How to build a marketing plan leadership will love

Targets get set. Budgets get signed off. Nobody checks whether the numbers hold.

This session starts with the revenue target, reverse-engineers it against last year’s metrics, and shows where the budget needs to go and which one or two bets are worth backing. Joe and Ryan walk through Rocket SaaS’s own plan as the worked example.

Who is this for?

Founders, CMOs, and marketers heading into planning season
Anyone who has to put a marketing budget in front of a board
Teams whose plan is currently a channel list and a spend number

Issues we’re seeing:

Targets are set with no one doing the maths on whether they’re realistic.

Prior year metrics rarely make it into next year’s plan.

You know which channel worked – not what it would take to make it ten times better.

What you’ll learn:

Start from the revenue target, not the channel list

What the business needs next year, what you spent and delivered last year, and what those two together say about what’s realistic for the year ahead.
Build the funnel maths that sets your budget

Work back from the revenue target through win rate, deal size, pipeline and lead volume to the spend it implies, using your own history where you have it and benchmarks where you don’t.
Set your channel and funnel mix

How to split the number across channels and funnel stages so the plan holds up when one underperforms.
Pick your big bets and turn them into a plan

Most plans have a single assumption doing the heavy lifting – a conversion rate that has to improve, or a channel that has to double. Find yours, price out what it takes to move it, and know the budget and headcount it costs.