Marketing Budget Governance
Marketing Budget Governance is the set of rules, approvals, and audits that control how marketing money is deployed. It moves marketing from 'Gut Feel' spend to 'Capital Allocation' discipline, ensuring that every dollar has a clear hypothesis and measurement plan.
The Short Version
The rules of the road for spending money.
The 'Use It or Lose It' Waste
It's end of quarter. You have $50k left in the budget. You dump it into broadly targeted ads to 'hit the spend goal'.
This destroys efficiency. Governance prevents reckless dumping by enforcing increments based on performance, not calendars.
How it works
Establish 'hurdle rates' (Minimum ROI to unlock budget)
Implement 'pacesetters' (Rules for scaling speed)
Regular 'Portfolio Reviews' (Kill losers, feed winners)
Common Misconceptions
Giving agencies specific spend targets instead of efficiency targets
Allowing 'experimentation' without defined success metrics
Ignoring ad account change logs (Who changed that bid?)
Frequently Asked Questions
QDoes governance kill creativity?
No. It protects it. By proving the efficiency of core spend, you earn the right (and the budget) to take creative moonshots safely.