Next year’s budget rarely gets approved on time. Some companies haven’t started their 2027 budgets yet. Others are almost done. Either way, there’s a good chance the final stretch will be a scramble. And for some marketing teams, approval won’t come until 2027, when that budget is already supposed to be put to work. That doesn’t mean planning has to wait. In fact, waiting for a final number is one of the easiest ways to lose the first few weeks of the year.

Too often, the planning process starts with this year’s budget, plus or minus a certain percentage. Then every line gets rolled forward because it was there last year. Tools renew on autopilot. Retainers continue because switching is a hassle. Events stay on the calendar. Campaigns get repeated because they’re familiar. By the time the budget is approved, you have a marketing plan that looks surprisingly similar to last year’s.

There’s a better way to approach it.

Before worrying about every individual line item, build the framework for the year. Start with what you already know, and build from there. That’s how you’ll get next year’s marketing budget approved before the end of the year and be ready to start 2027 with some momentum.

1. Start with what you already know

You may not know exactly how much you’ll have to spend in 2027, but you probably know many of the things marketing will need to support. Product launches. Releases. Company announcements. Rebrands. Major initiatives. Put those on the calendar first.

These are the moments that should shape your marketing plan because they’re tied to what the business is actually trying to accomplish. They also help you work backward. What needs to happen before a launch? What content will support it? What campaigns, sales enablement or demand generation need to surround it?

Suddenly, you’re not starting with a blank calendar or last year’s spreadsheet. You’re starting with business priorities.

2. Lock your events now

Next, identify the events that will serve as your tent poles for the year. For example, maybe that looks like two major industry shows, four regional client events and 12 webinars that support those larger moments. Then add the smaller opportunities around them: coffees, happy hours, breakfasts, seminars or partner events.

There’s a practical budget reason to do this early, too. Waiting until every dollar is approved can limit your options. When you already know an event matters, planning for it now gives you a much clearer picture of what needs to be reserved in the budget. More importantly, putting events on the calendar creates structure for everything that comes next.

3. Build the marketing around each event

An event shouldn’t be one line in the budget and one week on the marketing calendar. Think about the full lifecycle.

Before: How are you building awareness, promoting your presence and booking meetings?

During: What can you capture? Customer conversations, video, interviews, demos, insights or other material?

After: How will you extend the value through follow-up campaigns, sales outreach, social content, videos, blogs or webinars?

One event can create weeks, or even months, of marketing activity when you plan around it rather than treating it as an isolated tactic. And that means the budget shouldn’t simply answer, “How much does it cost to attend?” It should answer, “What are we going to do with this investment?”

4. Set the themes you’ll talk about all year

Once you know the big moments, decide what your company needs to talk about throughout the year. Your themes should connect the dots between business priorities, events, campaigns and content.

If one of your major events centers on a challenge your customers are facing, for example, the conversation shouldn’t begin two weeks before the event. That theme can show up earlier through LinkedIn content, blogs, webinars, email campaigns or sales outreach, build toward the event, and continue afterward.

That gives marketing a connected story rather than a calendar filled with unrelated activities. It also helps eliminate those random acts of marketing that creep in during the year.

When someone suggests a new campaign, webinar or piece of content, there’s a simple question to ask: Does this support one of the priorities we already agreed matters?

If not, it may not need to make the list.

5. Then pick the promotions and the tools

Only now would I start getting serious about individual channels, promotions and tools. Not the other way around.
It’s easy to begin planning with tactics: We need paid media. We need another webinar. We need this platform. We did this sponsorship last year. But the tactic should support the plan. The plan shouldn’t exist to justify the tactic. This is also the point where I’d put every current budget line on one page: the tool, the agency, the channel, the event. Next to each one, write down what it produced this year.

What contributed to pipeline? What led to conversations? What helped move opportunities forward? What are you continuing to pay for simply because you paid for it last year?

Some lines will be easy to fill in. Others won’t. Pay attention to the blanks. Those are potential places to redirect investment toward the priorities you just identified. A few hours with a spreadsheet now can be much more valuable than spending another year wondering why certain marketing investments never showed up in pipeline.

If you wait for the final budget before you start planning, you’ve already lost valuable time.

You can know the business priorities.

You can lock the major events.

You can plan the marketing around them.

You can establish your themes.

And you can figure out which promotions, tools and investments actually deserve a place in the budget.

The final number may not be approved yet. The plan behind that number can be. And when the budget does get the green light, your team can spend less time figuring out what to do and more time actually doing it.

Get help putting together your marketing plan for next year.