Winning Over the CFO: Proving Marketing Value With Data

The role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) has broadened significantly. Now, nearly halfway through 2025, CMOs face complex challenges: industry practices being overhauled by artificial intelligence (AI), shifting consumer behaviors, and increasing pressure to demonstrate tangible business metrics. According to Gartner, Inc., navigating these waters requires a measured approach.

The Chief Marketing Officer Journal for the first quarter of 2025 from Gartner, Inc. provides insights and strategies for CMOs to navigate the complexities of the current marketing landscape. The journal emphasizes the importance of bridging marketing strategy and operations, crafting differentiation, and prioritizing customer journey insights to help achieve desired marketing outcomes.

The pressure on CMOs to demonstrate tangible value has never been higher. Yet, securing buy-in, particularly from finance leadership, remains an imminent hurdle. According to Gartner, Inc., 40% of senior marketing leaders identify the chief financial officer (CFO) as the most skeptical of marketing’s contributions.¹ This skepticism can translate into budget constraints and questions about marketing’s strategic fit. To help bridge this credibility gap, CMOs should adopt a multifaceted approach—one that combines the structured logic often favored by finance leaders (deductive reasoning) with compelling narratives derived from diverse data sets (inductive reasoning).

The Deductive Case: Speaking the CFO’s Language

CFOs typically operate within established financial frameworks and principles. To resonate with this mindset, marketers should showcase performance drivers using clear, logical, and predictable models. A deductive approach can involve:

Applying standardized frameworks: Create accepted reference points, like return on investment (ROI), customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value (CLV), and link marketing spend forecasts directly to revenue projections. Presenting data within these familiar structures can provide a logical basis for budget requests and performance reviews.

Highlighting efficiency: Use deductive reasoning to show how marketing is allocating spend based on known performance drivers. For example, demonstrate how budget was shifted away from underperforming channels based on pre-defined benchmarks.

Leveraging technology: Employ marketing analytics platforms and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM applications, to help automate reporting based on these frameworks, which can improve consistency and reliability in the data presented.

This deductive approach can create a foundation of financial accountability and showcase a strong understanding of business principles.

The Inductive Narrative: Weaving Data Into Insight

While deductive frameworks provide structure, they can curtail the full picture of marketing’s influence. Inductive reasoning, building broader conclusions from specific observations and data patterns, is essential for telling the whole story. According to Gartner, the differences among approaches to communication value are clear: senior marketing leaders who communicate marketing’s value through a long-term, holistic view were able to prove marketing’s value and get credit.² Here are tips for communicating marketing’s long-term effects:

Synthesizing diverse data: Move beyond single metrics. Collect and analyze data from various sources, e.g., campaign engagement, website analytics, social listening, brand health surveys, customer feedback captured in a CRM system, and sales pipeline progression.

Identifying patterns and deducing stories: Use the consolidated data to uncover patterns and construct narratives. For instance, show how a brand awareness campaign (difficult to measure with direct ROI) correlated with increased organic search traffic, improved sales conversion rates downstream, and positively shifted customer sentiment. This can help marketers paint a holistic picture of marketing’s value. Increasingly, AI tools are becoming adept at spotlighting these complex, non-obvious patterns across large data sets.

Employing sophisticated metrics: Incorporate a wider variety of metric types, including more complex ones (like brand equity shifts or increased CLV). According to Gartner, leaders who use a greater variety of metric types are 26% more likely to prove marketing’s value and receive credit.³

This inductive approach can provide more context, reveal less obvious contributions (like brand building or market shifts), and demonstrate a deep understanding of market dynamics.

Bridging Gaps & Creating Synergy

Relying solely on deductive frameworks can make marketing seem like a cost center focused only on predictable, short-term returns. Conversely, relying only on inductive stories can seem anecdotal or lacking in financial rigor to a skeptical CFO.

The recommended way forward is to blend both: using deductive frameworks to demonstrate financial credibility and performance measurement baselines, while layering on inductive stories to illustrate the broader, strategic, and often contingent value generated by marketing initiatives.

Overcoming Barriers

Applying this multifaceted approach, linking deductive and inductive reasoning, requires addressing key internal factors. CMOs need team members who are proficient in data analysis. Leaders with high data and analytics involvement were 1.4 times more likely to prove value, according to Gartner.⁴ Furthermore, addressing talent gaps is critical; 39% of senior marketing leaders surveyed by Gartner cited a lack of necessary soft skills (like communication and storytelling) and competencies as a top barrier to proving value.⁵

Winning over the CFO and other skeptical executives may require speaking a common language while also providing context-rich, data-driven accounts of marketing impact. By strategically combining structured frameworks and financial logic with data and compelling narratives, CMOs can build credibility, justify budget, and firmly established marketing as a vital engine for sustainable business growth.

How Forvis Mazars Can Help

Modern CRM technology can help address the challenges outlined in Gartner’s recent Chief Marketing Officer Journal. By centralizing customer data, enabling data-driven strategies, and enhancing engagement through AI-powered insights and personalized experiences, CMOs can effectively bridge the gap between strategy and operations. CRM technology can empower marketing teams to deliver differentiated marketing and prioritize customer journey insights, helping to drive significant value.

As your organization moves forward, Business Technology Services professionals at Forvis Mazars can help you define and execute your digital transformation goals. Our technology consultants have certified experience with Microsoft and Salesforce CRM systems and provide technology assessments, system design, implementation, upgrades, training, and support services. Connect with us today to learn more about the ways technology can help your organization achieve its goals.

Winning Over the CFO: Proving Marketing Value With Data

The Deductive Case: Speaking the CFO’s Language

The Inductive Narrative: Weaving Data Into Insight

Bridging Gaps & Creating Synergy

Overcoming Barriers

How Forvis Mazars Can Help

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