The gap between marketing and finance leaders isn’t about ambition — it’s about approach.
According to fresh research by Google, NewtonX, and Project X Initiative, CMOs and CFOs broadly agree that marketing drives long-term growth. Yet short-term financial pressures and misaligned priorities are holding back profitable collaboration.
Here’s where things stand — and what needs to change.
Plan for Long-Term Growth, Not Just Quarterly Wins
Marketing and finance teams often have mismatched priorities:
- CMOs: Focused on long-term brand building and positioning.
- CFOs: Anchored by budget constraints and short-term profitability.
Research shows only 43% of marketing leaders feel there’s a shared understanding of strategy, compared to 61% of finance leaders — a striking mismatch that reveals an underlying friction.
What CMOs should do:
- Engage early: Bring CFOs into marketing planning at the earliest stages, not just during budget negotiations.
- Champion agile budgeting: Build flexibility into budgets to allow for both short-term responsiveness and long-term brand investment.
- Hold joint sessions: Set regular, structured reviews between marketing and finance teams to realign strategy and resources.
- Bottom line: If marketers want more long-term investment, they must help finance teams feel confident in how that investment will be managed and measured.
Speak the Same Language: Build Shared KPIs
Metrics matter — but only when both sides know what they mean.
Today’s CMO-CFO misalignment often comes down to incompatible KPIs:
- 32% of marketing leaders struggle to link marketing activities to financial metrics.
- 42% of finance leaders cite the challenge of measuring marketing’s long-term impact.
What CMOs should do:
- Co-create KPIs: Define metrics together that serve both marketing and finance goals.
- Focus on lifetime value: Use metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV) and incremental revenue to make marketing’s contribution clearer.
- Educate and align: Make it standard practice for marketers to understand key financial concepts — and vice versa.
- Smart move: Create a joint marketing-finance scorecard. Not only does it establish shared accountability, but it also reinforces that marketing is a growth lever, not just a cost center.
Build a Unified Data and AI Infrastructure
No trust, no growth — and without quality data, there’s no trust.
CFOs in the research flagged serious concerns:
- Data quality issues.
- Fragmented systems.
- Integration challenges.
Without solid, integrated data, marketing can’t prove ROI — and AI, the great hope for better attribution and real-time optimisation, can’t deliver either.
What CMOs should do:
- Consolidate customer data: Create a shared platform accessible to both marketing and finance.
- Integrate AI tools smartly: Use AI for consistent measurement, predictive analytics, and real-time performance insights.
- Prioritise clean, reliable data: Invest in infrastructure that standardises data across departments.
- Reality check: AI will only be as good as the foundation it stands on. Clean data is the new oil; without it, no marketing innovation will scale effectively.
Trusted Partners, Not Occasional Collaborators
Ultimately, the CMO-CFO relationship needs to evolve beyond periodic check-ins.
It requires:
- Mutual respect: Understand each other’s strategic pressures and business goals.
- Consistent communication: No more “handoffs” between marketing plans and financial reviews.
- Joint ownership of outcomes: Growth is a shared goal, and both leaders must be held accountable.
In 2025 and beyond, the companies that win will be the ones where the CMO and CFO don’t just coexist — they collaborate.
The stakes are too high for siloed thinking. Bridging the marketing-finance divide isn’t just good for internal politics — it’s a competitive advantage.
Need a fresh perspective? Let’s talk.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, uses data-informed decisions to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
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