THE FINANCE RELATIONSHIP PLAYBOOK
There is no such thing as “performance marketing”. I am trying to kill that term, because all marketing performs. The label lets brand marketers off the accountability hook and traps direct-response marketers in last-click thinking.
Your CFO is not your adversary: they are your most important ally, and allies are made before the crisis. The finance playbook is how marketing earns and keeps its budget in the language finance trusts: deliver results that matter, measure what can be measured well, explain the rest logically, and treat procurement as a partner.
My entire career has been based on influence. I rarely controlled the channels, the budget allocation, or even the results I was meant to drive. This is the influence playbook.
Not to Be Confused With
📊 Reporting results
A dashboard of metrics is reporting. Proving value means showing finance, in their language, that marketing moved the business. Reports inform; proof persuades. If you need a data scientist and a microscope to determine whether you had impact, then you didn’t.
🤝 Procurement as gatekeeper
Most marketers treat procurement as the department of “no”. Include them early, share results, celebrate their work, and they become your bad cop in negotiations instead of your blocker.
The Four Principles
1Deliver Results That Matter
- The work must be consequential: would anyone care if it succeeded?
- Results must be big enough to matter at a business level
2Measure What Can Be Measured Well
- And make sure finance believes it
- I book proactive measurement reviews with the CFO: historically every two years, but they have become more frequent
- Be open about limitations. It builds more trust than pretending
3Logically Explain the Rest
- Earn trust on measurable things → then explain judgment calls on unmeasurable things
- Example: pulling out of a major conference could hurt brand in ways that can’t be measured
- Strong measurement credibility buys you space for judgment calls
4Treat Procurement as an Asset and Ally
- Include procurement early, share results, celebrate their work
- They are your ally in negotiation (the “bad cop” in good cop/bad cop)
The Growth Accounting Frame
This is the actual conversation I have with finance, with numbers. Net growth of a million users a month is made up of 15M acquisitions, 30M churn and 16M resurrections. My team is responsible for 10% of acquisitions and 10% of resurrections. The question is how you frame that:
− Churn (30M users/month)
+ Resurrections (16M users/month)
= Net Growth (1M users/month)
✗ The Wrong Way
“We drive 10% of acquisitions and 10% of resurrections.”
Sounds optional.
✓ The Right Way
“If you turned off paid marketing, the business would shrink by 2M users/month instead of growing by 1M.”
Sounds existential.
Frame as net contribution, not gross percentage.
The Layoffs Lesson (Case Study)
Consumer Marketing (had done the work)
- Already proactively optimised budget with finance
- Proved value to business partners
- Partners willing to cut their OWN budgets to protect marketing
Business Marketing (hadn’t done the work)
- Large programmes with few success metrics
- Business partners questioning value
- No one stood up for the team
Quick Action Checklist
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Schedule a proactive measurement review with finance
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Prepare growth accounting frame for your business
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Include procurement in your next agency selection
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Identify your top 3 measurable results and present them clearly
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List what you CAN’T measure and prepare logical explanations
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Ask finance for suggestions on improving measurement
Know Its Limits
My position: this playbook assumes you have measurable results to show, and not all good marketing is measurable on a finance-friendly timeline. Brand building compounds over years; “measure what can be measured well” strains when the payoff is a decade out. Be honest about that gap rather than inventing numbers. Finance respects “we can’t measure this precisely, here is our logic” more than false precision.
And influence has limits. In the 2022–23 layoffs, consumer marketing had done the work and still took roughly 20% cuts. The playbook does not make you immune; it makes you harder to cut. You will never win if you are standing alone.