By Greg Dos Santos, CFO at Incubeta
In today’s marketing landscape, failure isn’t a flaw—it’s fuel for progress. For senior leaders, the real challenge isn’t just launching the next big idea; it’s proving marketing’s value across the organization and breaking down the silos that hold growth back.
With 40% of marketers still struggling to demonstrate ROI, aligning marketing with broader financial objectives is no longer optional. Metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV), and overall ROI have become essential tools in showing how marketing contributes to revenue, brand strength, and long-term success.
Yet a longstanding disconnect between CFOs and CMOs continues to hinder this progress. These two critical roles have often worked in parallel rather than in partnership. Only 22% of CMOs describe their relationship with CFOs as “truly collaborative,” while 26% call it “indifferent” and only 7% admit it’s “hesitant.” This misalignment has made it harder for marketing to earn the investment and trust it needs to drive real impact. But that’s beginning to shift.
By embracing experimentation and failing fast, businesses can refine strategies and leverage data to justify budgets and optimize performance. Emerging technologies like AI and predictive analytics enhance transparency, enabling smarter decision-making and encouraging collaboration between finance and marketing. When short-term losses are seen as opportunities to learn, businesses can adapt, innovate, and turn challenges into sustainable success.
Redefining the role of the CFO as a strategic partner
The traditional CFO role – focused solely on financial stewardship and cost control – has evolved into that of a strategic business partner. Today’s CFOs are expected to work cross-functionally, using financial insights to drive growth rather than simply monitor spending. Marketing plays a pivotal role in achieving these financial objectives, making collaboration between finance and marketing more critical than ever.
The numbers prove it – 82% of CFOs say their responsibilities have significantly expanded over the past five years, with a growing focus on data-driven decision-making, long-term growth strategies, and cross-departmental collaboration. As finance leaders take on a broader strategic function, aligning with marketing becomes essential to ensuring business-wide success.
Shifting the perception of marketing from a cost center to an investment center is key. Outperform marketing, which integrates data, creative, media, and technology into a seamless ecosystem, strengthens this dynamic. By focusing on measurable metrics like CLV and revenue contribution by channel, CFOs can better demonstrate marketing’s impact. This approach empowers finance leaders to champion innovation, ensuring marketing efforts align with broader financial goals for a stronger, more integrated strategy.
Breaking down the CFO-CMO barrier
CFOs and CMOs don’t always see eye to eye. Different priorities, misaligned metrics, and varying perceptions of risk often create friction. While marketing focuses on customer engagement and brand building, finance zeroes in on profitability and risk. Without a shared language, proving marketing’s financial impact is an uphill battle.
And the gap is widening. According to the CMO Insights 2025 report, collaboration between marketing and finance has dropped to 35%, down from 42% the previous year. This decline signals a need for a more structured approach to alignment.
Proactive communication is critical. Marketers must adopt a data-driven mindset and speak the CFO’s language – concise, structured, and tied to business outcomes. Outperform marketing helps bridge this gap by bringing together the entire marketing ecosystem to deliver results under pressure, leverage technology and AI to boost productivity, and redefine possibilities by transforming marketing into a profit center. By focusing on measurable impact and fostering shared accountability, businesses can break down silos, build trust, and maximize the power of their marketing-finance partnership.
Smarter tech. Sharper data. Faster fails
AI and predictive analytics are revolutionizing marketing. They provide real-time insights, automate decision-making, and create a common language between marketing and finance. The result? Faster, smarter, data-driven strategies that drive measurable impact.
And marketers are leading the charge. More than half of marketers (56%) say their company is taking an active role in implementing and using AI. From analyzing data for customer insights to optimizing campaigns on the fly, AI is rapidly shifting how marketing and finance interact.
A fail-fast mindset is key to staying ahead. Instead of fearing failure, businesses should embrace rapid experimentation and leverage AI-powered tools to iterate, optimize, and refine strategies in real-time. Outperform marketing seamlessly integrates these technologies, ensuring every campaign is aligned with customer needs and financial objectives.
By treating marketing as an investment, not a cost, and using AI to bridge creative and financial insights, businesses can optimize performance, justify budgets, and fuel sustainable growth.
The next chapter of the finance-marketing partnership
Failing fast isn’t about embracing failure—it’s about accelerating learning. It’s a mindset that allows businesses to refine strategy, boost performance, and unlock sustainable growth. Outperform marketing takes this one step further, moving beyond short-term wins to create a durable foundation by integrating data, creativity, media, and technology into a unified, agile ecosystem.
When businesses adopt data-driven strategies, champion cross-functional collaboration, and invest in adaptive technologies, the long-standing divide between CFOs and CMOs begins to fade. Finance and marketing teams, working in step as strategic partners, can align spending with business priorities—turning campaigns into measurable, growth-driving outcomes.
This kind of alignment doesn’t just improve performance—it creates resilience, fosters innovation, and positions businesses to thrive in the face of change. By embracing the principles of outperform marketing, organisations can rewrite the rules—proving that when finance and marketing move together, they don’t just support the business; they propel it forward.
