How CMOs are scaling pipeline growth with flat marketing budgets

There’s a quiet math problem eroding the foundation of enterprise marketing: pipeline expectations are growing, but budgets aren’t.

According to Avasant’s 2025 B2B Marketing Execution report, median marketing budgets remain flat at 3–4% of revenue, with even high-growth sectors like SaaS maxing out at 8–10%. Yet across industries, CMOs are under increasing pressure to generate more qualified pipeline, deliver tighter personalization, and accelerate speed-to-impact.

The data points to a persistent mismatch between rising pipeline expectations and flat marketing budgets.

The math isn’t adding up: Strategy is advancing, but execution is stalling

Strategic alignment at the C-level has strengthened. CMOs have greater visibility, clearer mandates, and tighter alignment with business objectives. But execution hasn’t kept pace. Why? Because budget composition is working against performance.

• 55.9% of the average budget is tied up in talent 
• 20.2% is committed to technology 
• That leaves just 24% for programs that actually drive pipeline

And that 24% isn’t always working hard. Complex MarTech stacks and globally distributed teams often result in underutilized tools, delayed activation, and operational bottlenecks. Already-tight budgets quickly become sunk costs.

Today’s CMOs aren’t just being asked to do more with less. They’re being asked to deliver exponential outcomes within models that were never designed for this pace of change.

What separates growth-stage CMOS? Executional velocity

The Avasant study made it clear: marketing execution is now the biggest differentiator between growth-stage and stagnant enterprise teams. 

• Growth-stage companies spend 46% more on execution as a share of their marketing budget than low-growth peers. 
• They are also twice as likely to outsource campaign execution, ops, and analytics, giving them greater flexibility, specialization, and scale.
• Critically, these organizations shift execution from a cost center to a performance multiplier, built on modular delivery models, tech-assisted workflows, and outcome-focused partnerships.

This isn’t a pivot from strategy. It’s a reinforcement through operational redesign. 

The new CMO playbook: 3 shifts for execution-ready marketing

For CMOs navigating pressure without proportional budget increases, the playbook is shifting in three ways:

1. From ownership to orchestration 

Internal enterprise marketing teams can no longer afford to own every layer of execution. The shift is toward orchestrating ecosystems of talent, tools, and insights. That means:

• Internal teams focus on strategic planning, insights, governance, and stakeholder alignment. 
• External or modular teams handle execution, optimization, and scale.
• MarTech becomes a platform for coordination, not just a collection of tools.

2. From capacity planning to elastic scalability 

Linear team growth won’t meet exponential demand. CMOs are moving toward elastic execution models, blending internal resources with flexible, on-demand capabilities that scale across regions, segments, and product lines.

Outsourcing is central here, but it’s not outsourcing as we knew it. Think beyond cost; it’s capability elasticity. Done right, it allows teams to run more experiments, regionalize programs, and respond to commercial priorities with speed and precision.

3. From spending to allocating

The question has to change from “How much are we spending?” to “What are we getting per dollar?” That means optimizing resource allocation based on real performance, not internal politics or historical line items. Forward-looking CMOs are: 

• Auditing underutilized platforms and tools
• Rationalizing headcount vs. program spend 
• Building transparent ROI models across all delivery channels

This mindset moves marketing closer to how CFOs think and earns credibility in the boardroom. 

Why execution is the new brand differentiator 

The marketing function is being re-engineered around execution: faster, leaner, more adaptable. For CMOs managing $75M+ budgets, how the next $1M is spent will matter more than whether you get $1M more.

CMOs who recognize this and act accordingly won’t just hit their targets. They’ll change the shape of the function itself. 

To explore the data behind these trends and see how enterprise CMOs are redesigning their operating models for executional impact, download the full Avasant 2025 B2B Marketing Execution report here. 

Ready to scale execution where it matters? 

CMOs can no longer afford execution models that stall strategy. The next leap isn’t more headcount, it’s smarter allocation. At 2X, we help enterprise marketing leaders turn structural limitations into operational leverage. Our marketing-as-a-service (MaaS) model delivers scalable execution across campaign ops, content, analytics, and MarTech, so you can free your internal team to focus on strategy, not scramble through delivery.

Outsource for cost savings? That’s old thinking. Outsource to outperform? That’s what 2X delivers.