On December 6th, 2022, we'll be offering a comprehensive webinar on budgeting strategies for the new year featuring Forrester. Anu Adegbola, an account director of paid media with Marin, and guest speaker Brett Kahnke, a principal analyst with Forrester, will cover how to approach your marketing budget for 2023 while also giving tips on how to adapt your budgets as needed ongoing.
To get you started before the webinar, we've put together a "too long didn't read" guide on Forrester’s approach to budget allocation and what steps you should take when planning a long-term fiscal strategy. To get all of Forrester’s insights and tips, you'll need to download Forrester's report directly (available to Forrester subscribers or for purchase) and attend our webinar event, but this quick overview should help you start moving forward.
Summary of Forrester’s Strategic Budget Allocation Process
In the Forrester report, Kahnke explains how marketing teams are tasked with executing marketing and maximizing results while also dealing with a murky set of objectives. As a part of this process, execution teams must work with business priorities to find the best course of action. The Strategic Budget Allocation Process can be used by the central, regional or country-based field marketing teams or as a second business within an organization. The complete guide by Forrester outlines the benefits of creating a marketing program plan that aligns spending with business, marketing, and campaign objectives. Kahnke also highlights common mistakes that can lead to disconnected or habitual marketing.
The Five Steps of Forrester’s Execution Strategy Phase
Step 1: Review Budget Allocations And Prepare Guidance
Check if team goals align with campaign budget allocations; include campaigns, sub-campaigns, and targeted segments in your analysis.
• Review the top-down and bottom-up budget distribution.
• Define execution guidelines for marketing teams.
• Provide regular feedback on successes and failures, especially in communication with leadership.
Step 2: Layer on Specific Program Allocations and Ensure Totals Stack Up Against Strategic Targets
Step 3: Define Programs You Absolutely Need Within Your Marketing Strategy
Step 4: Identify the Right Tactics for Your Team at this Time, Build the Calendar, and Finalize Allocations
The program manager's primary deliverable in this step is a program calendar. This summarizes the duration of each program and its related tactics in a production schedule and includes the correlating spend for each tactic.
Step 5: Check your Bottom to Top Overview, Get Endorsement, and Share the Plan
It’s important to communicate the priorities of marketing campaigns to other departments within the business. Confirm that your final plan is still aligned to the organizations needs in terms of objective, campaigns, and program allocations.
We look forward to sharing more with you in December and hearing directly from Brett how the execution of this strategy will give you the best marketing plan for 2023 possible.
