Why CMOs struggle and how aligning with CFOs changes everything

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CMOs are under pressure to prove their value, and many are struggling to do it. Much of marketing’s impact is difficult to measure in the way finance evaluates performance. While CMOs focus on long-term brand building, CFOs prioritize short-term, on-paper financial results. That disconnect shapes how marketing is judged. The core issue is not measurement failure but misattribution bias — treating what is easiest to measure as what matters most.

CMOs have long had the shortest tenure in the C-suite. We’ve heard it for over 20 years, and it’s been shown as recently as a 2025 Spencer Stuart study, which found an average tenure of 4.3 years.

It isn’t all bad news. Spencer Stuart reports that two-thirds of CMOs leave due to promotion or a more attractive lateral offer. There’s clearly a lot of potential for CMOs who get it right, but the data show that many don’t.

What stands out in the study is that one-third of Fortune 500 companies don’t even have a CMO. Lowe’s and Starbucks eliminated CMO positions only to bring them back less than two years later, suggesting that CMO value became clear only after they were eliminated. These reversals highlight how the absence of marketing leadership can expose its previously unmeasured impact.

Furthermore, a 2023 survey of over 275 marketing leaders across industries and geographies by CMO Council noted that nearly 80% of CMOs either don’t care about collaborating with CFOs or are hesitant to do so. This highlights a clear division between the two roles.

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Why attribution distorts marketing decisions

Attribution distortion occurs when lower-funnel channels receive disproportionate credit because they are easier to measure, not because they create the most value.

CFOs need CMO insight to understand the marketing funnel that takes customers from awareness to consideration to conversion.

This happens with every campaign: We divide the budget across all funnel levels, and that’s healthy behavior. Then we get the first monthly report and see that the lower-funnel channels account for most of the conversions. Somehow, this is the point where we take off the CMO hat and put on the CFO hat. It’s time to reallocate the budget to lower-funnel channels, as we believe they’re the only ones generating revenue.

As marketers, we know they’re not the only channels bringing in revenue, but they are the ones easiest to attribute revenue to. You’ve likely also seen the results over time of cutting upper-funnel channels, just as Lowe’s and Starbucks saw when cutting the CMO position.

The C-suite has the same experience when it comes to the conflict between sales and marketing. Marketing makes the sales team’s job easier by qualifying a pool of leads. Still, it can be difficult to quantify marketing’s impact when the sales team brings the money to the CFO, so it’s easier to attribute all that revenue to sales with just a hunch that marketing probably did something positive.

How CMOs can align marketing with financial outcomes

The path to resolving this conflict isn’t easy. The first step is to recognize the importance of building a relationship with CFOs. While both roles have different day-to-day responsibilities, CMOs should focus on the similarities — most importantly, that both roles are focused on strengthening the company’s financial position.

The CMO’s next task is to invest in analytics. Marketing analysts have many tools at their disposal to quantify performance and show the impact of channels that are more difficult to measure — think things like billboards, earned media, broadcast TV, etc. To be sure, the attribution here won’t be as easy to understand as that of promo or QR codes, but the impact is quantifiable.

You can even build a composite metric to evaluate all channels using fair criteria and use it to get an overall picture of whether your efforts are improving performance or need work. Composite metrics allow marketers to evaluate channel performance consistently, even when attribution models differ. By watching this metric alongside finance metrics like CAC, LTV and EBITDA, you can show improving performance and a focus on the metrics CFOs care about.

Again, this shouldn’t be foreign to CMOs. This is the same tactic marketing teams use to convince CMOs to invest in upper-funnel channels. By leveraging data to show the impact of those tactics, CMOs can be convinced of the need to invest in full-funnel strategies. It can even take turning them off for a time to show the downward trend, but sometimes that’s the sacrifice required to prove that these less-measurable channels truly have a positive impact.

The hard work of aligning marketing and finance is worth it

Aligning marketing with financial performance is the foundation for a strong CMO-CFO relationship. At each step, when faced with CFO skepticism or pushback, CMOs should consider how they evaluate upper-funnel channel performance and apply those principles to the points of contention.

Because one thing is more difficult than another doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing. Building a career to the point of becoming a CMO is also hard, but worth it for the many successful CMOs out there. Combining that success with a strong, positive relationship with CFOs will lead to big returns for all.

Key takeaways: Generated by AI

• Marketing is often undervalued because financial models favor what is easiest to measure, not what drives long-term growth.
• Attribution bias leads organizations to overinvest in lower-funnel channels while underinvesting in demand creation.
• The absence or removal of the CMO role can reveal the hidden impact of marketing on business performance.
• Aligning CMOs and CFOs requires translating marketing impact into financial terms using consistent metrics and analytics.
• Sustainable growth depends on measuring and investing across the full funnel, not just optimizing for short-term, attributable results.

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