(Note: This is Part 3 of our 6-part series on marketing planning. Part 1, “Making the Case for Higher Spend“,  can be found here. Part 2, “Selecting Metrics“, can be found here.  Check back here every Wednesday in August and September for a new installment!)

Early results from the Council’s ongoing marketing budget and spend survey suggest that Marketers are (understandably) cautious as they look ahead to 2011.  With the cooldown in businesses re-stocking their inventories and consumers continuing to keep pursestrings drawn tight, budgets appear to be flat to marginally up.

• Anticipated 2011 marketing budget as a percentage of revenue appears to be running about 2-3% lower than in 2010
• With 2011 revenue growth for the S&P 500 forecast to be in the 3-6% range, that amounts to an absolute budget increase of 1-3% for your average large enterprise.
• Marketing leaders are holding onto as much of their working budget as possible, hoping to fund that by capturing greater productivity from fewer marketing staff.  The early numbers suggest marketers are shifting the people/program split by 1-2 percentage points in favor of marketing programs (i.e., 32%/68% split to 30%/70% split)

Looking for a quick benchmarking pulse check to inform your marketing planning?

Take the marketing spend “Cosmo quiz”:  it’s short and sweet—will take you less than 3 minutes—and you get some immediate benchmarking feedback at the conclusion of the survey on your marketing program vs. people spend for 2010 and 2011.

We’ll even recommend your ideal marketing mix based on your astrological sign!

(I’m kidding.  That approach, of course, would be foolhardy…unless you know you are a Taurus with a bad moon rising, in which case it would make perfect sense for you.)

As we gather responses from enough organizations to create benchmarking sets at the industry or category level, we’ll provide the data back to members from those industries who took this short survey.

MLC Members, with planning season in full swing, be sure to check out our upgraded marketing planning solution.  MarkPlan™ 2010 is a software suite that leads you through a series of well defined steps and proven templates for building strategic marketing plans that fit your organization.  Think of it as a TurboTax wizard that will help you generate your marketing plan.  Learn More.