10 Marketing Planning Considerations Every CMO Should Address

Effective CMO marketing planning requires more than an internal review of last year’s performance.

If you don’t spend time reflecting on what’s happening outside the four walls of your company, you risk missing key threats and opportunities that could make a dramatic impact on your annual marketing plan.

Starting with a broad external scan is one of the most valuable steps in marketing plan best practices.

In this blog post, you’ll learn about the top 10 considerations every CMO should build into their marketing planning process.

1. Uncertainty is the only constant

If there is only one point you take away from this list, make it this one. Business conditions can shift quickly and without warning, and the most prepared CMOs are the ones who build that reality into their annual marketing planning from the start.

When building agility into your marketing plan, keep these principles in mind:

• Agility is not the same as thrash. Reacting to every change without a strategic anchor will derail your plan faster than the disruption itself.
• Maintain a clear strategic heading. Adjust tactics as needed, but keep your core objectives stable.
• Scenario planning is your friend. Build contingency options into your plan so you are never starting from zero when conditions change.

2. The digital shift is permanent

The last few years served as a crash course in digital marketing strategy, and the shift toward digital is permanent and accelerating. Traditional tactics like physical events, direct mail, and OOH are regaining their footing, but digital belongs at the center of your marketing plan.

What this means for your CMO marketing planning process:

• Expect more competition for digital media. More marketers are investing in digital, which drives up costs and reduces organic reach.
• Cost-per-outcome benchmarks are shifting. Build in room to test and optimize rather than relying on historical numbers.
• Innovation is required to stand out. Budget for experimentation in your digital marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

3. Virtual and hybrid events belong in your long-term strategy

Virtual and hybrid events are strategic assets, and every CMO should be building these capabilities into their marketing plan for the long term.

Here is why virtual and hybrid belong in your annual marketing planning:

• They expand your audience. People who cannot attend in person due to cost, travel, or scheduling constraints can become reachable.
• They improve marketing ROI on events. Lower overhead and broader reach make virtual and hybrid events more cost-effective than traditional formats.
• The technology is mature. Virtual event platforms are now a legitimate part of the marketing tech stack. Evaluate and invest accordingly.

4. Third-party cookie limitations are reshaping digital marketing strategy

Changes to third-party cookie tracking, driven by updates to iOS and Chrome, have created real and lasting challenges for digital marketing strategy. These include:

• Limitations on third-party data for profile building. Audience targeting based on external data sources is less reliable than it used to be.
• Reduced retargeting effectiveness. Strategies designed to bring anonymous visitors back to your site have become harder to execute at scale.

Building a strong, privacy-safe first-party data strategy is the path forward. That means:

• Creating compelling reasons for prospects and customers to engage with your brand directly
• Investing in content and community-building that drives repeat visits through owned channels
• Treating your owned channels, including email, website, and community, as your most valuable data assets

5. Workforce turnover is a marketing budget planning issue

Marketing leaders should plan for continued elevated voluntary turnover rates. The cost shows up in recruiting, lost institutional knowledge, and disrupted execution. Addressing turnover is a core part of responsible marketing budget planning.

To protect your marketing plan from turnover risk:

• Budget for competitive compensation. Higher salaries and expanded benefits are now table stakes for retaining top marketing talent.
• Document core processes. If a key team member left tomorrow, your team should be able to keep moving without missing a beat.
• Reduce over-reliance on individuals. Build systems and workflows that are not dependent on any single person’s knowledge or relationships.

6. Virtual workforces are changing how CMOs reach audiences

The shift to distributed work has changed how your team operates and how you reach your audience. Prospects are harder to target geographically, and traditional location-based tactics are losing effectiveness. Updating your digital marketing strategy to reflect this reality is essential.

Practical implications for your marketing plan:

• Geography-based event strategies need to evolve. Organizing seminars in headquarters cities is no longer a reliable way to drive attendance or pipeline.
• Webinar timing requires more thought. With prospects spread across time zones, a single prime time no longer applies.
• Direct mail requires a new approach. When prospects are working remotely, traditional mailing lists fall short. Platforms like Sendoso and Alyce allow prospects to receive physical mailings without sharing a home address, making them worth exploring if direct mail is part of your mix.

7. Supply chain uncertainty affects marketing execution

Marketers depend on the supply chain for promotional materials, event production, branded swag, and technology hardware. Supply chain disruptions create real risk for marketing execution, and building lead time into your annual marketing planning is the best defense.

To protect your marketing plan from supply chain risk:

• Build in longer lead times. Do not assume you can order what you need close to a campaign deadline.
• Identify backup vendors. Single-source dependencies create unnecessary risk in an unpredictable supply environment.
• Plan physical campaign elements earlier. If your plan involves anything tangible, start procurement well ahead of schedule.

8. Inflation makes early action a marketing budget planning priority

Rising costs for products, services, and talent are putting pressure on marketing budgets across the board. Taking proactive steps as part of your marketing budget planning will give your annual plan more stability.

• Secure supplier contracts early. Locking in pricing before costs rise gives you more budget predictability throughout the year.
• Revisit your budget assumptions. Costs you benchmarked even a year ago may already be outdated. Validate before you finalize your plan.
• Prioritize high-ROI activities. When budgets are under pressure, doubling down on what demonstrably works is more important than ever.

9. Financial accountability is now a core CMO marketing planning requirement

CMOs are under growing pressure to demonstrate the business impact of marketing in the language of the business. Your marketing planning process should reflect that expectation from the start.
What financial accountability looks like in practice:

• Connect marketing activity to revenue outcomes. Pipeline influence, customer acquisition cost, and lifetime value should be part of your reporting vocabulary.
• Have a clear marketing ROI framework. Know how you are measuring return before you spend, not after.
• Show up to leadership conversations with data. Numbers and business outcomes carry weight in CFO-level discussions.

10. Marketing performance management is the future of CMO planning

The annual marketing planning process itself is being transformed by technology. CMOs who embrace marketing performance management will be better positioned to plan, optimize, and report with speed and precision.

What a modern marketing planning process looks like:

• Automated planning workflows that reduce time spent on manual updates and version control
• Real-time performance reporting that connects marketing activity to business outcomes as they happen
• Optimization tools that help you reallocate budget and resources based on what is actually working

Why marketing performance management matters for agile marketing

Marketing performance management platforms like Planful are designed to support agile, data-driven CMO marketing planning. As expectations for marketing ROI and financial accountability continue to grow, having the right systems in place is the foundation for an effective annual marketing plan.

Marketing leaders should also expect to see increased systemization and digitization of the marketing leadership process.  Given the requirement for agile marketing, combined with the need to optimize plans to deliver on key business objectives, marketing leaders should plan to deploy marketing performance management platforms like Planful that automate marketing planning, optimization, and performance reporting.