Marketing plans are being built against a less forgiving business outlook, making the distance between January's commitments and year-end's results increasingly expensive.
Over 50% of marketing leaders are less optimistic about the U.S. economy than they were the previous quarter, according to the Spring 2026 CMO Survey.
At the same time, 35.6% have raised prices in response to tariff pressures, while 43.7% are putting greater emphasis on retaining existing customers.
So what happens when a marketing plan is built for the business leaders hope to have rather than the business they do have?
Adam Heitzman, Managing Partner at five-time SEO Agency of the Year, HigherVisibility, says those trade-offs need to be clear before initiatives are added to the plan.
“Every initiative takes something from somewhere else. It might be engineering time, content capacity or attention from another priority. Those trade-offs should be clear before anyone commits to the work.”
How Should Marketing Teams Prioritize Their Plans?
The first planning mistake is often made before a single initiative gets assigned a quarter.
Teams begin with what they want to accomplish, then work backward toward resources, dependencies and expected results. Heitzman takes the opposite route.
“A useful plan starts with the facts on the ground, not the version of the business that looks best in a planning deck,” he says.
“You need to know what is working, what is stalled and where the real constraints are before deciding what deserves a place on the roadmap.”
He recommends starting with an honest picture of where the business stands before deciding where an SEO and content strategy should go.
That means reviewing what’s already working, where opportunities are being missed and what the organization can realistically support, then using business-relevant metrics to decide where resources belong.
The constraint is already visible in how much money marketing teams have to work with.
In fact, 56% of CMOs say their marketing organization doesn't have the budget required to deliver its 2026 strategy, according to Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey.
Marketing budgets are also averaging 7.8% of company revenue, only slightly above 7.7% in 2025, according to Gartner.
That leaves little room for a roadmap built on assumed capacity.
Before an initiative goes onto the roadmap, test whether the organization can actually deliver it.
- Is engineering available?
- Does the content team have the capacity?
- What business result is the work expected to support?
If those questions don't have clear answers, the initiative isn't ready for the plan.
The next problem is measurement.
Marketing plans can become crowded with rankings, impressions, traffic targets and publishing schedules while the finance team is looking for a much simpler answer: what does this activity contribute to the business?
Notably, 48% of CMOs rank greater involvement in business strategy decisions among their top three priorities, while 45% put demonstrating marketing ROI in their top three, according to PwC.
HigherVisibility recommends looking at SEO through outcomes such as conversion rates, revenue from organic traffic and returns on marketing investment, rather than traffic and rankings alone.
SEO returns can take several months to develop, so judging performance too early may not show the full results of the work.
That doesn't mean every marketing initiative can be reduced to one number, but it does mean the planning process should distinguish between metrics that describe activity and metrics that help explain business performance.
“Traffic can tell you whether people are arriving, but it can't answer the whole business question,” Heitzman says.
“The useful conversation starts when marketing can explain what that traffic is doing once it gets there and how that connects to commercial priorities.”
A greater focus on retention changes which marketing work gets priority in the first place.
In fact, nearly 44% of marketing leaders are increasing their focus on loyalty and retention among existing customers, according to the Spring 2026 CMO Survey.
Retention also gives planning teams another reason to resist a calendar packed exclusively with acquisition initiatives.
The goal is to decide which work supports the business's current priorities, then give those initiatives enough room to happen.
What Brands and Agencies Can Take Into Their Next Plan
HigherVisibility’s approach puts the marketing plan at the end of the planning process, after the business baseline, goals, resources and dependencies have been worked through.
Start by documenting the current state in enough detail to make trade-offs possible.
HigherVisibility recommends using performance data to establish a baseline, identify gaps and prioritize areas with a realistic connection to business goals.
That means understanding the starting point before setting targets, rather than deciding where the business should be before establishing where it stands.
Agencies can apply the same discipline when planning with clients, using that baseline to determine which deliverables are realistic before committing.
Then give each initiative a reason to exist.
HigherVisibility also recommends setting priorities around business goals, search intent and the customer journey, then tracking whether that work leads to conversions and commercial results.
Finally, leave room for the business to change without pretending the original roadmap was flawless.
About 53.1% of company executives prioritize cutting expenses when year-to-date profits come in below expectations, compared with 26.8% who prioritize growing revenues, according to the Spring 2026 CMO Survey.
When that happens, marketing can't assume the January plan will receive the same support in September.
“The strongest roadmap is the one where everyone knows what gets done first, what depends on something else, and what can wait when the business changes,” Heitzman adds.
Ask two questions before finalizing the plan.
“What should marketing do this year?” And “What can this organization realistically deliver, and what business result is each priority expected to support?”
That same discipline creates a clearer basis for deciding what belongs on the roadmap in the first place.
