Clarify Company Expectations
Understand your company's growth ambition, risk appetite, and your personal budget autonomy levels. How to discuss thee marketing budget with CEO.
Before you start planning, understand what is expected from you. This includes both your company's appetite for growth and risk, and your level of freedom in budget decisions. Have an early conversation with your CEO or direct manager to understand these boundaries clearly.
Know your company's growth & risk approach
Companies typically align with one of these approaches - identify yours through these signals:
- Exploratory Approach: Companies need to learn things, experiment, and want to invest in many bets, less risk-averse, but also more hungry for growth. (e.g. YoY growth at 50%, budgets growth at 100%)
- Balanced Approach: The company is well-established and adopts a cautious yet strategic stance. It focuses on moderate risks while safeguarding stability. Company well established, more risk-averse. (e.g. YoY growth at 25%, budgets growth at 30%)
- Conservative Approach: The company avoids risk, planning only initiatives that guarantee linear returns at a defined cost-to-revenue ratio (e.g. YoY growth at 10%, budget growth at <10%)
Starting questions for your CEO:
- Do we have set revenue targets and budgets, or should I propose them? If set, can I suggest adjustments?
- How do you define success for new marketing initiatives? (Example: If we tried five new initiatives and one succeeded dramatically, would that be a success?)
- Are targets seen as minimum requirements (must hit 100%) or ambitious goals (80% is good)?
- What's an acceptable payback period for customer acquisition?
- Once budgets are approved, how much flexibility do I have in moving dollars around?
Know your budgeting freedom
Before planning, clarify your role: are you the strategy owner or just executing the CEO's vision? Avoid wasting hours on plans that won't align with what's expected. Knowing how much autonomy you really have, helps focus your efforts where they matter most.
Your autonomy in budget planning varies between four levels:
- Full Autonomy: You are expected to propose the budget plan and expected outcomes
- Guided Autonomy: You work within set ranges (e.g., marketing budget must be 15-20% of revenue)
- Allocation Only: Fixed budget, you decide how to split it
- Strict Control: Fixed budget and targets, you execute CEO's vision with minimal adjustments