If Your Marketing Metrics Don’t Scare the CFO, You’re Doing It Wrong

I believe that marketing must be accountable—not just to the marketing team, but to the business as a whole. Too often, B2B marketing teams rely on ‘feel-good’ metrics like impressions, clicks, and social media followers. These numbers may look impressive, but they rarely tie back to tangible business outcomes.

If you want marketing to be taken seriously as a strategic function, you need to track and report on the metrics that matter to your CFO and your leadership team. You need to show how marketing activities directly impact revenue growth, customer acquisition, customer retention, and lifetime value.

Real impact comes from metrics like:

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) Conversion Rates: Are the leads you generate actually moving through the pipeline?
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much are you spending to acquire a customer, and is it sustainable relative to their lifetime value?
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Are you attracting customers who deliver long-term value to your business?
• Sales Cycle Length: Are your marketing activities helping to shorten the time it takes to close a deal?
• Attribution Data: Which campaigns, channels, or touchpoints are actually influencing purchasing decisions?

When you track these metrics and tie marketing investments to commercial outcomes, marketing becomes a true revenue partner. It earns the respect—and the budget—it deserves.

I work with businesses to build marketing dashboards that go beyond vanity metrics. We help you establish robust attribution models, integrate CRM and marketing data, and build reporting frameworks that enable smarter, faster decision-making.

By speaking the language of finance, marketing teams position themselves as growth drivers, not cost centres. This not only strengthens internal credibility but also ensures marketing strategies are more focused, measurable, and effective.

Remember: creativity still matters. Strong messaging, innovative campaigns, and brand-building initiatives are vital. But they must be aligned to clear, measurable goals that impact the bottom line.

If your current marketing reporting doesn’t make your CFO sit up and take notice, it’s time for a change. Metrics should inform, not just impress.

Want to elevate your marketing strategy by focusing on the numbers that drive growth? Contact us—we’ll help you build a smarter, more commercially powerful marketing function.