As the role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) continues to change, so must the strategies of marketers who look to engage and influence these key executives. With shifting priorities, increased digital transformation, and expanding responsibilities, marketers need to adapt their approach to engaging with CFOs to maintain success in marketing.
Connect and communicate what matters
To successfully interact with CFOs as their role evolves, marketers must stay current about the latest trends and changes impacting the finance industry. This includes reviewing industry publications, attending relevant conferences and events, and seeking insights from CFOs.1 By staying current, marketers can show their understanding of the evolving challenges and priorities facing CFOs, establishing credibility and relevance. Here are resources worth considering:
- Publications: CFO.com, Wall Street Journal CFO Journal, Harvard Business Review
- Industry reports and analyst research: Gartner, Forrester Research, McKinsey, Deloitte, and PwC
- Associations and conferences: Financial Executives International (FEI), CFO Alliance, Institute of Management Accountants (IMA)
Marketers can leverage this understanding to communicate more like a finance team when engaging with CFOs. This involves presenting information in a concise, data-driven manner, using visual aids to convey complex concepts, and focusing on the financial implications and ROI of marketing initiatives.
Embrace AI in an intelligent way
To successfully interact with CFOs as their role evolves, marketers must stay current about the latest trends and changes impacting the finance industry. This includes reviewing industry publications, attending relevant conferences and events, and seeking insights from CFOs. By staying current, marketers can show their understanding of the evolving challenges and priorities facing CFOs, establishing credibility and relevance. Here are resources worth considering:
Digital transformation has dramatically impacted the CFO role with increased automation, data analytics, and cloud-based solutions becoming industry standard. Marketers should align their strategies with the CFO’s own tech transformation by showing how marketing initiatives can streamline operations, enhance data-driven decision-making, and drive CFO process efficiency. This could involve using data analytics to provide valuable financial forecasting and planning insights or highlighting marketing technology (MarTech) platforms that integrate with the finance systems, such as AI.2
Here are some ways marketers can leverage AI:
- Get a CFO view: Marketers can use AI-powered analytics tools to gather and generate insights from combined data sets, such as customer data, marketing campaigns, and financial reports.
- Inform CFO decisions: Marketing operations teams can use predictive analytics to forecast sales, customer behavior, and market trends.
- Update marketing operations: AI-powered marketing automation platforms can optimize marketing processes such as lead nurturing, email marketing, and campaign management more efficiently.
Find alignment in goals
Strategic alignment with the CFO’s goals is more important than ever. Marketers must show how their initiatives align with the CFO’s overarching business objectives, such as financial growth, risk management, and operational efficiency.3 By positioning marketing as a strategic partner, marketers can build trust and influence CFOs decisions and actions by showcasing how marketing can contribute to achieving these objectives. Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) that marketers can prioritize to align with a CFO’s goals:
- Revenue generation
- Return on investment (ROI)
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Marketing-attributed sales
- Marketing contribution to gross margin
Highlight the value of data to stay relevant
Data-driven decision-making is a hallmark of modern finance, and marketers can leverage this trend to their advantage. By emphasizing the value of data and analytics in marketing initiatives, marketers can clearly show with evidence the ability to measure and attribute the impact of marketing activities on financial outcomes.4 This includes showcasing how marketing campaigns contribute to customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, and revenue growth.5
Build deeper relationships
Successful marketing to CFOs goes beyond one-time interactions. Marketers should proactively foster relationships and seek opportunities for collaboration with CFOs. This includes regular check-ins, providing updates on marketing performance with data, and soliciting feedback on how marketing can better support the CFO’s current objectives. Marketers can build strong partnerships that drive mutual success by opening more lines of communication and demonstrating a willingness to think strategically, like a CFO.
CFOs are involved in nearly every sizeable financial decision of an organization. Marketers must adapt their strategies to stay strategically relevant and provide value. By monitoring future trends, leveraging new technologies and data, and aligning overarching business goals rooted in interdepartmental collaboration, marketers can help CFOs navigate their changing landscape effectively as trusted strategic partners.
- Billtrust, The DNA of Future CFOs, 2022.
- Journal of Accountancy, The Changing Role of the CFO, March 2023.
- Coupa, The Strategic CFO, 2023.
- Gartner, Top 10 Priorities for CFOs in 2023, Jan 2023.
- PwC, What’s Important to CFO’s in 2023, 2023.
