Divide Planning Duties
Marketing budget planning is not only the CMO responsibility. Assign responsibilities and deadlines to your marketing team members.
Marketing budgets require input from multiple team members. Channel owners know their numbers best - their conversion, CPA projections and cost estimations will be always more accurate than yours.
Get rid of multiple planning spreadsheets
The biggest problem faced by CMOs: running budget planning through multiple spreadsheets. One for headcount costs, another shared with finance, and separate one shared with your marketing team. That makes consolidation a nightmare.
Solution: Use a Single Budgeting Tool
Use a single budgeting tool like Etropo that supports collaboration and category access control. Your team members input their numbers directly, with restricted access to sensitive data like headcount costs. Each line item should have the owner and you might have even owners for the whole category (like PPC), where all line items will be automatically assigned.