Most B2B planning for the year ahead starts with a spreadsheet of channels and a number for each. Paid search, events, LinkedIn, the website, an agency retainer. The budget gets set by adjusting last year's figures up or down, and the real question goes unasked. What did this year's marketing spend actually produce in pipeline?
In conversations with growing Irish businesses this autumn, that question comes up again and again, and most find it hard to answer. They are investing in marketing, but they cannot say which of it is turning into sales conversations. That gap is the best place to start 2027 planning, because every budget decision after it depends on the answer.
Why pipeline comes before the budget
A budget is a set of bets on where growth will come from. Without pipeline data, those bets are based on habit, on what competitors seem to be doing, or on whoever argues hardest in the planning meeting. With pipeline data, the conversation changes. The team can see which activity produced qualified conversations, which produced revenue, and which produced neither.
This does not need a perfect attribution model. Most growing companies will never have one, and the tools that promise it tend to measure clicks better than buying decisions. What it needs is three numbers, gathered honestly, before anyone opens the budget spreadsheet.
Number one, qualified sales conversations and where each came from
A qualified sales conversation is a meeting or call with a buyer who fits your target profile and has a real need you can solve. Agree that definition with sales before counting anything, otherwise marketing and sales will count different things and both will be right.
Then list every qualified conversation from this year and record where it started. A referral, an inbound enquiry from the website, an event, a LinkedIn post, an outbound sequence, a partner introduction. Ask the buyer if the CRM does not know. "How did you first hear about us?" asked on the first call is still one of the most useful lines of data a company can collect.
What good looks like is a short table, source down one side, number of qualified conversations across the top. Patterns usually appear quickly. Many Irish B2B companies find that a large share of their best conversations came from referrals and direct relationships, with paid channels producing volume but fewer qualified buyers.
Number two, pipeline created from those conversations
Next, put a value against each qualified conversation that became a real opportunity. This is the pipeline created, the total value of deals that sales was actively working, grouped by where they started.
This number matters because conversation counts alone can mislead. One channel might produce ten small conversations while another produces two that are worth five times as much. Pipeline value shows where the commercially important buyers are coming from, and it gives marketing a figure the leadership team already understands.
What good looks like here is a pipeline figure per source and a sense of the ratio between marketing spend and pipeline created. That ratio, tracked over time, is a far better measure of marketing than impressions, followers or website traffic.
Number three, sales cycle length from first contact to closed deal
The third number is how long it takes a buyer to go from first contact to signed contract. Measure it from the date of that first qualified conversation to the date the deal closed, and take the average across this year's won deals.
Sales cycle length decides how far ahead marketing needs to plan. If deals take nine months to close, activity in January shapes revenue in the autumn, and a campaign started in June will not show up in this financial year. Many budgets are judged too early because nobody wrote this number down. It also shows whether marketing is helping deals move faster, which is often where the best return on marketing spend is hidden.
What to do if you cannot answer these questions
If these numbers are not easy to pull together, that is a useful finding in itself, and a good place to start. It is also very common in companies that have grown quickly on founder relationships and referrals.
Start with the simplest version. Go through this year's won and lost deals with the sales team and record where each conversation came from, what it was worth and how long it took. A spreadsheet is fine. From January, add a required source field to the CRM and ask every new prospect how they found you. Even a simple record of where each sales conversation came from will show what is working, and measuring it is how you improve it.
Avoid the temptation to fix everything at once. A new website, new ads and a CRM rebuild launched in the same quarter make it impossible to tell which one moved the number. Get the measurement in place, then sequence the investment.
How to turn the three numbers into a 2027 marketing budget
With the three numbers in hand, the budget conversation becomes much more practical.
Put more behind the sources that produced qualified pipeline, and ask what would let them produce more. Cut or test the activity that produced neither conversations nor pipeline. Set a pipeline target for 2027 that is linked to the revenue target, working back through your conversion rates and sales cycle length. Plan campaigns early enough that they can influence revenue inside the year, given how long your deals take to close. Agree a small number of measures for marketing that the leadership team will review every month, with pipeline created at the top.
It is also worth checking how buyers now research suppliers. More B2B buyers are asking AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for recommendations before they ever contact a company. If your company does not appear in those answers, some of next year's pipeline may never reach you. Including AI search visibility in the 2027 plan is now a sensible line item for most B2B companies.
Funding 2027 marketing work in Ireland
Irish companies have an advantage when planning next year's marketing. Several state schemes can part fund strategic marketing work, which can make a larger 2027 plan affordable.
Enterprise Ireland's Strategic Consultancy Assignment funds up to 50% of the cost of an external strategy consultant, to a maximum grant of €35,000, for eligible client companies. For smaller pieces of work, Enterprise Ireland's Access Advice, Small Strategic Consultancy offers up to €5,000. Companies working with their Local Enterprise Office can look at the Grow Digital Voucher, worth up to €5,000 at up to 50% of eligible costs.
Grants fund defined projects with a clear start, end and set of outputs, and most must be approved before work begins. That makes the planning window important. If funding is part of the 2027 plan, talk to your Enterprise Ireland development adviser or Local Enterprise Office early. The full list of schemes, amounts and eligibility is in the guide to marketing and sales grants in Ireland.
A few hours now saves a year of guessing
The end of the year is a busy time, but a little planning now makes a real difference to the year ahead. Even a few hours getting clear on these three numbers can help a company get far more from its 2027 budget, and gives the leadership team a shared view of what marketing is there to produce.