Marketers Unleashed

How to Make Your CFO Your New Bestie

• Kathryn • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this episode of Marketers Unleashed, host Kathryn Strachan sits down with Benjamin Mills, a seasoned CFO, to explore how CMOs and CFOs can work collaboratively to align marketing strategies with overall business goals. Benjamin shares his extensive experience transitioning from public accounting to internal CFO roles, highlighting the unique challenges and perspectives in leading financial operations. He discusses day-to-day CFO responsibilities, effective marketing budget management, and strategies for demonstrating marketing's value as an investment rather than a cost center. The conversation offers practical advice for CMOs on breaking down silos, aligning with strategic goals, and navigating budget constraints, especially during economic downturns.

Kathryn:

Welcome to Marketers Unleashed, the podcast where marketers break free from the noise and dive deep into the raw truths of the marketing world. We're here to go beyond best practices and uncover the bold ideas, untold stories, and hard lessons that shape real marketing success. From dissecting daring campaigns to confronting the challenges keeping us awake at night. We're unleashing honest, unfiltered conversations to inspire, educate, and challenge you to think differently. Get ready to conquer the untamed side of marketing. I'm your host, Kathryn Strachan, and this is Marketers Unleashed, where we're not just talking marketing, we're redefining it. For anyone who doesn't know me yet, I'm Kathryn Strachan, author of Scaling Success, Building Brands That Break Barriers, international keynote speaker, and fractional CMO for cutting edge brands. I've spent years navigating the ever changing world of marketing, and I've seen it all. As your podcast host, I bring my expertise and curiosity to the table, diving deep into honest conversations with industry leaders to uncover the insights, challenges, and bold ideas shaping our industry. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to Marketers Unleashed. I'm really excited because today I have Ben Mills here. Ben is a CFO and he's going to be telling us all about the CFO perspective and how CMOs can work better with CFOs and how these two C suites can have a better relationship. But Ben, can you get us started by telling us a little bit more about yourself and your background and what you do?

Ben:

Sure. First, I just want to thank you for having me on the show today. I'm really excited. Real quick on my background. I spent about 25 years in public accounting. I was a partner for 17 years and I've switched hats now and I'm running as a CFO and I'm now inside companies. Whereas before I was working with CFOs on the outside. So I see a different perspective and I'm working inside companies now is their CFO and handling all the CFO responsibilities. I'm really encouraged by and it's exciting because there's a lot of good things that go on and helping companies grow and prosper. And obviously marketing is a big piece of that. If you get it right, things go really well. And if you don't get it right, you see the ramifications from it.

Kathryn:

Yeah, it's good to hear, because not a lot of CFOs see it that way. can you maybe give us a little bit of a glimpse into the life of a CFO? What does your day to day look like? What are some of the things that you're thinking about, or the challenges that you're helping businesses to navigate?

Ben:

What goes through on a day to day basis in the CFO world is you pretty much have the whole company reporting to you. In one capacity or another. So you have a lot of challenges. You have a lot of competing departments, a lot of competing areas. And it's important as a CFO that you're keeping the company, all going in the same direction and all pulling in the same direction with the common goal. And that's to, help the business grow, become more profitable and constantly, meet its objectives and its strategic plan. So there's a lot of moving challenges and, things come up and unexpected things occur all the time on a daily basis. Cash flow needs, customers, supply chain issues all sorts of different things can come up on any given day.

Kathryn:

Yeah, and marketing's just like one small element of this. And obviously it's an important element, but it's only one element of your workload. I mean, when it comes to marketing, how do you start to think about marketing budgets and how marketing fits into your bigger financial picture?

Ben:

When I look at the marketing department the first thing I sit back and say where's the company going? Where's the company today? And where does it want to go tomorrow? I think the key for them working with the CMO or chief marketing officers in the marketing department is aligning those two things together. That if we're looking to expand to a new market, if we're looking to do growth, if we're in the mature market, making sure that our marketing department patterns where the overall company wants to go. I'm not going to spend marketing dollars on Monday with a payoff on Tuesday and see it that quick. Usually there's an investment and it takes time to see the return on it. From my perspective, it's an investment that has measurements, has indicators and gets tracked. To see if it's successful.

Kathryn:

It's a pretty unique perspective, though, why do you think that other CFOs maybe see it as a cost center?

Ben:

I think that happens a lot in companies and I've seen it a lot over the years It's because there's a mismatch of what the marketing department is doing and where the company is going. It doesn't line up in the same direction. I also don't think that there's a common communication going on between the marketing department and the CFO, and I think there's a lot of missed opportunities that they're not speaking clearly to each other and there's a misunderstanding of what the marketing is doing and there's not clear metrics to evaluate it. There's there's no follow through with it. There's no revisiting it on how it worked or didn't work. So I think that's why a lot of them view as an expense item a lot of them view it as a place that they can always just cut from because they're not taking the time to look at it as an area of investment and really working with the marketing department to utilize it to help grow the business, help grow sales or just line up with what the business plan is overall for the company.

Kathryn:

Yeah, I mean, I've run into that a few times in my career with CFOs, and I don't know that I fully understand how to overcome it. For CMOs and senior marketers listening, if you find yourself in a situation where you have a CFO who does see it as a cost center, who, is constantly cutting the budget or making redundancies in the marketing team, like, how do you start to get them on side?

Ben:

I think the first thing you have to understand it from the CFO's perspective, the CFO is not dumb. They want to make the company money. They want to make smart investments for the company. They want to look at every dollar they spend and see a smart investment. I don't think my views on marketing have changed over the years, but I do think the way you market has changed dramatically. With social media, with all the different outlets that are new and coming up all the time. So I would start first with a structure planned that you present to your CFO on who your customer is, where they are, how you're going to measure the return on the investment, how are you going to measure the expenses? What does, a good marketing plan look like as far as a metric and what do you hope to get out of it? And how does it line up with where the company wants to go? I think a lot of times CFOs and marketing focus on things that don't necessarily matter, like how many clicks you have or likes or impressions or things like that, as opposed to much more of a result driven metric that the CFOs can look to.

Kathryn:

Yeah, I think you touch on something really important there, and one of the biggest challenges is getting CFOs to sign off on like the more top of funnel, the more brand building sort of activities that maybe take, 6 to 12 months to start really producing good results in ROI, but are very important for the brand's long term growth. How do you get away from those bottom of funnel metrics and help convince a CFO to invest in some of those bigger brand building activities?

Ben:

What I would do is I wouldn't look at them as separate. I would look at them together. One being more of a short term marketing plan and one be more long term. First, you gotta identify who your customers are and where they are, who your audience is and where they are. And then I would, show them how there's two pieces to it and explain it's like R and D. You could spend a lot of money on R and D and it could be years before you realize the results of that. And you have to explain how there's a, combination of those two things. I've also on occasion seen where people show the competitors are doing it, showing that your competitors are taking advantages of different areas and, and you're absent to it. And how it's important that your competitors are in front of your customers, but you, you might not have a presence there. All those things put together I think would help when dealing with the CFO.

Kathryn:

Yeah, I mean, I've seen that work before where real FOMO of look, our competitors are doing this. We need to be doing it as well, or we're going to be losing market share, we're going to be losing customers to them can really help convince them that it's the right thing to do. What do you think is one of the biggest hesitations or like fears from a CFO when it comes to investing in marketing?

Ben:

I think the one of the biggest fears they have is being able to see the results from it or finding a way to measure it or track or see that it's a worthwhile investment. And I think if, if the marketing people understand what the CFO is looking for is more of a, I'm going to make an investment, help me measure the return on it. I think you would see a much better result as opposed to saying, I'm going to make the investment and we're going to have a lot more clicks and likes on our website. And we're going to have a lot more impressions on this social media page. Try to connect it to getting more revenue, more customers longevity of customers. And matching it with where the company wants to go. I mean, if you're in a growth company, your marketing plan might be different than if you're more of established mature company. If you're a startup, your marketing plan will be different. So you want to make sure that when you present the plan, it falls in line with all the other parts of the strategic plan the company has and where they're going and how it supplements that. And how it supports it and how it helps, increases the chance of meeting the strategic plan of revenue growth, of profitability, of expansion. And it's not just a silo mentality of just here's our marketing plan. We're in a silo and we didn't connect it to the rest of the business.

Kathryn:

You've probably seen a lot of marketing strategies in your time. Can you tell me a bit about what you consider to be a good marketing strategy and what, on the flip side, you maybe consider to be a bad marketing strategy?

Ben:

What I've seen in the past and what I try to do now is, when you come up with the strategic plan for the company, a good marketing plan works with it and pulls it in the same direction. Unfortunately, often I've seen where the company has a strategic plan or goals that they want to achieve in the next year, 2 years, 3 years. But the marketing plans on a silo because we've always done it this way. We continue to do it that way and they're not bridging that gap between where the company wants to go. And what they're doing today. If a company is looking to expand in a new territory, the marketing plan is going to be different this year than what you did last year, but all too often there's a misstep there and there's not that investment to maybe change course. And I think the other thing that marketing has on occasion is if something's not working, admit it's not working. And then change, if the return that you're hoping to get, it's not there, learn from it, grow from it, and then change it going forward and don't try to justify it and keep doing it, acknowledge it didn't work or acknowledge it's not the right place for your customers and move on to a different type of plan.

Kathryn:

One of the challenges that I run into sometimes is like a fractional CMO is when the company itself doesn't have a bigger vision or doesn't have a sound business strategy. Have you seen that in your line as a CFO?

Ben:

that's, that's what I get more involved in because you're, You're absolutely right. I think it would be tremendously hard for you to come up with a marketing plan and a marketing strategy for a company if they don't have a business strategy or they have go or who they want to be. think you have to start with the general company wants to do. Um, I don't know how you would come up plan without having any idea. of the strategic plan of the company, or I think it'd be a big challenge and then I think you end up in a silo and then that's where it's just a that they view know, you're sort of not meeting this that they have, but they won't tell you actually developed. Um, You just have to mystically understand what they want and achieve it.

Kathryn:

Yeah, and it happens, it happens

Ben:

sure

Kathryn:

drives me nuts because without that bigger business strategy, it's really difficult to create a marketing strategy. And, marketing strategy can help you achieve anything from hiring the right people to expanding into the right market. What about when companies face hard times? I mean, when a company goes through a hard time, or the economy does, marketing is often one of the first things hit, whether it's redundancies. or budgets, you know, I was just speaking to somebody today at meta and meta has now gone through four redundancies And most of their marketing team is now gone. It's not just smaller startups who cut their marketing team it's bigger organizations as well. I mean as a marketing leader What do you do when the company is going through a hard time or, or the economy is, and how do you protect your role, your team's roles, and be able to continue to market?

Ben:

I I think that It's obviously a challenge, but I think the first thing that a company needs to do they hit a hard time Fully understand why what's causing the hard time. Is it their product? Is it the overall industry? Is it the overall economy? Is But when they're going through challenging times like every department in the company, everyone's gonna feel some of the pain, but I think that's even more of the time that a marketing department to show Their value and their investment can Um, and cut cut those areas because sometimes those areas just funnels the downhill You know what I mean? So I think the key is to understand what's downturn and the downturn. see how marketing can, can you know, is is the downturn because your competitors are marketing a lot more and they're taking you're, you're, you know, um, but you

Kathryn:

Yeah, I mean, that sounds logical, but a lot of the times the senior leaders in the company don't know or won't tell you or, are perhaps embarrassed that their product isn't good. So, you know, aren't super transparent around that. So how do you actually get the truth out of them?

Ben:

always have those challenges in big companies, you to say hopefully in, in companies and growing companies, they have honest conversations because if you don't have honest conversations. you're not going to solve problems. just want to put your head in the sand and pretend that that's not your problem just kicking it down the curve and okay, we'll cut marketing this year, but the problem didn't go away. So you're going to have the problem in a year. It's just, you won't be able to cut marketing next year. already cut it. that is a challenge. And I think what you just have to try to do is, is, them the problems are from a marketing perspective, show them where the product are to show how marketing can help them get out of those problems. And why having marketing metrics and having uh, indicators is even more vital because you can show them that there is value. the perception that a lot of senior leaders have in companies, if they're, if they're, is they don't fully understand the social media marketing world anymore. They if marketing is giving them metrics that really don't mean anything. why they see it as an expense. When I

Kathryn:

What are some of those metrics that you look for in a marketing strategy or a marketing report?

Ben:

return on the investment. of customer acquisition. costs, Return on the ad spend. if if spent 100, 000 on an advertising campaign, but grew in a market area five or 600, 000 start doing some metrics to show the return on those. are a little bit more tangible that I think a CFO can relate to because it impacts the bottom line.

Kathryn:

Yeah, and it is that, about that bottom line and return on

Ben:

right?

Kathryn:

But I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges with marketing is attributing ROI directly to every

Ben:

Yes, I would

Kathryn:

you get like a lot of measuring of last attribution. But, research shows and especially in B2B, but you always have to have multiple touch points before you get that final conversion. I mean, one of the highest converting pieces of content are case studies, because by the time somebody comes through to case study, they're not deciding if they have that problem, but they're deciding if they want to work with you. But there's a whole host of activities that have to happen before they get to reading your case study. I mean, they're not going to read your case study if they don't know who you are. One of the challenges I always butt into is yes, we can show ROI on, say, that case study. It converted, five clients, whatever it was. But it's more difficult to do it with, all the activities that got them to that point where they read that case study. So what about those more top of funnel activities? Do you care about any of those metrics? Or, are those metrics not so important for a CFO? What do you

Ben:

I think you definitely care about them. agree with you, they're not as clearly measured. So it's a different type of perspective, but I think what you have to try to connect it to is one is a long term investment of just branding your company or branding your product area that competitors are doing um, how it will pay off in the long run uh, R and D investment. We make R and D investments all the time, which they may or may not pan out they're not going to pan out for two or three years or longer often. there's a lot of what if scenarios in those calculations as well. of it depends on what you're selling and what your product is obviously, and where you are in the market and where you're going. If you're breaking into a new market. or three year plan is much more of an investment to get your name out there in a new community or a new area. see how, how well known you are in an area, geographic location to your competitors,

Kathryn:

Yeah, and sometimes especially with a lot of the clients I work with, they're like building their marketing for the very first time. So they don't necessarily have the data and the insights to say, Oh, this sort of activity gets us in front of your audience. So often I'm making best guesses based on my industry knowledge, my experience, but I don't have any data or metrics from their end to actually back it up until it gets going. So you're making educated guesses really a lot of the time on this is going to work and it's definitely more difficult to get budget sign off when you, don't have the metrics from the company itself on, this works for your particular brand. So as a marketer, some of the things that are likely, highly likely to work, but until they actually get going, it's quite difficult sometimes to prove that it will work before you've actually ever done any of it. For companies who are perhaps building their marketing for the first time and are thinking about marketing budgets for the first time. I mean, what kind of advice would you give them?

Ben:

they're building their marketing budgets for the first time, I think first advice I'd give them is, is your strategic plan who are your end customers and what do you want to do? then I would take your marketing plan line it up with where the company wants to go. I would look for research and look for where your customers are, who you're trying to sell to, why that will help support why you're making certain investments the way you are in your marketing plan. I think the key is and I think what happens for a lot of marketing departments and I've seen it over the years is they end up in their own silo. connect it with the rest of the company they end up in their own silo, then they become an overhead expense and they're not valued the same way. if they, if they, to where the company is going. owners want to go, where wants to go. end of the day, they want to achieve their strategic goal. to achieve in business to do and where they want to go. want to show how you partner up with them and how this is a parallel plan to help them achieve that. just stay in your silo keep doing what you've always been doing, it's going to get cut.

Kathryn:

What happens if you inherit a silo? it's one thing to set it up from the beginning to work closely with the rest of the company, but sometimes you come into a role and marketing's always been siloed from the rest of the company.

Ben:

were hired or you come in and there's a silo mentality, I think what I would say is why are they bringing you in? Are they recognizing that marketing has been a silo and they're not getting a good return on that? And that's why you're there today. maybe you have to show them how I'm here today because there's a culture shift. marketing in the past wasn't working. is what we're going to be doing different. And you have to present it differently to them. need to show the, the way marketing department is going to be operating going forward is different than the way it's been in the past. going back to what I said earlier, you're going to take the strategic plan and you're now going to take whatever marketing dollars you have line it up with that strategic plan.

Kathryn:

Yeah.

Ben:

doesn't change overnight. It'll take time, obviously, depends on how ingrained that silo is. that's where I would start one

Kathryn:

Yeah, and I think marketing often gets siloed because they make marketing sit underneath the CRO. So the CRO is having the board level conversations and speaking with the CEO and the other C suite, and marketing is only receiving that information either secondhand or not receiving it at all. In your perspective should marketing have a seat at the board level? Or like, how, how does the ideal kind of structure look so that you don't have those silos?

Ben:

think it depends on the size of the company and, where you are in, in the um, evolution of the company. also depends on who you're selling to and what your products are. I think marketing can play a bigger role in the company than other companies. Um, think that if they don't have a seat at the table, they should be very tuned into what's going on. think it's a mistake not to have them tuned in. Because, key player in executing over strategic plan of the company. if you have a poor marketing department or a fabulous marketing department, I think the differences could be dramatic on being able to achieve your strategic goals in the longterm.

Kathryn:

One of the things that I see a lot of companies do as well is they invest really heavily in sales, so you know, they'll have a 20, 30 person strong sales team, but then only have a one person marketing team. I mean, is that something that you've seen in your career? And what would your take on that be?

Ben:

seen that quite a bit in my career, and my recommendation is I'm necessarily think it should be 50 50, but I think there should be a correlation between the size of the marketing department the sales team to the overall company. depending on the company that I would probably want marketing to be a little bigger 20 to 1 ratio or 30 to 1 ratio. it also depends on what selling and who your customers are. If you're a B to B business you're selling to end users and customers and, marketing department could vary, you how you market could vary. the size of the department can fluctuate. met with some small businesses that have four or five people in their marketing department. to them, that's a big part of what they're doing. I'm saying, 20 million, under 25 million, they have a sizable marketing department and because that's a key function that they view it necessity to grow the business.

Kathryn:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's important to put marketing in place first before sales because it creates a demand that then gives the sales team something to work with. I mean, if you put in a really strong sales team first, and then

Ben:

It's The chicken or the egg.

Kathryn:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you end up with a sales team that like doesn't have any inbound leads. So are having to go out and hit the ground running and like really pound the pavement, which makes their job so much more harder.

Ben:

then nobody's heard of them. There's nothing out there in the community from a marketing perspective. So they're actually building it it becomes a very fragmented piece because now you just have a random group of people trying to do sales and marketing at the same time. And it's not a structured method of how you're going to the market. have a fragmented 20 random people and marketing the company at the same time. giving 20 different messages, what the company does and how they do it, opposed to one unified message. think that's inefficient and it's uh, make sense to me.

Kathryn:

If you do find yourself with a CFO who maybe doesn't believe in marketing or, is not super easy to work with, how can you maybe get them on on board? What advice would you have for CMOs listening on how they should work with their CFO?

Ben:

What I would try to do is, is break it down into terminology and things that the CFO is going to understand. like I said earlier, they want to make good investments. They're sitting in that seat to make good investments with the dollars they have. So I would break it down into it could help with revenue growth, how it could help with return on investment, it's an investment that could yield them more profit, how it's an investment that could help their income statement. not a cost center. And I say that and I know it's Harder to do just casually saying it, I would try to break it into terminology that they understand. you can do that, you would have a better chance of success in getting the budget through don't think a lot of CFOs right now maybe fully understand the social media marketing much anymore if they're not even on social media. assume that they understand the importance of some of that stuff. might need to explain it a little bit more. what happens sometimes is people in an area and they get expertise in the area and they think everybody understands it and everybody knows it. I think assume that they understand all the components of the marketing today. opposed to years ago

Kathryn:

And they'll like, Bring in an agency, or, make a junior marketing hire, or do something like that, not get the results that they want, and it takes, two to three times of them falling on their face for them to really realize. the value of a marketing strategy, but then at that point, they've been burnt a couple of times. So then they're even perhaps a little bit more resistant and, have a little bit of a mistrust of marketing when they do, realize that they do need to properly invest in it for it to achieve the right results. And it's quite a difficult like situation to be put in because you're already coming into a place where they're a little

Ben:

You're inheriting it. You're inheriting already a thought process that marketing doesn't work or it's not worth the investment. And that is a challenge. And often I've seen it where they'll hire a junior marketing person and that person for whatever reason doesn't accomplish the goals that they want, or they hire an advertising marketing company to do it and they don't achieve it. And they're quick to blame the marketing company as opposed to really look and could it be other things as well.

Kathryn:

times out of ten, it's because they don't have a larger strategy. So if you don't have a larger marketing strategy, it's impossible to know who you need or what you need. I mean, and they'll often bring in junior marketers because of they're trying to save costs, they're trying to do it cheaply, but they don't have anybody to actually nurture or support that junior marketing hire. So they're basically just bringing in somebody who doesn't have the expertise, which is why they're cheaper, and then leaving them to their own devices, which, I think is morally wrong on so many levels. You wouldn't hire, a junior finance person and expect them to perform at the same level as a CFO. So why do you hire a marketing executive and expect them to perform at the same level as a CMO? I mean, it doesn't make any sense, I think often because they're hesitant to invest properly, at a more significant level. They want to try something smaller, but without that bigger strategy, without that bigger vision, that something smaller is never really going to work. Or the other challenge that I see them do quite often is they try something once and then say it doesn't work. If you publish one blog, yes, it's not gonna work. You go to the gym once, yeah, you didn't lose weight. A lot of these things in marketing are about consistency, and having more of a long term vision and sticking to that plan so that, you do get the end results. But, yeah, it's difficult at that early stage to get them to see that sometimes.

Ben:

Yeah, especially nowadays, I think with social media, I think some people think if I post something on Monday, I should see results on Tuesday. And like you said, it takes time. It just doesn't happen overnight. And I think it's very easy to blame marketing people, whether it be a junior or a company, without fully understanding why a strategic plan didn't work.. And if they don't properly invest, like you said, you hire a junior, you're going to get what you hire. And yeah, you saved an extra couple of dollars, but what did it really cost you if you're missing major opportunities with revenue, customers, sales, and things like that.

Kathryn:

Yeah, I think there's something to be said for the cost of missed opportunity. And I mean, not fueling your company and setting it up for success. So before we wrap up today, do you have any final advice for CMOs on how they can best collaborate with CFOs and get their CFO, even if they're more of a conservative, traditional CFO, on their side?

Ben:

I think it's understanding who your CFO is and understanding their views and, and are they big into social media? Are they not big into social media? What is their background and understanding where they're coming from? So when you speak to them and you make your presentation, You can explain things to them so they understand it. If you have a CFO who's more traditional, who does nothing on social media, does nothing really in any of that world, I think the way you would present to them is different than if you have someone who's fully engaged in all that stuff and does it all the time and values and understands it a lot more. And then the second thing I would do is try to put in terms that they'll understand. And the terminology they'll understand. And that is how it impacts the income statement, how it impacts revenue, how it could help profitability, how it can be returned on their investment. If you do those two things, I think that'll help tremendously in selling your marketing plan. And then the last thing I would do is find out what the strategic plan is and be able to show how the marketing plan supplements it, and compliments it, and runs parallel with it, and works hand in hand, and I'll help achieve that strategic plan. Those are the three components that I would try to do when I'm explaining it to the CFO why it's a good investment. And if they're not working, change, if you discover that something's not working, be flexible and willing to change. I, I think there's more credibility often if someone says, look, we thought this, we were gonna go left, and we realize several months into it or whatever, that it's not working. Be flexible to change if you have to. Those are the recommendations I would have when I'm meeting with the CFO to try to get your marketing dollars or marketing budget approved.

Kathryn:

Yeah, I mean, I agree with all of that, but yeah, it is definitely easier said than done. And, your insights today have definitely helped shed some light on that, starting to break down some of those silos and give us some insight into how CFOs think and what your day to day is like. So thank you so much for

Ben:

you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Kathryn:

That's a wrap for this episode of Marketers Unleashed. Thank you for tuning in and diving deep with us into the unleashed world of marketing. We hope you're leaving with fresh insights, new ideas, and maybe even a few a ha moments to feel your next big move. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new episode. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a review or connect with us on LinkedIn to share your thoughts. And join in the conversation. Until next time, keep thinking bold, challenging the norms, and unleashing your inner marketer. After all, what's the worst that'll happen? I'm your host, Kathryn Strachan. Over and out.