B2B Planning Season: Tools, Templates, Strategies and More

If it's Q4, it's marketing planning season! Strategy, budgets, cross-department alignment and much more. Some could argue successfully that planning season never ends, but there's definitely a bump 3-4 months before a new fiscal year starts.

Last Friday's CMO Coffee Talk discussion featured a robust discussion about best practices, tools, strategies, cautionary tales and more relative to up-front planning. As you'll see from the chat highlights below, we covered a lot of ground.

If you are in the CMO Coffee Talk community, look for several planning tools and templates in the #swipe-file channel.

If you are a B2B CMO or head of marketing and want to join a community of 1,900+ of your peers, let me know!

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The nice thing about Dec-Nov is that you probably start your fiscal with a bang with the December buying stuff

We're moving to 6 month budget planning due to current economic climate.?We're staying hyper focused on our metrics.

If you need one to debate with the broader company... ask someone what they mean by "user" (chaos ensues)

We have the same question about Campaign vs. program etc. If you have a definition, please share

Re lexicon, campaigns vs programs vs tactics - important distinctions!

Who's getting a major bump in the budget next year vs. flat vs. decrease? With everyone predicting recession, we are getting a lot of pressure from the board...

We are getting pressure to decrease.

Flat budget for me on run rate

Single Source of Truth, so important!?In many cases finance has their version of the plan, sales/marketing have another.

I usually bury my buffer budget in projected media spend.

I typically do the opposite -- plan for 120% so that there is always an active “backlog" to draw from but with flexibility to pull programs and projects in and out

Love that...the 20% enables agility. Have to guard it for real pivots, not for random "can we do a sales dinner, I hear marketing has budget" things.

No one digs into the media budget

I like Allocadia if you do the work to tie it to Marketo. Tried Plannuh and it was a mess.

but don't put that 20% in an unplanned bucket.?Call it launch funds or accelerator funds or something like that.??Looks less swipable to the finance team.?;-)

We use spreadsheets and Adaptive Planning - I used to work for Planful back in the day which is a great planning tool

we used Forrester/Serious Decisions definition for campaign, program and tactics. In fact then entire marketing team went through the trainings

I tried Allocadia and we couldnt make it work. Was wondering about Plannuh.

We are flat spend with flexibility to optimize within it for headcount and opex.

I’ve used Sirius Decision/Forrester Plan on a Page template as an organizing principle, but it is not ideal of operationalizing the plan

On budget, I do both.?I have allocated placeholders that I can easily move but appears to be committed.?I also keep a running list of “shovel ready" projects that can be started and spent within a week in case I ever get the “we need to spend money now" question.

I'm not sure if this was covered, I arrived late. but interested to know how others approach the "yearly" plan versus shorter time periods. I've moved from the yearly plan that required ongoing changes, to a yearly budget and goals - with more detailed, tactical quarterly plans.

I am always allocated to the penny - best way to protect against swipes.

Other trick is getting rolling pipeline targets set when bookings targets for the following calendar year is not set and your sales cycle is ~6 months (like now) and your international expansion targets are WIP.?I've had to just make decisions and communicate based on QoQ rates

Insight has great benchmarks re. budget allocation

https://www.insightpartners.com/blog/marketing-by-the-numbers-marketing-budget-for-b2b-saas/

when I was at a very large tech co, this happened at the end of every quarter and I always had a SOW sitting in a drawer ready to spend it.

Insight metrics including full start up cross team KPIs are an excellent start.

time horizon on returns - such a big discussion right now.

Would love to do a poll to this group on YoY Δ in marketing (and really S&M) spend; and how that compares to AGR shift. Genuinely curious in this macro.

I will be up YoY but that's because they now understand how underinvested in marketing they have been. Will likely come from the Sales budget to keep overall GTM flat yoy.

In early stage - we did an annual plan, and quarterly updates on a rolling 4 quarter basis to make sure we were tracking up or down cycle issues

40-50% of budget to S and M. No perfect answer but 17% is a good start for Marketing.

100% Align to product roadmap, new regions/expansion and where the sales quota is coming from for Field Marketing budget.

Pipeline modeling is important for planning to show where you need the budget and if you don't get it, the pipeline and booking numbers will be impacted. Boards acknowledge it but don't change the budget :-). They want you take money from other buckets like branding and put it in DG

My team is on the hook for 25% of pipeline annually. I’ve got every penny committed to achieve it, but we review it monthly and adjust investment - and tactics - to hit pipeline goals accordingly.

OKRs ??

I love the simplicity of a single slide

I love a plan on a page as well. We are also doing that.

we are taking that approach this year, it's a big shift and a messy middle to get there.

I have only used spreadsheets but…my goal seek xls becomes the single source of truth. I start with inputs like ACV and deal cycle time (B2B SaaS so cycle times are 5 months-ish). So start with Sales rev goals several months out, adjust for Marketing’s contribution to get Marketing's rev goals. Then adjust for win rates to determine pipeline, and then adjust for each SFDC historical conversion rate to determined required number of opportunities, leads, etc for each of the preceding months. And once you know the # of leads, you map rows for marketing mix line items--adding the # of leads for each month from each lead source—and the cost of each of those leads. It's here that you know whether your budget is sufficient.

We do monthly planning with the entire team including junior folks, so they visibility and exposure to the budget planning process early on in their careers too. So they are part of the bottom up after they understand the corporate and marketing objectives and priorities. I also provide budget 101 training for all new team members too.

Love that idea - multiplying!

Love the idea of "Budget 101" for the team

Great point. I have my team create individual tactical plans for their areas (social, SEM, content, etc). These are included in the appendix.

It's also a deck that I had the finance team vet as well, so it's finance approved.

+1 Transparency and training on budget for others in marketing. Great way to have open discussions later when or if adjustments are needed.

I start with business objectives and sales plans

that's the way I've typically planned as well - have my team create their plans. They then get to be creative and get excited about "owning" the plan, but I do find it challenging to make sure they are creating plans that will deliver the stated results!

For me, much easier to win over the CFO than the CRO. Anyone else?

Agreed 100% .?As a former CFO, I know the importance of ROI measurement/attribution.

If the plans don't exist, I then generate my best guess to break it down by quarter. Look at past sales and predict a Y-o-Y growth rate or triangulate with VC best practices from Scale Ventures or Insight or . . .

the CRO is usually a sales person

Generally — CRO Short term, CFO Long term thinking.?Generally…..

I try not to talk budget with the CRO, they tend to be out of touch with what things cost

are people seeing an uptick in CMOs reporting into CROs? I've personally seen it but small sample size

Seth Godin wrote "anything that touches the market is marketing." I like that a lot....

totally, I think trojan horsing is one of the great skills for Market leaders

CRO should have zero input into marketing budgets. That's ridiculous.

see it more in start ups and when numbers start to slip

completely agree. get CFO on board with your plan and everything else goes well.

CMO reporting to CRO isn't really a CMO IMHO

Or. Unless that CRO has a marketing or product marketing background.

I run whenever a recruiter pitches a CMO role that will report to CRO.

I also see reporting to the CRO when the CEO is too lazy to try to understand marketing

(more like a VP marketing which really becomes more of a VP demand)

My experience is CROs are always from Sales with min Marketing experience.

I don't think it is so black and white, yet often true

Currently living this, my CEO is basically a CRO! So hard.

If I get any recruiter calls and the role reports to anyone besides the CEO, I say 'no thanks!’

Marketing leaders understand way more parts of the business, making us pretty dang good at CRO (or CEO...in my completely opposite of humble opinion)

This issue of CMO reporting to CRO is as much about marketing misunderstood and undervalued by CEO as it is an organizational cop out

Don't you think we are reacting to CRO more as how it has been executed and not in concept?

I love the idea of CMOs moving into CRO -- have seen more and more of this happening

let's not confuse strategy vs execution

“yes, and…”

I think the CRO and CMO need to have a check and balance on each other.?If CMO reports to CRO you lose the constructive tension.

Marketing reporting to CRO gives great insight into the org. Not a situation for me.

I think we are now doing the same thing we are frustrated by which is making the CRO the CSO

if there is a true CRO I don't see an issue, the issue is most companies just changed the CSO title to CRO

A CRO that has scaled a big company is also culturally different than start up CROs

An interesting discussion happened on LinkedIn this week in response to the question. If there were only one metric to measure marketing, what would it be? The consensus seems to be overall revenue.

After sharing your mkt obj/strategies - How have you all guided your teams to build their dept plans and budgets - brand product mkt, comms, events, demand, etc. - and work together vs. having siloed approaches?

Bingo, - it's not about the title, it's about the reality that CRO is usually?really a CSO that _finally_ has gotten control of Marketing. I say we strike back and all become CROs.

I now report to the CRO who is also the President and the heir apparent to the CEO. I am here precisely because he knows what he doesn't know and it trying to widen his purview and make the transition to CEO. So it's all about execution.

I couldn't agree more with our fight back strategy

I think the CRO / CMO issue requires us to look inward about what we want the CMO role to be and how we apply it in practice so that it is more meaningful and better understood by rest of Exec team. Think it's what's behind a lot of CMOs chaning there titles to Chief Growth Officer.

community IS brand in my mind.

When we get caught in the tactics debate we have already lost. We have to connect all activity to rev generation and get out of the stuff convo's

Brand = Reputation

Industry and company size make a difference as to the view of marketing. When considering an opportunity, I always pay attention to this idea of a sales-driven org or marketing-driven org. In a sales-driven org, you will spend the first year trying to establish and educate regarding the role.

When I was at (past company), we definitely considered our community building part of brand (annual conference, social, online forum, etc.). It was a major part of our valuation when we exited.

if you can demonstrate good results on typical performance channels, you get a bit more permission to invest in the longer term.

As an exec team, we have agreed on a 50/25/25 approach to marketing spend. I commit a minimum of 50% to short term pipeline generation activities, 25% to solving longer term problems (community, brand, research, product testing, etc.), and 25% for marketing excellence (the mar-tech stack, training, new tools, experimentation, etc.). The 50% based on pipeline development starts with the sales targets. The 25% on long term impact is a top down based on 3-year company planning and bottoms up based on what we are hearing from our team in the field. The 25% on marketing excellence is really bottoms up and something the team within marketing is passionate about. I find that these boundaries really prevent us from having the same debates about allocation over and over again. I have also found that as we go into our 3rd year with this framework that the other execs come to me more frequently with ideas on the longer term impact activities and assume just assume the pipeline generation engine is a machine.

Brand = People's perception of you

I also make sure people understand deliverable timing up front, so they understand how the budget turns into action (and remind them of lead times)

Run far away from ‘show me money and you'll get money'

I think of community as a channel. I ran marketing for open source software company. We used open source to engage. Many people eventually raised hand and turned to customer. Needed to treat it like a channel and find subtle ways to capture conversions and articulate value to biz.

To justify brand spend to my CEO I had to position it as Brand = free leads ?? (can build a dashboard to show this -- eg. organic brand search)

I dont think every show me the money convo is bad. In many cases it's show us the pipeline impact so we can confidently allocate more

Right on, organic and branded search = a proxy for brand impact. I use that too.

My EVP of Sales and I have started creating a joint GTM plan that we roll up yearly and quarterly to the board, and then prepare monthly for the leadership team. I've cascaded the same 1 slide template down for Marketing and for each of my Orgs.?Distilling down to 1 slide has been enormously powerful for me - and thinking of GTM as co-owned with sales has forced the right conversations.?Will send the template in #swipefile

I'd agree not every convo is bad - it's if they expect results to magically generate without investment

That's cool by definition because you're essentially saying pipe/sales support is just half of our job

I do an annual full tool review with the entire marketing team as a way for marketers to learn about each tool - and assess if we’re using each tool to it’s highest level and to identify any gaps.

Median total marketing spend as a percentage of new business ARR was 59% during covid, up from 46% pre-Covid. In other words, the median company spent $.059 in marketing for each dollar of new business during COVID.

https://www.insightpartners.com/blog/marketing-by-the-numbers-marketing-budget-for-b2b-saas/

Just found out our CEO's writing about timelag / delay on brand was a blog post versus a white paper. Digging around for it. I will say off cuff from my experiences (include former big agency) I think the bigger value comes later (12months+). Depends on market/company/situation ...

We have a similar approach to reduce tech debt. Rather than always buy new tech, can we stretch our current tech to make sure we get what we paid for.

?

Important company dynamic to understand in my experience .. is the business willing to truly plan and execute with an annual perspective or is the culture to revisit every quarter and make significant changes. This is not so much about being responsive to market conditions - it is more about mindset of leadership on spend.

How are you all setting strategy with your marketing directors? We're doing Amazon-style memos ahead of an in-person meeting in a couple of weeks just to get big thoughts down on paper.

80& should be allocated to revenue generating Campaigns (no more than 4=5 integrated “campaigns” and 20% for out of campaign spending and contingencies…

mindset really matters.?moving at intelligent speed to address changes needs to be an acceptable framework mentally first which allows for the flexibility needed to manage to the market

I always get an up front agreement with CFO that we don’t have a “use it or lose it” quarterly rule.?I’ve seen that nonsense in some companies and I tell folks that when everything else in the company is delivered on time (hiring, product releases, etc.) and we don’t get any new in-year asks (ha :-)) then we’ll commit to it.

How connected is the marketing budget plan with sales budget (salesforce size, tools)? And Customer success too?

And need Key planning assumptions from belt to drive sales, marketing, product close alignment

And an agreed upon Marketing “Will/Will Not” template!

Understanding how accruals for expenses are taken by the CFO is also important.?For example if you are sponsoring something in the next year, are they taking the expense this year or next.

Does anyone else have a ‘rolling’ planning season for Marketing to factor in the MQL>Close timeline for close to align with the 1st of the calendar year? i.e. Marketing calendar year for me is Aug 1 > Jul 31 vs Company plan is Jan 1 - Dec 31. This has added complexity as you can imagine. Just curious.

I think it's important to have outcomes-focused discussions with sales and not tactical at all.

Stop-Start-Continue is a good framework

At my previous company, we moved to breaking out large events and then having a general event bucket for smaller shows. It worked well. We'd also be creative and move some events under paid media (sponsorships, etc.).

for narrative. It is messy and gets a bit divergent, but super helpful to hear how leaders in team are framing their understanding of market

Team needs to understand the accruals policy too.

Start with winning moves and annual priorities from ELT and multiple meetings to get input/involvement and synchronize across multiple levels

Someone asked about Sales alignment - super-super critical.?For example our CRO is creating a new team to go after a new market - starting this year.?I’ve explained to him, CEO and CFO that will require a top-to-bottom marketing investment that isn’t planned for today.

in my case has been Stop. Switch. Start

I believe another important prompt - particularly for alignment - what do you believe is happening in the market with our buyers?

Hmm - that is a whole coffee talk session for B2Bers - how to make the case for Brand investment when the business typically only understands Demand Gen investment

storytelling around budget matters too, I’ve found

Agreed , it's not about what you are spending but what outcomes you are buying.?Storytelling helps with that!

I give everyone my team a budgeting 101 course (10-slides) and tech training as well as some tips for how to start with their budgeting.

We spend about 2 months to plan for the marketing plan. This incl liaising with key stakeholders across regions, conducting research, aligning to our strategic imperatives, reviewing our KPIs, and understanding our clients' issues. After presenting the plan to our exec committee, I then outline the budget and create a business case for the big ticket items for final approvals.

It depends what you define as "campaign" as well. The client that said 50-60 campaigns . . . not quite sure what constitutes as a "campaign" for them. Maybe it was only a paid push?

This is why shared lexicon is critical. Everyone loves tossing around the "campaign" term

YES id love advice there. we have some newer leaders and im already seeing the challenge on thinking company level vs department level

If sales gives feedback that the brand isn't well known enough they can't push back when marketing puts more budget into brand-building...

Any suggestions for walking into an organization when the budget and plan are locked?

For KPIs we use EazyBI and track all KPIs which helps us build our business case for budget approvals. For example, we were able to prove we received 400 leads in Q1 and Q2 and so getting approvals for budget to further contribute to pipeline have been a bit easier.

welp if the plan is already locked then i would immediately ask if performance against that plan is trackable.

Our FM team join all funnel review and quarterly business reviews with their respective regional sales leaders

I actually met with the regions and different sales teams monthly because I do NOT want to find out their feedback at the QBR when it's too late lol.

We do both - goal based and tactic or channel based.

I like the idea of categorizing/tagging by brand building, demand gen, customer retention and sales enablement.

If you are in an ABM motion you should be reviewing/planning monthly with regions/field.

How about budgeting by major campaign?

That's smart, I like the idea of tags for budgeting for sifting and sorting

I Find monthly is better then quarterly to create momentum & synergy with the team.

miscoding is real!!!

I like the Goal code idea on the ledger.?I’m going to advocate for that one to get added .

we created internal marketing codes and then matched them to what finance were using

I've got like about seven cost centers that finance has agreed to set up, which is way better than past finance teams that give us only three.

interesting concept of outlining the budget by goal. However, I don't know if I'd do that bc if I have a lead gen goal and a brand elevation goal, they'll probably remove by brand goal as they won't understand the longer term impact.

Your best friend at work needs to be the CFO

every i manage to find budget line items that are product/engineering that haaaaaappened to be categorized under marketing

https://www.demandrevenue.com/five-strategies-successful-cmos-use-to-engage-their-cfo/

Context.?Otherwise it's all just pops and clicks to lots of people on the ELT

Would love advice on how to plan for board updates, please share!

I would limit martech spent in that case and focus largely on program spend

Understanding the product VISION - not roadmap - in a high growth start up is also a really important factor in messaging.

You wouldn't push for using Hubspot as the CRM if it's a startup? I am used to SFDC as well but depending on their salesforce etc.

As a CMO of a Dutch company, who's been brought in to grow the market in the U.S., I am also have differences on the planning process.

Martech for startups:

I'd call $30 mil ARR a scale up vs. a startup

If you're just adding martech for the first time-- this is an amazing opportunity to get the data right!

Martech for Startups: (1) Marketing Automation Platform (2) Google Analytics (3) Figure out what your next problem is (usually not that hard)

Also important how you communicate the plan to the organization— use a 1-page template to make easy to consume and share…

$30 mil ARR needs sophisticated martech stack eg. Salesforce / Marketo + marketing ops

and one more (don't know if it's martech or salestech) - some sort of data platform (zoominfo etc)

But $30M in revenue is enough to have a robust martech stack.?BUT rev ops needs to be your partner in making sure

wondering out loud ... in this era of Dark Funnel ... would an investment in ABM (6Sense, Demandbase, etc) earlier be useful to establish the conversation MUCH earlier around anonymous engagement that Marketing drives. [Not a sponsored post]. I generally had thought of this as a later investment with maturity - maybe that is old school thinking?

It's a crawl/walk/run approach with martech. Get the foundations built first or you’ll struggle.

Reputation programs seeds demand early and brand awareness critical to be on short lists!

at a startup, I'd think about it as audience building

aim small, miss small.

You can’t capture what you don’t have.

If you skip the step of creating demand & brand building, you have a problem.

Also leverage other company's budgets -- who do you want to align yourself with and partner up on demand gen initiatives

How do you measure brand if you don’t have budget to get a survey done?

Look at Apollo.io vs Zoom, Rafiki vs Gong

Its the only way to get credit for the anonymous goodness we creaete

ask sales, ask customers, and ask analysts about the brand perception they view

In general - I feel we often spend too much time on the tools (which are often comparable) than the stuff that really moves the needle - too much “what email tool should we use?” and not enough “how do we send GREAT content”

I have strong feelings on marketing automation needing to focus on the ‘automation’ piece, or it’s just an expensive email tool. But that’s a discussion for another show

absolutely agree.?Strategy > Process > Tech

I heard someone say the other day, “strategy is about subtraction, not addition" -- love this for planning.

Understand what marketing (content, campaigns, etc) moves the needle throughout out the funnel and pipe is key to level setting what you need to continue to do and stop doing.

Related to the martech investment, what program/people mix makes sense for a $100M company vs. a $1B company? How should it evolve as a company grows?

yes but if you don't make good tech decisions at the beginning it can really mess things up... long term. It's worth investing here -- even at an early stage.

Strategy will drive your major campaigns

Less is More!

a key component is showing the martech enables brand and demandgen.

do your marketing directors/managers mostly have strong POV on strategy and spend? or do you have to painstakingly it out of them?

love the long term vs. short term balance representation

I had to give a strategy 101 presentation to my team ?? -- It's really difficult for some folks to think strategically

In the restaurant business the plan is reviewed based on daily sales.?Can you imagine doing that?

Trying to break the (human) bias to status quo ;)

I have needed to change the mindset of budgeting overall: It's not “marketing vs the CFO/CEO”, it is marketing achieving the CFO's strategy. I am in a very finance-driven org and we manage to have a healthy budget

I like yearly V2MOM plus quarterly Rocks to hit the Measures

I find rolling planning can hurt brand initiatives - they need time to have impact and show results.

I have a handful that absolutely have conviction, others that just want to focus on tactics

definitely need to coach

it varies between the leaders. it's also an opp for me to assess their strengths. it’s a big challenge though because the tactic thinkers will pivot with sales leaders requests throughout the year

mistakes are never fun, but I'd argue that on the list of mistakes, tech mistakes rank low?- mistakes in ICP, positioning, hiring have more impact than a wrong tech decision