That survey highlighted that 63% of marketing leaders are now reporting increased pressure from CFOs - up from 52% the year before. 61% are facing more scrutiny from CEOs. Board-level pressure on marketing has risen 21% in a single year.
It reminds me of the days pf the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 - the CFOs then were pulling on the purse strings and cutting marketing spend.
The new data from this survey are not isolated data points. They’re a consistent signal about where the relationship between marketing and finance is heading.
Inside the businesses I work with, I see founders and CEOs who don’t fully trust the marketing numbers they are being presented with. The reporting is inconsistent - different dashboards showing different things, none of them telling a clear story about what marketing is actually contributing to revenue. In short, attribution is messy. So when the CFO asks what the marketing budget is producing, the honest answer is often “we’re not entirely sure.”
And when you can’t answer that question clearly, budgets don’t get cut to zero. They get frozen. With everything going on in the world right now, uncertainty about markets is piling on even more pressure for fear of dealing with another recession - and yes, I did say the R word. All the number are getting questioned even more that ever, and seeing as we are just into Q2 of a new calendar year, and Q1 of a new financial year in the UK, they get whittled down incrementally because nobody can make a confident case for investing more.
Unfortunately it’s a pattern I see in many businesses, marketing not being abolished, just marketing being eroded because the connection between activity and outcome has never been made explicit or given clear visibility to everyone involved, not just the C-suite.
The solution isn’t more reporting. More reporting usually means more numbers that don’t tell a story. What changes the conversation with a CFO is one clear line from marketing activity to revenue. Not impressions, not engagement rates, not MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) sitting in a pipeline that hasn’t moved in sixty days. A clean answer to the question “What did we spend, and what did it produce?” is the answer.
Most marketing teams can’t answer that question. And until they can, the budget conversation will always feel like a fight. Marketing that can’t show its contribution to revenue is always a cost. Marketing that can show it is an investment. The CFO treats those two things very differently.
This is the No.1 task of any modern day CMO. Put away the crayons and fluffy work around branding, get with it with the numbers. and create that clear line between activity and revenue that everyone can cheer about.
If the budget conversation in your business has been uncomfortable lately, the question worth asking isn’t how to make a better case for more money. It’s why the current spend is hard to defend.
If this is the conversation you’re having right now, we need to talk. Head over to www.anthodges.com and let’s start the conversation.
Source reference: The CMO Survey, September 2025 - Marketers Claim a Broader Role and Increased Influence Amid Pressures. 63% CFO pressure statistic.
