Senior Analyst, Marketing Investment & Planning

GEICO•Bethesda, MD

1d•$100,450 - $157,850

About The Position

The Senior Analyst, Marketing Investment & Planning is responsible for the planning, tracking, and optimization of marketing spend to maximize impact and ensure financial discipline. This role reports to the Director of Investment Strategy and partners with Product Owners, Channel Owners, and Finance/FP&A to manage annual and quarterly budgets, oversee purchase workflows, improve forecast accuracy, and deliver insights on variances, risks, and cost efficiency.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, Economics, or related field
5+ years in budgeting/FP&A/financial operations with direct marketing spend exposure
Demonstrated experience managing large, multi‑channel marketing budgets, forecasting, variance analysis, and executive reporting
Experience with financial systems and budget/reporting tools, such as Workday, Excel, and Power BI

Nice To Haves

Oversight of large marketing budgets, including agency and media spend portfolios
Experience working in a matrixed environment across multiple stakeholders
Familiarity with purchase order, invoice, and month close workflows, including managing accruals
Advanced Excel (models, pivots, scenario planning) and strong financial acumen
Ability to translate marketing plans into budgets and forecasts
Strong stakeholder management with marketers and finance leaders
Process orientation (governance, documentation, audit readiness)
Data storytelling for executive audiences
Collaborative mindsight with high ownership, attention to detail, and comfort working cross-functionally
Aptitude with AI and experience with data automation with a vision for building agentic tools to improve processes

Responsibilities

Partner with Marketing leaders to develop annual and quarterly budgets that achieve strategic objectives.
Manage monthly, quarterly, and annual rhythms within the Marketing org to enable transparent budget management across the team holding budget managers accountability for reforecasts and identification of risks and opportunities for spend optimizations.
Build and maintain budget models that align spend to goals and enables scenario planning in support of changes to business priorities in order to maximize return on investment.
Own marketing spend governance: approvals, spend thresholds, vendor onboarding, PO requests, MA approvals, and invoice processes.
Partner with Procurement and Finance to ensure contract compliance, correct coding of financial artifacts, and timely accruals.
Implement controls to reduce maverick spend and improve audit readiness (documentation, SOWs, terms, and approvals).
Periodically optimize spend taxonomy (product, channel, campaign, program type, region, cost center).
Produce weekly/monthly budget status reporting: actuals vs budget vs forecast, burn rates, and variance explanations.
Create executive dashboards and summaries for CMO/VPs: spend pacing, forecast risk, and reallocation recommendations.
Identify under/over-spend trends and propose corrective actions (shift funds across channels, adjust campaign timing).
Support Finance with month-end close, accruals, and variance narratives specific to marketing activity.
Support Analytics in connecting spend with outcomes: MMM, PAS, CAC, CPL, ROAS.
Support business case development for incremental investment, headcount, tools, and agencies.
Track and report savings initiatives (rate-card negotiations, vendor consolidation, tooling rationalization).
Improve the end-to-end marketing finance workflow (intake → approval → PO → invoice → reporting).
Maintain and enhance tools used for budget tracking (Excel, ERP, procurement system, or marketing spend platforms), with an eye toward automation and future proofing for Marketing Investment organization.
Create templates and playbooks for channel owners (forecasting, reallocation requests).
Train marketers on budget best practices and spend governance.