Agree the plan with the business, protect its funding, and set the standards the work runs on.
Most parts of a business that spend money at scale work from a plan the business has agreed to, funding it can count on, and a settled way of doing the work. A new office, a new service line, or a major client program goes forward with an owner, a budget, a timeline, and a clear view of what it should return. Marketing is often planned differently. Its plan is assembled from requests that arrive from every business unit, its budget is reopened whenever a quarter gets tight, and the way work gets done varies from one team to the next. The business ends up with a long list of activity and less confidence about what it will produce.
AI is changing what that costs. Content, campaigns, research, and reporting that once took weeks can now be produced in days, and a team working with AI can take on far more in a year than any budget used to allow. When producing the work stops being the limit, the decisions that come before it matter more. These are which growth the business wants marketing to pursue, how much money stands behind each priority, and how consistently the work is done once it starts. Those decisions live in the plan and in the standards the team works from.
For CEOs, that makes the marketing plan one of the most useful tools they have for growth. A plan built with the business, funded before the year begins, run on written standards, and reviewed alongside the rest of the business gives the leadership team a commitment it can manage. It also gives marketing the footing to deliver it.
Build the Plan With the Leaders Accountable for Growth
A marketing plan is strongest when the people responsible for growth help write it. Business unit leaders, sales leaders, and account leaders know which clients, offerings, and markets the business is counting on, and marketing knows what it takes to reach them. When those groups build the plan together, every priority in it has an owner on both sides, and the plan becomes part of the business plan.
A common format makes that practical, especially in a matrixed organization with several business units and layers of approval. When every unit describes its needs in the same few categories, such as client events, content, digital programs, and support for sales pursuits, leadership can see the whole plan at once. It can see where two units are paying for the same thing, where a priority has nothing behind it, and where the budget is spread too thin to make a difference. The format should be simple enough for a business unit leader to fill in without help, with room for ideas the categories did not anticipate.
The plan also has to reach the teams marketing depends on to deliver it. Data, technology, content, finance, and procurement each play a part across the year, and each plans its own capacity. Sharing what marketing will need from them, and when, at the moment the plan is approved gives them time to be ready. Leading the marketing planning and budgeting process for a matrixed global business showed me how much of a plan’s success is decided while it is being built.
“Without agreed criteria, the ideas argued most persistently tend to win funding over the ones most likely to pay back.”
Fund the Priorities the Business Needs Most
With AI raising how much a team can run at once, every business unit will bring more ideas it can now afford to try. The plan’s main job becomes choosing among more good options than the budget can afford.
A clear set of criteria, agreed before requests come in, keeps those choices tied to growth. Priorities that serve the accounts, offerings, and markets in the business plan come first, each with an expected result and last year’s evidence about what returned the most. Agreed criteria also give the plan a fair way to say no. Without them, the ideas argued most persistently tend to win funding over the ones most likely to pay back.
Picture a firm where three business units each request a flagship client event in the same quarter, along with new content aimed at the same industry. Measured against the growth plan, one of the events serves the accounts the firm most needs to win, and a single content program can serve all three units. The firm funds both, and the money left over goes to a sales pursuit the growth plan depends on.
The annual plan commits to outcomes, priorities, and the share of the budget behind each one. That gives the year its direction and the business its predictability. Within that commitment, the team can shift funding toward the programs producing results as the year goes on, with agreed limits on how far money can shift before leadership reviews it. Marketing that keeps learning from every client interaction needs exactly this kind of plan: steady enough for the business to count on, with room to act on how the market moves and shifts.
Protect the Funding Before the Year Begins
Funding set aside for each agreed priority before the year begins lets marketing make firm commitments to the business and to the teams it works with. When those dollars are earmarked with the same protection other committed investments receive, the money is there when the work is due.
Access to the money matters as much as approval. Once a priority is funded, the people running it should be able to spend against it without waiting on extra sign-offs that add time and little control. Clear limits, regular reporting, and a named owner for each line give finance the oversight it needs while the work keeps its pace. With AI, a campaign can be ready in about the time an approval used to take, so each added sign-off delays more work than it protects.
Protected funding also makes it possible to build capability year after year. A marketing leader who agrees with the CEO and CFO at the start to fund new capability from the function’s own efficiencies can keep reinvesting those savings for as long as the arrangement is honored. That approach suits AI especially well, since AI creates efficiencies in marketing faster than most budget cycles account for.
Set the Standards Every Team Works From
Consistent execution comes from shared standards: playbooks for the programs marketing runs again and again, templates for the work it produces most, editorial calendars, and scorecards that show how each program is performing. When every team works from the same standards, quality stays predictable whoever does the work, new people get up to speed quickly, and leaders can compare results across units and accounts.
AI raises the value of those standards. AI agents now draft content, prepare materials, and run parts of programs, and they work from whatever guidance the organization gives them. A playbook that once guided a few dozen people now also guides the agents working alongside them, across far more work. Written down, kept current, and owned by one person, a standard keeps all of that work consistent.
Each standard works best with a single owner who keeps one version current and updates it as the business, its strategy, or its technology changes. The same discipline applies to the tools the team uses. Keeping the set of tools as small as the work allows, a principle I have long applied to marketing technology, gives people and agents fewer places to look and fewer ways to do the same task. Training follows the same logic. Guidance built around each role, from account marketers to event leads to analysts, helps each person learn the work they own and do it well.
In one of my CMO roles, I was responsible for growing client engagement across many countries. We agreed with the regional sales leaders and finance that pipeline, bookings, and revenue for each region, and for the industry sectors within it, would measure our success. I developed a core set of playbooks, templates, and a messaging framework that kept the core of the work consistent while letting each country tailor it to the opportunities in its market. Teams also had a way to ask questions and get help applying them. We set principles we all used to decide what was relevant in each market, how it should be positioned, and how it connected to the growth opportunities and measures we had agreed. Leading it centrally, with dedicated project management, I brought every country into one workstream. We got into market on an aggressive timeline and built sales momentum with several early wins. We kept refining the framework together, and over the quarters that followed we drove consecutive growth and market-leading growth in our industry sectors. The business also reached several all-time highs in its share price over that period.
Review the Plan on the Rhythm the Business Keeps
A plan stays useful when it is reviewed on a set rhythm. Scheduling a quarterly review with each team at the start of the year, timed with the business’s own reviews, makes adjusting the plan routine, and every team arrives prepared.
Each review looks at results in the business’s terms, from pipeline to bookings to revenue, alongside spending against plan. When the plan, the spending, and the results are kept together in the firm’s Intelligence Layer, the review can focus on decisions: which priorities to accelerate, which to scale back, and where to shift funds. Between reviews, the team handles what comes up day to day, such as a canceled event or a new opportunity, and brings larger changes to the next review with a recommendation.
In one CMO role, I put in place a system and templates that connected business unit, account, and marketing planning, so our marketing plans developed in step with the business plans. With my peers, the group CEO, CGO, and CFO, I finalized the plans, agreed the financials and measures, and ran the year against them. We made improvements as results came in and checked progress every quarter. We doubled down on investments with measurable returns and cut those that kept underperforming after efforts to improve them stalled, moving the money to priorities that warranted more. We delivered several quarters of pipeline and bookings growth.
Match the Two Plans Line by Line
A useful first step is to lay next year’s marketing plan beside the business plan and match them line by line. Every marketing priority should connect to a client group, offering, or market the business is counting on. Every growth priority in the business plan should have marketing behind it, or a clear reason it does not. The gaps on either side show where the plan needs work before the year begins.
The CEO, CFO, and CMO can do this together in one working session before the planning cycle opens, then repeat it at each quarterly review as the business changes. Done every year, the exercise makes marketing a dependable part of the firm’s Growth Engine, with each new plan building on what the last one taught.
About John Fildes
I grow the top line by connecting marketing to business strategy. By leveraging powerful positioning, content marketing, and client insights, I help organizations drive qualitative and quantitative results at scale.
I've built an amazing network of incredibly talented people over the years. What I've appreciated most is those who have invested in me, mentored me, and helped me become the talented professional I am today. I pay it forward by doing the same for other high performing professionals and entrepreneurs.
Learn More: Growth Leader | Business Builder | Leadership Multiplier
All views are my own and not those of my current or prior employers.
