Yesterday I wrote a post on how to argue a case for your marketing budget.

But what if you’re not sure you’ve got a strong case to start with? Here’s a checklist to make sure you’ve thought through all the angles before you go in for the meeting with the CFO. (If you didn’t get it yesterday, here’s a download summarising other useful stats and links to online B2B marketing budget resources. Marketing Investment – Resources Sheet)

1. Have you started with a clean sheet of paper? Have you questioned old or inherited assumptions? Don’t use last year’s budget as a starting point, it will often lead you to make the same mistakes.
2. Have you budgeted on the basis of what you are paying now? Can you get things cheaper through better buying practices? Manage costs through prudent buying, investigate alternatives for spend rather than assuming it will cost the same this year as it did last year.
3. Have you looked hard enough at the people and skills side? Do you have what you need, or are you living with what you have? Have you considered outsourcing rather than increasing headcount or replacing leavers?
4. Have you budgeted programmes rather than lines? Line-based thinking can lead you from where the real issues are with marketing programmes. Sometimes changing creative or changing tactic masks a fundamental problem with the marketing strategy itself. You can also make a much more effective business case for a programme than a single line.
5. Have you cut out costs by standardising production? Adopt marketing agency type-approaches to numbers of authors’ amends you will allow internally. Impose SLAs on yourself and your team to uphold and improve the services you provide to the business.
6. Have you looked at where you can adopt new purchasing and manufacturing techniques within your job or team? Consider a “just in time” approach to content generation for example. Review your processes and look to minimise waste wherever possible?
7. Ask yourself a lot of tough questions – do you absolutely have to do things? Have you challenged received wisdom that certain activities work – are you sure they don’t just make people feel good? Do you have measures from previous years that can back you up?
8. Have you focused your spend on improving what really matters to the business? (Leads generated, a better conversion rate, customer loyalty increase?, larger average £ sale per customer, increased profitability per customer?)
9. Have you projected the revenue stream from your activity forward rather than looking back? Different activity, in a different market or at a different time will give different results. Look forward over the coming year with your assumptions, don’t base this year’s marketing on last year’s revenues.
10. If you have multiple products or services, have you budgeted differently for them depending upon the corporate objectives, aspirations and markets for each?
11. Are you being asked to do too much with too little? Avoid the “marketing always wants more budget” accusation. Be clear and realistic – don’t be pressured into agreeing to achieve myriad objectives with insufficient resources. You will fail to achieve your objectives and undermine the reputation of marketing.
12. Are there other areas of the business that will impact your success? Should you make a case for the marketing spend in these areas too? (Customer care, sales and bid support, internal communications.)
13. Have you pre-identified points throughout the year when you are willing to sit back down the CFO and review your progress and the returns you are generating?