their priorities.

Tell a story about what you’re trying to do with digital and how it contributes to those priorities.

Make sure you know your numbers and that they support the story you’re trying to tell, including measurements of intangibles.

Think about the people you’ll need and how you need to invest in them.

Make sure you know which decisions are reversible. The people you’re asking to say yes need to understand whether the organization must commit fully or has an opportunity to change course later.

The goal always is to make it easy for the people who will sign off on these decisions to say yes.

If you can tell a story, show the numbers that back it up, and make the decision reversible or at least understand where the opt-out points are, you’re going to make it much easier for people to approve the investment and deliver on the priorities you’re promising in the long run.

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

I’m willing to bet you know somebody who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Go ahead and send them a link to the episode. Let them know what you think too. Keep the conversation going.

You can find the show notes for this episode and an archive of all our past episodes at timpeter.com/podcasts.

If you want to learn more about this topic, I’d love to suggest that you pick up a copy of my book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech. It’s available on Amazon and Bookshop.org. You can find the links in the show notes.

Finally, thanks so much for listening. This show would not happen without you.

Until next time, please be well, be safe, and be excellent to each other. I’ll see you soon.

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Tim Peter

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about the company’s strategy and digital marketing consulting services or about Tim.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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