Why your budget tells the truth about your marketing strategy

Your strategy document says one thing. Your budget says what you actually believe. In this episode of Content Amplified, Heidi Wurpel, Head of Marketing at Emburse, shares how she audited every marketing dollar by backing in from bookings all the way to budget, a journey she frames as "there and back again" in a nod to The Hobbit. Heidi walks through building a taxonomy that slices spend by segment, vertical, channel, campaign, and persona, and what she found when the matrix came back full of goose eggs: line items with zero return. She explains why startups, growth companies, and market defenders should each see a different story in their budgets, how to layer in headcount with good-enough percentages, why you have to be honest about the bias in your attribution model, and why finding your own goose eggs first beats having finance find them for you. If you lead a marketing budget, this episode shows you how to make it confess.

About Heidi

Heidi Wurpel is the Head of Marketing at Emburse, the spend-management company that covers everything from purchase orders and virtual cards through reimbursement and expense intelligence. She joined Emburse six years ago after a career on the brand and corporate side of marketing, starting with a journalism undergrad focused on advertising, then an MBA that took her into technology and ten years in corporate IT. Her first marketing job was selling jewelry for a luxury chain through the 2008 recession, where the team grew the business by pairing e-commerce with experiential, event-based marketing.

Show Notes

• Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiwurpel/