Persuading your CFO to invest in marketing

B2B budgets are going down, and still CFOs wonder what is the next process for which they should cut down on their expenses. Now more than ever, they want to see those results that justify the expense. If you are a CMO who wants to keep the CFO happy, what can you do? You must provide the hard fact “evidence” that the marketing pragrams you want to start these days will prove to be profitable for the company in the end.

Some random ideas on how to produce those cold facts that CFOs want to see from the CMOs these days:

• Define KPIs better. Before you even launch a B2B marketing campaign, make sure to thoroughly define the key performance indicators that will measure the results. Let me give you an example: if your goal is to build additional access points into a prospect company that you target, then first of all you should be able to see how deep results your cappaign produces on the short term. Afterwards, you can design a plan to produce results on the long term.
• Create a strong tie between marketing processes and business priorities. Study the sales goal your company has, and then demonstrate the CFO how the marketing programmes you design can support these objectives. For example, if you hava managed to create more contacts at prospect companies, show how the sales team is setting more and more meetings and how demo requests increase.
• Show how the results you achieve link to business goals. If you have a new online marketing campaign, and it generates, let’s say, 75% more clicks than the previous one, this number alone is not sufficient to explain success. You have to explain the financial and the sales team how this increase affects the company, to prove a whole cause-and-effect chain that helps your business achieved the defined objectives.

In the end, what really matters is to discover what’s working for your company and why, and not just think in terms of B2B ROI.