Growth Strategy By Soluna Foundry · Published Sep 10, 2026 · 6 min read

How to Plan Next Year's Marketing Strategy: Start With Four Numbers

A practical breakdown of the four numbers - CAC, conversion rate, LTV, and ROAS - you need to pull before you write a single line of next year's marketing plan.

Key takeaways

"Grow 30% next year" is a meaningless target because it never says where the extra revenue comes from - the real number should be calculated backward from this year's CAC, conversion rate, LTV, and ROAS.
Channel-by-channel CAC matters ten times more than your annual blended average, because the average quietly hides the one channel that's bleeding money while everyone assumes things are fine.
LTV and repeat rate set the ceiling on what CAC you can actually afford - skip that math and next year's budget is just a guess wrapped in a spreadsheet.
When vetting an outside growth consultant, the test is simple: do they ask for your real backend data before proposing numbers - if they don't, they've probably never actually operated a business.

It's usually a Tuesday in November. Someone in leadership says "let's grow 30% next year," the room nods, and a media plan gets built around that number without anyone asking where the extra revenue is supposed to come from. That's the moment most annual plans actually break - not in December when the plan launches, but in November when nobody challenged the number in the room.

"Grow 30%" Is a Wish, Not a Target

30% growth can come from more traffic, higher conversion, higher prices, longer retention, or some combination of all four - and each of those paths needs a completely different budget, team, and timeline. Saying "grow 30%" without naming the lever is like saying "get healthier" without saying whether that means diet, sleep, or training. It sounds like a plan. It isn't one yet.

A revenue target with no number behind it is just a hope wearing a business suit.

The Four Numbers To Pull Before You Plan Anything

Before anyone opens a spreadsheet for next year, spend two days pulling this year's real numbers off every platform you actually use - ad accounts, CRM, GA4, POS if you have physical locations. This is the actual first step in how to plan next year's marketing strategy, not the brainstorm session and not the moodboard. Most teams skip straight to tactics because the data-pulling part is boring. It's also the part that decides whether the plan survives Q2.

CAC by channel, not blended CAC - what it actually costs to acquire one customer from Meta, from Google, from a KOL campaign, and from organic/referral, calculated separately
Conversion rate at each funnel stage - click to lead, lead to sale, sale to repeat - so you know exactly where the money is leaking, not just that it's leaking somewhere
LTV and repeat rate - what a customer is worth over 6-12 months, and what share of this year's revenue came from repeat buyers versus first-timers
ROAS by channel on a rolling 90-day basis, not a lifetime average that quietly hides a channel that stopped working three months ago

The blended average is where most plans go wrong. Your overall CAC across every channel this year might look like a healthy RM 45 - while one channel is quietly running RM 180 and another is running RM 12. The average erases the exact information you need to make a decision, which is precisely why it feels comfortable to look at.

LTV is what sets the ceiling on all of this. If your 12-month LTV is RM 500 and your repeat rate is 40%, you can afford a CAC that most competitors can't, because you're not buying a single transaction - you're buying a relationship that pays out multiple times. Skip this math and every acquisition budget you set next year is a guess dressed up as a plan.

Once You Have The Numbers, Build The Checklist

Set the growth target per channel, not company-wide - a 30% company target might actually mean 10% from paid, 15% from referral, and 5% from a price increase
Set a CAC ceiling per channel based on LTV, and pause or kill anything structurally above it, instead of giving it "one more month" indefinitely
Give more budget to the channel that's under its CAC ceiling with room to scale - not to the channel that had one good week in Q3
Build in a quarterly checkpoint to re-pull these four numbers, because CAC and conversion rates shift with ad platform changes and competitor spend - a plan written in November and never revisited by March is already stale by Q2

That checklist is basically how to plan next year's marketing strategy without guessing - and it's also how you'd know if an outside consultant knows what they're doing. If you bring someone in to help build this, there's one question that tells you everything: do they ask for access to your real ad accounts, CRM, and analytics before handing you a plan, or do they hand you a plan first and ask for data later? Anyone confident enough to propose numbers without seeing yours hasn't actually run a business - they've written a template.

We built this four-number habit out of necessity, not theory. We had to plan real budgets for itsherbs.com, the healthcare group we operate with 30,000+ patients and 10 branches, long before this became something we did for other brands. There was no room in that plan for a 30% growth wish - there was only a sheet with CAC by channel and a repeat-visit rate we tracked every single week. The teams that get next year's plan right don't have better creative. They have four numbers on one page before anyone touches a calendar, and everyone in the room already knows which lever the growth is supposed to come from.

Frequently asked questions

How do I set a realistic marketing growth target for next year?

Start backward, not forward. Pull this year's CAC by channel, conversion rate by funnel stage, LTV and repeat rate, and ROAS on a rolling 90-day basis, then calculate how much growth each channel can realistically absorb before its CAC exceeds what your LTV can support. A target like "grow 30%" only becomes real once you can say which channel, at what CAC ceiling, actually produces that number.

What's a good customer acquisition cost (CAC)?

There's no universal "good" CAC - it only means something relative to your LTV. A commonly cited rule of thumb is that LTV should be at least three times CAC for the acquisition to be sustainable, but your real benchmark is your own repeat rate and margin, not an industry average that ignores how your specific business actually makes money.

How much does it cost to hire a growth marketing consultant, and how do I choose one?

Pricing varies widely, from a few thousand ringgit for a short audit to a monthly retainer for ongoing strategy work, so fee alone isn't a useful filter. The better test: does the consultant ask to see your real ad accounts, CRM, and analytics before proposing numbers? If they're comfortable writing a growth plan without your actual CAC and LTV, they're guessing, not operating.

Should I set one company-wide growth target or separate targets per channel?

Separate targets per channel, every time. A single company-wide number like "grow 30%" hides which lever is actually doing the work, and lets an underperforming channel coast behind a stronger one all year. Break the target down per channel, tied to each channel's actual CAC ceiling, so you can tell mid-year exactly where growth is on track and where it isn't.