It’s early fall. Somewhere in your company, finance is getting the budget template ready. In the next six to ten weeks, next year’s spending will be negotiated, approved, and locked.
For most marketing teams, this is the most important stretch of the year. It’s also the one they’re least prepared for.
Next year’s money gets decided in the next ten weeks.
The offseason is where seasons are won
Most companies set budgets in Q4. Department heads submit requests in October and November, leadership reconciles them against revenue targets, and the numbers are final by December.
If marketing isn’t planning now, it will end up doing one of two things. It will plan after the budget is set, which means fitting a strategy to whatever number it was handed. Or it will plan in January, which means the first quarter of the year goes to deciding what to do instead of doing it.
Neither is a strategy. Both are how teams end up with another year of random acts of marketing.
Fall planning lines marketing up with the rest of the business. You’re making your case at the same table, on the same timeline, as sales, operations, and product. If you show up late, the money is already spoken for.
Review the game tape first
Before you plan next year, be honest about this one. What produced results? What got done because it had always been done? Which vendor, tool, or channel got a yes in February and hasn’t justified itself since?
This doesn’t have to be a big audit. A one-page review of your major programs works: what it cost, what it was meant to do, and what it actually did. The point is to walk into planning with evidence, not memory. It’s also the single most credible thing you can bring to a budget conversation, because it shows you’re willing to cut your own work.
Walk into planning with evidence, not memory.It’s the most credible thing you can bring to a budget conversation.
Know the final score you need
Marketing plans that start with “what should we do next year?” end up as activity lists. Plans that start with “what does the business need next year?” end up as strategies.
Get the company’s revenue target first, then do the math. Say the business needs $4M in new revenue. Your average deal is $50K, so that’s 80 new customers. If sales closes a quarter of qualified opportunities, you need 320 opportunities. Now you know what marketing has to produce, and you can build backward from there to the programs, channels, and budget it will take.
What does marketing actually have to produce?
Start with Chris’s example, then change the numbers to yours.
That middle number is what your plan, your channels, and your budget are built backward from.
Your numbers will be different, and some of them will be estimates. That’s fine. A plan built on stated assumptions can be tested and adjusted. A plan built on “more awareness” can’t.
Call the play. Don’t ask coach what to run.
This is the part most marketing leaders get wrong.
How much can we spend on marketing next year?
Puts leadership in charge of your strategy. You get last year’s number, plus or minus.
We need $X to produce Y.
Puts you in charge. Marketing did the math and owns the outcome.
“How much can we spend on marketing next year?” puts leadership in charge of your strategy. And honestly, they hired you to come prepared. If you don’t come with a plan, you can expect a number based on last year plus or minus a percentage, and you’ll spend the next twelve months doing what that number allows.
“We need $X to produce Y” puts you in charge of it. It says marketing understands the business goal, has done the math, and is accountable for an outcome. That’s a conversation leadership can say yes to, or push back on with specifics. Either way, you’re negotiating on your terms.
It’s even stronger if you give them options. Build three versions:
Base
What it takes to protect the current pipeline and hold ground.
Growth
What it takes to hit the revenue target.
Stretch
What an additional investment would unlock, and what it would return.
Tiered options turn a yes-or-no request into a choice about how fast the company wants to grow. Finance teams respond far better to that than to a single number with no alternatives.
Eyes on the whole schedule, not just Sunday
Once the budget direction is clear, lay out every major campaign, launch, event, and seasonal push on a single twelve-month calendar. It sounds basic. It’s where most of the year’s problems show up early enough to fix.
Where the pile-ups and the gaps show up early
You’ll see where you need extra firepower. A calendar shows you the stretches where content, design, and campaign work pile up. If Q2 has a product launch, a conference, and a website refresh, you know now that you’ll need a contractor, an agency, fractional support, or an extra hire in March. Not in May, when it’s too late to hire well.
You’ll see where campaigns bunch up. Three big pushes in the same six weeks means each one gets a third of the attention, and your audience gets a third of the patience. The calendar lets you spread them out, or decide which one matters most.
You’ll get ahead of your big events. Every company has a few moments that really matter: a trade show, an annual campaign, a launch, a membership drive. Put them on the calendar and build a work-back schedule for each one. When the plan says creative is due eight weeks out and promotion starts six weeks out, the month before the event stops being a fire drill.
You’ll see the gaps too. Quiet stretches are useful to know about. That’s where evergreen content, nurture programs, and brand work can go without competing for resources.
Cut day
Every plan needs a “not doing” list. The review you did earlier should give you a few candidates: the program that never found its audience, the channel you’re on because a competitor is, the recurring piece nobody reads.
The “not doing” list Cut day
The program that never found its audienceThe channel you’re on because a competitor isThe recurring piece nobody reads
Stopping things is how you fund the things that work without asking for more money. It’s also a strong signal to leadership that marketing is managing a portfolio, not accumulating commitments.
Keep a timeout in your pocket
Two things keep an annual plan from breaking in March.
Hold a reserve. Set aside 10–15% of the budget for opportunities you can’t predict yet: a partnership that comes up, a competitor misstep, a channel that outperforms and deserves more. Without it, every good idea mid-year becomes a fight over money that’s already committed.
Set a review cadence. Put quarterly checkpoints on the calendar now. Each one asks the same questions: What’s working? What isn’t? What do we move? A plan that gets reviewed every 90 days stays a plan. One that gets reviewed in December becomes a document.
A plan that gets reviewed every 90 days stays a plan. One that gets reviewed in December becomes a document.
Practice the handoff
Marketing creates demand. Sales converts it. If the two teams plan separately, they’ll set targets that don’t connect. Before your plan goes to leadership, sit down with sales and agree on the shared number, the handoff, and what each side is measured on. Presenting a joint view of the pipeline is far more persuasive than two department requests that happen to be on the same agenda.
- The shared pipeline number
- The handoff, defined
- What each side is measured on
Check the roster before you lock the budget
The calendar tells you what needs to get done. It doesn’t tell you whether the right people are in place to do it. That question decides whether a plan is still alive in March, and it has to be answered while there’s still money on the table.
Put one name next to every major program on the calendar. A person, not a department. “Marketing” can’t own a trade show. Then check whether each person is in the right seat. The simplest tool we know for this comes from EOS®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It’s called GWC™, and the rule is what makes it work: every answer is yes or no. If you can’t say yes with confidence, it’s a no.
Understands the role, what it’s accountable for, and how it ties to the revenue number.
Wants the day-to-day work, not just the title or the pay.
Has the time, skills, and bandwidth to do it at the level the plan needs.
Write the owner’s name for each seat, then answer yes or no for each letter. A seat needs three yeses.
If one name shows up on three seats, score capacity for all three jobs at once. That’s usually where the first no is hiding.
GWC™ (Gets it, Wants it, Capacity to do it) is a tool of EOS Worldwide. Seat list adapted by Branch for marketing planning.
A no on capacity is a budget line. It’s the most common no in marketing, and it’s rarely about talent. One person owns content, the website, and the trade show, and the calendar shows all three peaking in Q2. That’s a contractor, an agency, fractional support, or an extra hire, and it belongs in your Growth tier now. Not requested in May.
A no on gets it is a clarity problem. Usually the seat was never defined. Write down what the role owns and what it’s measured on before January, then score it again.
A no on wants it is the hard conversation. Have it now. A plan that depends on someone who doesn’t want the work will stall no matter how well it’s funded.
No quarterback? Sign a veteran.
Everything above assumes someone owns the plan. Plenty of companies don’t have that person. There’s a coordinator executing well, or a founder who’s still the de facto CMO, and nobody whose job is to build the case, run the numbers, and defend the budget.
Planning season is where that gap costs the most. The budget gets set with or without a marketing recommendation. Without one, marketing gets last year’s number and a to-do list.
A fractional CMO fills that seat without a full-time executive hire. They join your leadership team, own the pipeline number, and build the plan your team will execute. A full-time search takes three to six months, which means next year’s budget gets set before your new hire starts. A fractional executive can start in about two weeks, early enough to walk into the budget conversation with you.
Chris DennenCMO, BranchWho’s in the room when the budget gets set?
Budgets lock around week 10. Only one of these is in the room.
A fractional CMO joins your leadership team, owns the pipeline number, and builds the plan your team will execute. How it works →
Who in your company is going to walk into the budget meeting and say “we need $X to produce Y”?
If the answer is no one, that’s the seat that’s empty.
Not sure whether you need the plan or the person? If your team can run it once it’s built, our two-day Marketing Strategy Workshop gets you a plan before budgets lock. If you need someone to own it, a fractional CMO takes the seat. Either way, it starts with a 15-minute call.
Win January
The teams that plan in the fall spend January executing. They know when they’ll need help, where the pressure points are, and what the year is supposed to produce. They walked into the budget conversation with a recommendation and walked out with a mandate.
The teams that don’t… They’ll spend January figuring out what to do with a number someone else picked. If planning season is coming up and you don’t have the foundation to build from yet, that’s exactly what our two-day Marketing Strategy Workshop is for.