Creating an Intentional Relationship Between the CMO and CFO

Today’s digital world has created marketing opportunities that would have been unimaginable just a short time ago. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) can understand their customers, track customer engagement, and drive business growth better than ever before. They are creating more value for customers by driving smarter acquisitions and more effectively connecting marketing with the customer experience.

As a result, CMOs are making bigger, data-driven marketing investments requiring larger budgets to work with. And that means they need to strengthen relationships with chief financial officers (CFOs), the executives who control the checkbooks. CMOs today have to make stronger business cases that forecast returns on investment in a way that speaks to CFOs.

In a recent article, Zach Morrison, CEO of Tinuiti, notes that the heads of marketing and finance in today’s organizations need to be on the same page to drive growth effectively. He believes that making progress requires CFOs to understand that marketing can be a growth driver rather than a financial drain and to be in sync with CMOs.

Why Should Marketing Bridge the Gap with Finance?

Chief marketing officers need to make an effort to build a solid relationship with their organization’s chief financial officers for two significant reasons:

• The CFO influences multiple key business areas that can affect marketing performance. For example, they set marketing budgets and are involved in decision-making on technology spending, business strategy, pricing, new product development, and more.
• In many organizations, most of the senior executives don’t have a comprehensive understanding of (or appreciation for) how marketing creates value for the company. As a result, when budget time rolls around, there is an under-investment or misallocation of funds for the marketing department.

Marketing leaders must educate other senior executives, especially CFOs, about how marketing works and creates value.

Bringing CMOs and CFOs Together

In many organizations, the interactions between CMOs and CFOs are typically tense and strained. Frequently, marketers feel unappreciated and misunderstood, while finance people often don’t understand or know how to evaluate marketing proposals properly. Unfortunately, these feelings don’t contribute to a healthy relationship between CMOs and CFOs, which is a problem.

Generally speaking, serving customers is a primary job of CMOs, and understanding costs is a primary job of CFOs. Perhaps the most challenging task for CMOs is determining where to spend marketing dollars and how to translate performance into the ROI metrics that CFOs are looking for.

So, how can CMOs and CFOs create a shared understanding that drives growth?

One potential solution is presented in a report published by the B2B Institute (in association with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) in the UK). The report is based on responses from senior leaders of B2B organizations in the US, Europe, and Asia. At the heart of the report is the VALUE Framework, a guide for CMOs that outlines how to build effective relationships with CFOs and other finance leaders.  

The framework consists of five elements:

• Value – CMOs have to thoroughly understand how value (short- and long-term) is created within their organization and how value is perceived and received by customers. Armed with this knowledge, CMOs can better identify how marketing efforts affect profit and revenue growth.   
• Accountability – CMOs must accept accountability for value creation for the aspects of profitability and revenue growth that marketing efforts influence. Accepting accountability for those aspects increased credibility and trust with CFOs and other financial leaders.
• Language – To communicate effectively, CMOs must always put marketing programs and activities in the proper context by using the language of value creation and business language that will speak to CFOs.
• Understanding – The CMO should consistently communicate the value of marketing across the organization to ensure financial leaders understand it.
• Evidence – CMOs need to have an evidence-based mindset and use value-based metrics to reflect the value marketing creates for the business.

Final Thoughts

A strong relationship between the CMO and CFO is one of the most important for senior leaders to develop and nurture. The CMO must generate value and results with the budgeted resources that are allocated and measured by the CFO. Despite that reliance on one another, CMOs and CFOs in many organizations are not effectively connected. However, with collaboration, effective communication, and evidence-based performance analysis, this relationship will drive business growth.