For many B2B marketers, 2023 was a tough year. Budgets were flat, the market was shaky and goals were high. As the year went on, growth slowed considerably and many marketers had difficulty achieving those goals. When it came time to plan for 2024, many of their organizations had to cut marketing budgets as a result.
Not only are marketers faced with smaller budgets, CFOs are scrutinizing their activity more than ever. Many are calling 2024 the “show me year” for marketers. They not only have to succeed, they have to be able to prove it to the CEO, CFO and the board with measurable results.
It sounds difficult, and it is, but it’s also entirely possible. While there might be a period of work ahead to get to “show me” success, CMOs will do best if they are aligned with their CFOs throughout the process.
Focus on New Similarities Not Old Stereotypes
I’m a CFO at a B2B marketing data and technology company, basically a CMO’s worst nightmare. Given our company position as marketing experts, and given my position in the organization, I expect our CMO to provide measurable results in order to justify her budget. The good news for me is that our CMO is willing and able to do it, but many organizations don’t have the same successful alignment.
The majority of CFO-CMO relationships aren’t collaborative. In fact, four out of five CMOs say that their CFO’s aren’t very willing to collaborate on investments, goals and metrics. CMOs want more budget; CFOs want to pay less, but get more results. The historical tension is clear.
The good news is that the two roles are coming closer together. While CFO’s have always been focused on metrics, CMOs are only more recently data-driven. So, rather than allow past differences to drive the relationship, CMOs and CFOs can come together on their growing similarities.
For example, both groups have the common goal of wanting data that is consistent, accurate and timely. One typical frustration of CMOs is that CFOs often ask for proof points that CMOs simply can’t provide. Their reporting might be outdated or difficult to access. Explaining the hurdles to CFOs and showing a desire to develop better data and measurement practices can provide the catalyst for collaboration.
If a CMO needs two different platforms to be integrated in order to measure leads moving through the purchase funnel, it’s worth presenting the issue to the CFO so that they can discuss earmarking budget for the project. If a CMO wants databases to have better data hygiene, sharing the potential benefits of investing in a new process with the CFO can get them to see more clearly what steps are needed for the CMO to be able to show progress.
Lean Into Tactics That Drive Results
Our CMO tested a variety of different tactics from events to demand generation. Her data showed that events were more productive for reaching our unique goals such as offering up-sell and cross-sell opportunities to existing customers from different parts of the business.
While we all consider demand generation to be a vital part of a healthy B2B marketing organization, our experience last year showed us that events should be the top priority this year while focusing our demand generation budgets specifically on achieving new logo goals because there are still many untapped opportunities that would benefit from a similar treatment as last year. To determine the right priorities, we use data from analysts, our own products, and bespoke research to inform and support our strategy.
Our CMO then put together a plan that was prioritized based on how clearly sales results were tied to each activity so that we could see where to draw the line for the budget.
Be Smart About Long-Term Needs
Being a CMO means balancing the activities that are immediately good for sales goals with activities that will drive long term business health.
From a sales perspective, even when CMOs have the data they need to measure their efforts, some tactics are simply more measurable than others. We recently rebranded our company after a number of major acquisitions. While difficult to tie branding efforts directly to sales, our CMO provided a clear argument for spending on branding even in a tough budget year.
Using outside research and our own past information, our CMO focused on the inputs that are most important to our ideal customer profile. She proved that we needed to earmark money for analyst relations, thought leadership and other “air cover” activity to ensure that our company was accurately positioned in the market and that we were in the correct consideration set. Knowing that what we were doing was directly related to the top elements that prospects consider as they make purchase decisions helped clear the budget approval.
We also agreed on success metrics that would be reasonable predictors of success, even if they weren’t explicit sales numbers. Achieving earned media coverage, mentions in top reports and getting awareness and consideration improvements from B2B marketer surveys all served as measurable proxies for success.
Leave Some Budget for Innovation
A huge number of marketers are investing in AI in 2024 – a major innovation that’s somewhat unproven still. However, it’s clear that over time, AI will deliver more and more savings and better and better insights. Already 88% of marketers say that AI has changed the way they create content. AI has the potential to save time, speed up and automate manual tasks and deliver new insights.
Some AI “investments” are actually free. Chat GPT doesn’t cost anything to use. A CMO can use these free tools to show how effective they are at saving on initial planning, or in deriving insights. With this approach, decision makers can start to see the potential and can better understand why software upgrades or new data processes could also benefit in the future.
Short-term spending on things like AI will get the most scrutiny and would put in buckets that I would call variable based on ROI, but strategically the CEO, CFO, CMO and board need to be aligned on a long-term investment plan to improve brand awareness and company perception. CMOs do need to share guideposts that things are trending in the direction but the measurement period is longer. Getting a new investment right like AI takes time and commitment and would need to be allocated based on the industry, growth cycle of the firm and competitive landscape, just like every strategy and tactic that’s included in a smart marketing plan.
Author
Get our newsletter and digital focus reports
Stay current on learning and development trends, best practices, research, new products and technologies, case studies and much more.
