How do you get buy-in from other marketing stakeholders that control the budget?

Not every launch needs paid support, and that's perfectly acceptable.

If your business goal isn't directly tied to revenue or reaching people outside your existing environment, it's okay not to use paid channels. The decision should be based on your specific goals and what you're trying to accomplish. If paid support does make sense, remember that it doesn't have to be just direct response performance marketing - you could use influencers or other approaches. The key is aligning the channel strategy with your business objectives and determining whether paid spend is truly necessary for this particular launch.

For smaller launches that won't generate new leads, focus on owned channels rather than requesting additional budget.

If a launch is small and won't generate new leads, I wouldn't spend money on it - I'd keep it to owned, free, or sunk-cost channels. To influence paid marketing teams who manage various channels throughout the funnel, make sure your go-to-market calendar is on their radar. At SurveyMonkey, we've become more agile since bringing paid marketing management in-house, which gives us flexibility without agency fees for frequent creative changes. When we have an upcoming launch, we alert the team and use the existing always-on budget but swap in new creative, especially in lower-funnel placements, to include the latest product messaging and UI. This approach doesn't require building a business case for additional launch budget - instead, you're leveraging ongoing streams and slotting into those.