The 5 hottest challenges of Marketing Budget

Christmas is approaching and with holidays getting closer and closer... Every marketing department is restless because of the hectic atmosphere and the thousands of things left to do in the office. The most common source of worries? The Marketing Budget of course!

We surveyed some of the best Marketing Directors around and asked them to share the main challenges they usually face to get their budget approved. You can find the 5 hottest below.

We also added some small suggestions for each of them, hoping they might inspire you for your upcoming presentation to the Board :)

1. Actual budget. Whenever things do not go as planned, the Marketing budget is the first one to get cut. However, when things go well, the budget does not grow proportionally. So frustrating.

Advice: be as tangible as possible. A word that every board understands is very simple: profits. Enter the meeting with a cost-benefits analysis at hand (demonstrating the potential returns on investment with a higher budget, including estimating the revenue or market share growth that can be achieved with a larger marketing spend and how it could outweighs the additional costs). Moreover, if you know the board is risk-adverse, organize the budget with an incremental approach. Start requesting approval for additional funds for specific high-impact initiatives and get additional ones at the reach of some promising signals (set the relative KPIs Win-Win :)

2. ROI Measurement. An evergreen classic. Are these campaigns really generating value for our brand? How can I know without a direct impact on sales?

Advice: double approach. On one side, be as tangible as possible. Whenever you can, set upfront tangible KPIs. Whenever not possible, however, be creative. Crack your numbers, find correlations between previous investments in similar initiatives and results, and provide case studies and benchmarks from competitors or even from your own company (in many cases the same initiative has already been successfully launched in other countries). The key is always the same: to make things tangible for the board and not up in the clouds like marketeers too often tend to be.

3. Competitive Pressure: are we spending more than competitors? If so, are we wasting money?

Advice: get on the field, get your hands dirty, check what works and what doesn't work and then change the flow of the dialogue.

What really matters is not the total amount spent by each competitor. What matter is how much is invested in actions that generate results, in the short or the long run. Define which opportunities are unmissable and highlight the consequences of falling behind. Focus on specific actions linked to precise strategic pillars, instead of insisting to get a big budget just because competitors also have it.

4. Artificial Intelligence. A topic which exploded across the world and across all sectors. Why shall we spend in external partners to gain insights or create communication campaigns when AI is so advanced? Or: why do you need more resources? Can't you just use AI instead?

Advice: as usual, be tangible. The board might have read some of the thousands of sensational articles which came out in the last 12 months, which describe a level of AI still not commercially available for the masses. Bring tangible cases of how similar companies managed to leverage AI. Most likely it won't have disrupted the entire marketing department, but it has been limited to specific applications. In those cases artificial intelligence can be a great ally of marketers, but it will still need pilot programs and phased implementation to reduce risk. The change towards such a powerful tech is for a corporation harder than what we might commonly think.

5. Customer Insights: do we really need another customer research?

Advice: First of all, from our heart, do not go half ways. If you do not have budget, just go on the field and collect data and insights first-hand. However, if you have the budget, do proper research, not anything cut short to save some money.

To persuade the board to invest in proper research, showcase how in the past customer insights led to better-targeted campaigns and improved customer experiences. Meaning, very tangibly: better ROI. If you do not have past cases, present case studies of companies that achieved significant growth through data-driven marketing. Always be tangible

Have you faced any of the challenges above? How did you manage to overcome them? Have you faced any different challenge which might be relevant for your fellow marketeers?