Dossier: Successful marketing budgets and plans

Summer is slowly changing into autumn, the annual cue for the opening of the "budget season." Time to fire up the roulette wheel; redistribute marketing investments on gut feel, driven by the resources provided by management. Or are you doing it differently this year?

In the ever-changing world of marketing, it can be challenging for CMOs to determine the correct marketing budget. The economic landscape and technological advances in the marketing industry calls for a new approach to budgeting. In this article, Glenn Weuts - Head of Marketing Technology at iO, shares seven marketing budget insights, with recommendations for how to determine your budget for 2025.

Companies are unaware of the enormous the cost of bad customer experiences. Out-of-pocket costs such as customer service are being pushed up, at a time when it’s becoming more difficult and expensive to find new customers.And this is happening while the brand credibility is declining and there is erosion in terms of new business development. In the video below, Steven Van Belleghem calls for more investment in customer focus, as a driver for a successful 2025.

Les données jouent depuis longtemps un rôle crucial pour mesurer l’efficacité des stratégies marketing et commerciales, ou pour identifier leurs échecs. Pourtant, dans de nombreuses réunions, les discussions sur les raisons de ces échecs et sur les changements à opérer se font encore sur la base d’intuitions. En éliminant l’émotion des prises de décision, marketing et ventes gagnent en efficacité. Autrefois, les stratégies étaient fondées sur des résultats passés. Aujourd’hui, nous avons atteint un niveau élevé de prédictibilité. Le marketing digital n’a jamais été aussi proche de la certitude.

In our work with clients we see that there’s an increasing focus on effective, goal-oriented marketing communications. Data dashboards that show ‘more conversions’ and ‘more sales’ at a glance are preferred when reporting to the boardroom. But this carries a risk too. It might be a good time for brand managers to ask themselves: are the most obvious tactics also the most impactful ones?

Digital marketing offers enormous opportunities in the field of data-driven working. We often fail to take advantage of these opportunities. That's means you miss out on a lot of opportunities to maximise the impact of your budget.

At iO, we get to support a lot of national and international organisations in the area of digital marketing. One of the tools we use to allocate marketing budgets as efficiently as possible is Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM). While this may sound new and unfamiliar to the ears, it's a technique that has been used as early as the 1980s and 1990s to clarify the impact of marketing spending on sales. But what exactly does MMM entail and why is it so essential when planning marketing budgets for 2025?

Établir les budgets de marketing pour l’année à venir : voilà qui donne des maux de tête à beaucoup de spécialistes. Allez-vous reprendre les budgets des années précédentes, même si la technologie évolue à une vitesse fulgurante et que le marketing pourrait être complètement différent demain ? Ou suivrez-vous votre intuition quitte à prendre des risques ? Heureusement, il y a la modélisation des données, qui vous permet d’élaborer un budget étayé et correct, couvrant vos coûts annuels sans aucun problème. 

By using dashboards efficiently and automating your data analysis, better results are within your reach.