Creating and Executing the Marketing Plan and Budget
Anatomy of a plan
A defensible marketing plan links situation analysis → objectives → strategies → tactics → budget → measurement → controls. Objectives must be specific, measurable, and time-bound, and tied to a business outcome (revenue, share, margin, retention) rather than an activity ("run 12 webinars"). The exam frequently swaps an activity for an objective; reject activity statements.
Budgeting methods
Know the common approaches: percentage-of-sales, competitive parity, objective-and-task, and affordability. Objective-and-task is generally the most defensible because it builds spend from required activities to hit a defined goal. Traps: questions that imply percentage-of-sales is "best practice" (it is simple but circular - it sets spend by past revenue, not by opportunity), and questions that confuse the budget method with the allocation across mix.
Execution and control
Execution depends on a clear calendar, owners, dependencies, and a measurement framework with leading and lagging indicators. Build in contingency: a plan without a trigger for underperformance is incomplete. Watch for questions about budget reallocation mid-flight - the right answer usually ties reallocation to measured performance against objectives, not to gut feel or to equalizing spend.
Rule of thumb
For any plan question ask: does the option connect spend to a measurable objective with an owner and a timeframe? If it only describes an activity or a percentage, it is likely a distractor.
Worked example
Goal: grow qualified pipeline 20%. Objective-and-task budget: estimate cost per qualified lead (say $400) × 500 incremental leads = $200,000, then allocate by channel based on historical conversion. That is defensible; "spend 5% of last year's revenue" is not.