Marketing has a credibility problem. Not because the work isn’t valuable. But because too often, the value isn’t visible — at least not in the language that matters to the people making investment decisions.
The research paints a clear picture:
- 64% of marketing leaders struggle to track their impact back to financial performance
- 63% report increased pressure from CFOs to prove value
- Only about half of CMOs say marketing is involved in strategic planning
The result? Marketing gets quietly relegated from growth engine to support function. And it’s not just a perception issue — it’s affecting business performance. Research on CMO–CFO alignment shows that when marketing is fully integrated into financial decision-making, companies see up to 26% higher marketing efficiency and double-digit profitability uplift.
The opportunity is significant. But it requires a shift — not in what marketing does, but in how it connects what it does to commercial outcomes.
What Does “Commercially Minded” Actually Mean?
A commercially minded marketing function operates on four principles:
1. It understands how the business makes money. Not in abstract terms, but specifically — the revenue model, the margins, the levers.
2. It deliberately prioritises financial outcomes. Creative work still matters. But it’s anchored in commercial intent, not activity for its own sake.
3. It acts as the connective tissue of the business. Marketing touches every part of the customer journey. That makes it uniquely positioned to integrate sales, product, customer success, and finance around a shared growth agenda.
4. It speaks the language of the CFO. Not to abandon marketing’s craft, but to translate its impact into terms that build credibility and influence at the strategic level.
When marketing operates this way, it stops being a cost centre and becomes an integral part of the growth engine.
The Core Departure Point: How Money Flows Through Your Business
Before any framework or tactic, you need clarity on how revenue actually moves through your organisation. Think of it as three buckets:
1. New Customers People buying from you for the first time. Two dimensions matter here: volume and value. A customer acquired through one channel may be worth significantly more than one from another. Understanding this — and the cost to acquire each — is foundational.
2. Existing Customers The customers you already have a relationship with. Depending on your model, this is about retention, repeat purchase frequency, or expansion. The objectives: keep them longer and increase their lifetime value through upsell, cross-sell, or referral.
3. Lost Customers Customers who leave, don’t renew, or stop buying. This represents lost future revenue. The causes typically sit upstream — in acquisition quality, product-market fit, or customer experience. The objective: minimise and learn.
Every marketing activity should connect to one of these buckets. If it doesn’t, the question is simple: why are you doing it?
The 5-Step Framework
Step 1: Reconnect with the Commercial Line
All for-profit businesses exist to generate profit. Marketing’s role is to contribute to that — and to demonstrate the contribution clearly.
This means building fluency in commercial vocabulary across the function such as:
- CAC — Cost to acquire a customer, by channel
- LTV — Lifetime value of customers acquired
- LTV:CAC ratio — The relationship between value and acquisition cost – how long does it take you to pay back the investment made on acquisition
- ROAS— The return you are getting back from your advertising investment
- Funnel Metrics —Pipeline, conversion rates, deal economics
- Leading indicators —E.g. brand awareness, customer satisfaction etc.
You don’t need perfect measurement from day one. Start with what you know today, build a baseline, and refine over time, ideally with the support of your cross-functional counterparts.
Step 2: Start With the End in Mind
Before any campaign launches, the team should articulate its predicted commercial impact.
“We believe this campaign will increase website traffic by 5%, which will drive a 2% lift in sales based on the quality of the traffic we expect.”
This is a hypothesis — and you will often be wrong. That’s not the point. The point is to think through the commercial link before execution, so you have something to measure against after.
Then go back. Assess accuracy. Understand variance. Grow commercial acumen through iteration, not through debating the theory.
Step 3: Build Feedback Loops
Hypothesis → Execute → Measure → Analyse. This becomes the rhythm.
Every initiative needs a measurement hierarchy:
- What metric is this intended to move?
- Did it move?
- Why or why not?
Post-campaign analysis isn’t about blame. It’s about collective learning. And where possible, layer in direct customer feedback to enrich your understanding of the reasons for the results.
Step 4: Restore Marketing as the Connective Tissue
Marketing should be the custodian of the customer and the organisation’s integration fabric.
- With Sales: Shared pipeline, shared revenue accountability. The tension between marketing and sales dissolves when both teams own the same goal.
- With Product: Marketing is at the front line of customer feedback. Validate demand, test messaging, surface insights on what resonates.
- With Customer Success: Enable lifecycle campaigns, share learnings from acquisition, support expansion.
- With Finance: Demonstrate cause and effect. This is where credibility is built or lost.
Step 5: Build Commercial Capability Across the Team
Not everyone on your team will be analytically minded — and that’s fine. But everyone needs a basic understanding of data-driven impact assessment.
This doesn’t happen by accident. Embed it into:
- Learning and development programmes
- Performance management frameworks
- Team rituals and check-ins
Keep asking: What insight informed this? What did we learn from last time? Over time, the narrative shifts.
A Transformation in Practice
I’ve lived through this shift twice in my career. The most formative was leading a business unit of a multinational telco during a revenue decline crisis. The mandate: restore growth.
We restructured reporting around the three revenue buckets — acquisition, base, and churn. We identified priorities in each. We established a monthly cadence: plan, implement, measure, recalibrate. Every initiative had a hypothesis on how it would impact the commercial problem.
It was uncomfortable at first. But after about 18 months, we had increased the customer base by 22% and revenue by 9%.
The lesson: when you understand how money flows, marketing can integrate teams across the business to grow revenue and profitability. It becomes the connective tissue, not a sidelined function.
Reflection Questions
- Think about your last campaign. Can you articulate the commercial impact you expected before launch? Did you go back and compare actual versus expected? Do you understand why?
- Which of the three revenue buckets does your team focus on most — and which are neglected? Is there value being left on the table?
- If your CFO asked you tomorrow to justify your budget in commercial terms, would you have an answer?
Key Takeaways
- Know how money flows: new, existing, and lost customers
- Speak the CFO’s language: CAC, LTV, ROI, funnel metrics and leading indicators
- Hypothesise before you execute — then measure against it
- Be the connective tissue across functions
- Make feedback loops non-negotiable
Marketing’s credibility isn’t restored through better campaigns. It’s restored through clearer connection to commercial outcomes — and the discipline to demonstrate that connection consistently.
Want to bring this to your team?
I run workshops for marketing and commercial leaders who want to build more commercially minded marketing teams — closing the gap between activity and outcomes.
If this is on your radar, register your interest and I’ll be in touch with details.