This is an important time of year.
We’re in a crucial planning season as teams across industries finalize their budget proposals.
And the question that many marketers have on their mind is:
How can I ensure these budget requests are approved by leadership?
Especially when marketing budgets continue to shrink year-over-year.
Which is why we’ve put together 7 practical tips for creating a budget proposal that leadership can rally behind.
Let’s get into it.
1. Identify Business Goals
Start by zooming out. Look at the broader business objectives that your company is trying to achieve. Whether you’re looking to enhance brand visibility, capture new customer segments, or support a major product launch, these high-level objectives serve as your guiding lights or “north stars.”
Every line in your budget should trace back to these fundamental goals, demonstrating to leadership that your proposed spending aligns with organizational priorities.
2. Understand Your Industry
With business goals in mind, take a closer look at market trends and competitor activities. Understanding your industry lets you emulate proven successful strategies, as well as identify opportunities your competitors have missed.
For example, should you invest in a heavily saturated channel? Or should you explore new channels that no one in your space has leveraged? Maybe there is a case to be made for both. A well-researched competitive analysis can help justify either approach.
3. Understand Your Target Audience
You can have the greatest campaign ever with strong branding and impactful copy. But if it’s not being put in front of the right people, it won’t produce the results you’re hoping for.
So if you haven’t already, start by developing data-driven Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) – we actually conducted an experiment on using ChatGPT to define your true ICP.
From there, identify leads in your database that match these profiles. Then, craft messaging that speaks directly to their needs, pain points, and decision-making authority.
And remember that audience targeting is an iterative process. Monitor your response rates, test different messaging approaches, and be ready to adapt based on results. Your budget allocation should reflect this commitment to continuous refinement (ie. Instead of allocating all your digital advertising spend upfront, space it out to reflect different phases of testing and optimization month-to-month.)
Note: It’s not enough to just have well-defined ICPs and good messaging; it’s equally important to keep your database up-to-date and free of duplicates. Dirty data will cause all sorts of other problems such as lost revenue and productivity, data privacy violation risks, and unreliable decision-making. Here’s how to create a data hygiene plan that works.
4. Determine the Right Marketing Channels
Knowing your audience is only half the battle. You need to meet them where they are. Is it most effective to reach them through social media platforms, SEO strategies, email marketing, TV and print advertising, or all of them?
Evaluate your options and allocate budget across channels that reflect both audience behavior and channel performance data.
But don’t spread yourself too thin either; It’s better to excel on a few key platforms than to maintain a mediocre presence everywhere.
5. Learn From Past Performance
Nothing builds credibility like proven success. Review your previous campaigns thoroughly and see what worked and what didn’t. Doing this allows you to learn from previous mistakes, recreate proven strategies, and build on past wins as you expand your scope.
When you’re presenting your budget to leadership, highlight those specific examples where strong ROI was delivered. These examples act as valuable proof of concept, showing that you can be trusted with resources.
6. Project Results (Especially Revenue Growth)
Building on your historical analysis from the previous tip, take things one step further by creating detailed projections for future campaigns. Leadership will have more confidence in your vision when you support it with reliable projections backed by good data.
Projected revenue growth is especially important here. Highlighting how your proposed initiatives will directly contribute to increased revenue is a language your CFO (and the entire leadership team) will understand.
It’s also a good idea to develop a system of transparency and accountability through regular check-ins – maybe in the form of a continuously updating model that leadership can monitor throughout the year, for example. This kind of thing will help maintain trust and is generally good practice.
7. Focus on the Opportunity
At the end of the day, leadership can overlook cost if the ROI makes sense. This is why it’s important to focus on the opportunity that your budget creates.
When you’re communicating with leadership, focus on the high-level vision. Paint a picture of the potential benefits while showing how your plan aligns with broader organizational goals.
And keep it simple! Overly technical details might lose them. Instead, emphasize value and outcomes.
Because when they trust your vision, they’re far more likely to invest in your plan.
As we’ve mentioned, marketing budgets are shrinking – which makes compelling budget proposals vital to the success of your team and your company.
In order to get buy-in, you need a convincing narrative backed by solid data. Use these tips to help you create a budget proposal that presents a clear vision for growth that leadership can confidently get behind.
And if you want to dive deeper into this topic, don’t miss our upcoming presentation called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Get: How to Secure Budget for Your Team in 2025”.
Learn more and save your spot here!
