Budgeting for Marketers

I am told that there were times when marketers could simply tell the CEO ‘Trust me. This marketing programme will deliver great results”.

I don’t know whether this time did exist… but I am pretty sure that this is not the case, now. Marketers need to justify their marketing investment and need to produce various performance metrics.

In this post, I am sharing with you a presentation providing a VERY brief overview of what budgeting is and how it is done. It is only a primer, really. But I hope that it will be useful.

At the end of the presentation, I mention some resources that may help you further. And if you would like me to expand on a particular aspect, just leave me a note on the comments section, below.

Regarding the terms of use

I believe in open access and, therefore, I am very happy for you to use the content and ideas of this presentation, in all or in part. I do require, however, that you acknowledge the source. Moreover, if you intend to use the content or ideas for commercial purposes, I require that you make a donation to a charity of my choice. The causes that I am supporting at the moment are:

– Barbora Chromečková’s charity trek to the Everest

– Cancer Research UK

– The Girl Effect

That’s all.

Enjoy the presentation and do let me know what you think in the comments below or, simply, by ‘liking’ this post. And, of course, feel free to let others know about this blog post.

6 thoughts on “Budgeting for Marketers”

  2. Excellent presentation! In the brand of marketing propagated by a number of influential bloggers, speakers, and thinkers online, measurement is scoffed at. Especially in regards to social media and other types of relationship marketing, pundits literally tell you to just get out there and see what works. I appreciate the sentiment and am all for experimentation. But, no matter how you slice it, if you aren’t measuring your inputs and outputs, you don’t really know a thing. Thanks for contribution something useful for practitioners. We need all of the encouragement we can get to make sound decisions.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Thank you, Douglas. The point of this blog is to turn academic output into something that is useful in daily life. I see that you, too, value that. I am in great company, then 🙂

      I am quite pragmatic. I think that we should neither act without any references on what is working, nor become too tied up to numbers. At the end of the day, we have limited resources (including time!) and we need to know that we are using them effectively. But, equally, if we were waiting for the numbers to show that customers wanted cars, or iPods, we would still be riding horses and listening to music in our walkman.

      There needs to be a balance between planning and measuring, but also taking calculated risks.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Thanks for this presentation. I have worked managing design projects agency side for a number of years. I have experienced a lot of roadmaps and marketing programmes but never been privy to the detail of the marketing budget. The points you make about ‘Cost of opportunity’ and the responsibility on the marketeer to prioritise is a key point for me. I have often been faced with a very loose wishlist of needs that outweigh budget. Of course I push back to manage expectation and control the scope of projects from the outset but in future I’ll feel more comfortable shifting the emphasis onto the marketeer to really consider the actions they have identified across the programme and make choices about Cost of opportunity.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Thank you very much for your comment, Sandra. You are so right about the need to manage expectations and be realistic about what the initiatives can and can not do.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment