Every year, as planning season rolls around, marketers brace themselves — not for the creative brainstorms or the strategic debates but for the budgeting grind. For many, marketing planning isn’t energizing; it’s anxiety-inducing. And it’s not hard to see why.

Unlike planning in finance or operations, marketing planning isn’t something most professionals learn in school. There’s no textbook or course on how to build a marketing budget that aligns with business goals, supports cross-functional collaboration, and adapts to change. Instead, marketers often inherit last year’s plan (usually a spreadsheet and a lengthy slide deck), incorporate new targets, and hope for the best.

This kick-the-can approach is especially common in organizations where event sponsorships dominate the budget. Because event vendors push renewals while marketers are still onsite, teams get locked into next year’s spend before they’ve even reviewed this year’s performance. Add in product launches and other recurring activities, and the plan starts to look more like a calendar of obligations than a strategic roadmap.

Then comes the second wave of stress: the CFO’s deadline. Sales and marketing are both given a date to submit their budget proposals, often with little time — and even less collaboration between them. The result? Parallel plans that may not align and a marketing budget that reflects prior commitments and half-done planning instead of a strategically aligned plan that’s coordinated with your vision and with the sales and product teams.

I remember my first exposure to marketing planning and the CFO’s budget deadline. I was working for a major computer manufacturer, and my boss pulled me in to prepare a response to the CFO’s call for budget. We looked at all events, partner activities, and product launches in the current year, reorganized it a bit to account for next year’s calendar, added 10% negotiation padding, and wrote up our proposal.

We managed to get away with doing it this way, but it got me thinking that there must be a better way.

Planning Season Doesn’t Have To Be A Futile Fire Drill

The key to reducing anxiety isn’t just better tools — it starts with a better mindset. Planning should be a strategic exercise, not a reactive one. That means starting earlier and having a strategy, aligning cross-functionally both within marketing and with sales and product teams, and using frameworks that connect marketing investments to business outcomes.

Three practices make a big difference:

1. Use The Marketing Plan On A Page

Forrester’s B2B marketing plan on a page (client-only access) is a simple but powerful tool for capturing business objectives and selecting marketing’s approach to address them. It prioritizes effort and guides the definition of specific performance goals. This sets the foundation for deciding what marketing is going to execute and how much to invest. (If you’re not yet a Forrester client, you can find a plan-on-a-page overview here.)

This also avoids reliving last year’s event calendar. It provides the strategic footing upon which to anchor your campaigns, programs, shared services, and other initiatives.

If you want to see how the plan on a page works in practice, Brett Kahnke and I will be walking through it in detail during a webinar later this month.

2. Use The Strategic Budget Allocation Model

The Strategic Budget Allocation Model takes a top-down approach to build marketing budgets aligned with business objectives and mapped to integrated campaigns. This model breaks the marketing budget into logical components — programs, personnel, and technology — and distinguishes between in-campaign and out-of-campaign investments. It’s designed to help marketers allocate budget based on strategic goals, not historical inertia.

By organizing the budget around what marketing is trying to achieve (rather than who owns what pieces of the budget), the model enables clearer ROI measurement, better collaboration, and faster planning cycles. It’s not just a budgeting tool — it’s a way to make marketing more intentional and adaptable.

3. Establish A Quarterly Planning Council

Instead of treating planning as a once-a-year scramble, create a rhythm. A quarterly planning council — made up of marketing, sales, and product stakeholders — can review plans, assess alignment, and make adjustments based on performance and shifting priorities.

A good planning council should include representatives from each major marketing subfunction, meet regularly with a clear agenda, and focus on strategic alignment rather than tactical updates. This council doesn’t just improve coordination; it builds trust. When marketing, sales, and product are aligned on goals and investments, it’s easier to justify budget, pivot when needed, and demonstrate impact.

Plan With Confidence

Marketing planning will always involve complexity. But it doesn’t have to involve chaos or induce anxiety. By adopting a strategic planning model and building a regular cadence for collaboration, marketers can turn planning season from a source of anxiety into a source of clarity.

If planning season has you feeling overwhelmed, now’s the time to rethink your approach. Start with strategy, build alignment, and make planning a source of confidence. Stop kicking the can down the road — and start building plans that move the business forward.

Learn more about and register for our complimentary webinar, Retool Your B2B Marketing Budgeting For 2026 Success, on Wednesday, August 27.

If you are a Forrester client, please feel free to reach out to schedule a guidance session and discuss how to apply these best practices in your organization.