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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.marcenta.ai/llms.txt

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Planning lets you define what success looks like for your marketing program and then track how your actual results compare to those expectations over time. You set targets by metric, channel, region, and time period. Marcenta then surfaces the gap between plan and actuals across your dashboards, KPI tiles, and reports automatically once a plan is active. Select Planning in the left sidebar. The page lists all plan versions your organization has created, along with their status: active, draft, or archived.

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How plans work

A plan is a versioned set of targets. Only one plan version can be active at a time. When you activate a plan, all previous versions are archived. The active plan’s targets feed directly into:
  • KPI tiles on dashboards — each tile shows the planned target and whether you’re on pace to hit it
  • Planning summary — a real-time comparison of actuals vs. targets by metric, channel, and period

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Create a plan

1

Start setup

Select New Plan or navigate to Planning → Setup to open the plan setup wizard.
2

Name your plan and set revenue goals

Enter a plan name (e.g., “FY 2026 Marketing Plan”) and your top-level revenue goal, pipeline coverage ratio, average ARR, and sales cycle length in months. These inputs drive the lead and opportunity forecasts by channel.
3

Select your channels

Choose the marketing channels included in this plan (e.g., paid search, organic, email, LinkedIn). You can add conversion rate assumptions—lead-to-opportunity rate and visit-to-lead rate—for each channel.
4

Set budget by channel

Enter the planned budget for each channel. Marcenta uses these values to build out a monthly execution plan that distributes leads and budget evenly across the plan period.
5

Save and activate

Save the plan as a draft to review the targets before committing, then activate it when ready. Activating the plan archives all other versions and starts surfacing plan vs. actual comparisons across Marcenta.

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Set and edit targets

After creating a plan, you can view and edit individual targets on the plan detail page. Targets are organized by:
  • Metric — the KPI being targeted (e.g., impressions, clicks, conversions, spend, users)
  • Channel — the marketing channel the target applies to (or all channels)
  • Region — an optional geographic dimension
  • Period — the time window covered by each target (monthly by default)
Select any target row to edit the target value or add notes.

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Track actuals vs. targets

The Planning summary view compares your actual performance data (pulled from your connected sources) against the targets in your active plan. For each metric-channel-period combination, you see:
  • Target value — what you planned to achieve
  • Actual value — what Marcenta has measured from your connected data sources
  • Coverage — the ratio of actuals to target (e.g., 0.82 means you’ve achieved 82% of the target)
Actuals are drawn from the same connected data sources used by Queries and Reports. If a source is disconnected, actuals for that source will not appear in the planning summary.

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Plan assumptions

Each plan can include a set of assumptions—documented conversion rates, budget allocations, and other inputs that informed the plan targets. Assumptions are saved per channel and can include:
  • Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate
  • Visit-to-lead conversion rate
  • Budget allocation
You can view, edit, and add assumptions from the plan detail page. Assumptions do not affect actuals; they are for reference and audit purposes.

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Duplicate a plan

To create a new plan based on an existing one, open the plan and select Duplicate. Marcenta copies the plan’s assumptions and targets into a new draft version, which you can then modify before activating.

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KPI tiles and plan pacing

When a plan is active, KPI tiles on dashboards show whether each metric is ahead, on track, or behind relative to the plan target for the selected date range. Marcenta calculates how much of the plan period has elapsed and projects an expected value at that point in time. If your actual value is significantly below the expected pacing, the KPI tile health indicator turns to warning or critical.
KPI pacing is most accurate when your plan targets are set at the same granularity as your dashboard date range. Monthly targets compared against a full-month date range give the clearest signal.