Marketing budgets have a habit of becoming historical documents.
- Last year we spent £X.
- This year costs have increased.
- This activity performed reasonably well.
- This agency is still under contract.
- This event has always been in the plan.
Add a few new initiatives, make some adjustments and eventually you arrive at next year's number.
The budget gets approved.
But there is a more important question:
What is the business actually buying with that money?
Having spent years responsible for marketing budgets, agency spend and commercial performance, I think leadership teams should challenge marketing investment in exactly the same way they would any other significant area of business expenditure.
Not because marketing needs to prove the value of every individual pound.
It doesn't.
But because there should be a clear connection between what the business is trying to achieve and where its marketing money is going.
Before approving the next budget, I would ask six questions.
1. What are we actually trying to achieve?
This sounds obvious.
It often isn't.
A marketing plan might contain:
- Search
- Paid advertising
- Social media
- Events
- Content
- Website development
- PR
- Agency retainers
Those are activities.
They are not business objectives.
Start with what needs to change commercially.
- Do we need more new customers?
- More opportunities from existing markets?
- Growth in a particular product or service?
- Higher customer retention?
- Entry into a new market?
- Improved conversion?
- A stronger pipeline?
Once that is clear, you can start asking whether the planned marketing activity supports it.
Without that connection, budgeting becomes an exercise in funding activity.
2. What worked this year?
Not:
What did we do?
Ask:
What worked?
There is a significant difference.
A campaign being delivered successfully does not mean it generated a successful business outcome.
A website can receive more traffic without generating more opportunities.
Social engagement can increase without contributing meaningful revenue.
An event can be extremely busy without producing a single worthwhile lead.
Look at the evidence.
- Which activities generated enquiries?
- Which produced customers?
- Which influenced significant opportunities?
- Which improved conversion?
- Which helped retain or grow existing customers?
And where possible:
What did those outcomes contribute commercially?
You will rarely have perfect attribution.
That is not a reason to avoid the question.
3. What didn't work — and why are we still paying for it?
This is often the more valuable conversation.
Marketing plans accumulate activity.
- A sponsorship gets renewed.
- An agency retainer rolls over.
- Software continues being paid for.
- A campaign returns because it was in last year's plan.
Nobody necessarily made a bad decision.
The business simply never stopped to make another one.
Every budget cycle should create permission to ask:
If we weren't already doing this, would we choose to start doing it today?
If the answer is no, there needs to be a very good reason for it to remain in the budget.
Stopping something can be just as valuable as starting something new.
4. Are we funding the constraint or simply generating more demand?
Marketing does not operate independently from the rest of the customer journey.
Imagine increasing lead generation by 30% when the sales team already struggles to follow up existing enquiries.
Or spending heavily on paid traffic when the website converts poorly.
Or generating demand for a service the business cannot deliver profitably.
More marketing applied to the wrong constraint can simply make an existing problem bigger.
Before increasing acquisition spend, understand where the customer journey is currently breaking down.
The best marketing investment may not always be another campaign.
It could be:
- Better conversion
- Faster sales follow-up
- CRM improvements
- Better customer data
- Improved propositions
- Sales enablement
- Website changes
The commercial problem should determine the investment.
Not the marketing channel.
5. Do we know what our agencies and suppliers are accountable for?
External specialists can add enormous value.
But accountability needs to be clear.
- What outcome has the agency actually been asked to influence?
- What does it control?
- What does your internal team control?
- What measures are being used?
And importantly:
Who inside the business owns the commercial outcome?
Outsourcing marketing activity does not outsource responsibility for marketing performance. It is the same point I make about the quality of the brief.
Leadership still needs to understand whether the combined investment is moving the business forward.
6. If we had 20% less budget, what would we stop?
I like this question because it forces prioritisation.
If every item in the marketing budget is apparently essential, it is unlikely the business has genuinely prioritised.
- What would you protect?
- What would you reduce?
- What would disappear completely?
Then reverse the question.
If you had another 20%, where would you invest it?
The answers tell you a lot about where the team actually believes value is being created.
A good budget should reflect those priorities already.
A marketing budget should be an investment thesis
You are effectively saying:
If we invest this amount of money, in these areas, we believe it will help create these commercial outcomes.
That does not mean everything will work.
Marketing involves testing, judgement and uncertainty.
But the logic behind the investment should be visible.
And when something doesn't work, the business should be prepared to change it.
The objective isn't to spend the budget.