For decades, marketers have been fluent in impressions, reach, CTRs, ROAS, share of search, click through & engagement rates — all of which are really just a glossary of activity, not impact. It used to be that dropping those acronyms in Boardroom meetings would get polite nods. No longer. When uncertainty reigns, corporate budgets begin to reflexively tighten, and marketing budget reductions typically follow in the ensuing quarters. I think one of the key reasons why marketing budgets are always first on the chopping block is because the metrics we share are a measure of effort, and these metrics usually translate poorly into business value. And when times are tight, business value is the language CEOs and CFOs speak every day.
As the CEO of a digital marketing agency known for its data fluency, I’ve seen firsthand how hard it can be to prove marketing’s value in terms that resonate outside the marketing bubble. Not because the impact isn’t there — but because the way we frame it often misses the mark.
It’s time we change the conversation. That starts by changing the metrics.
The CFO doesn’t care about Click-Through Rate
Let’s set the record straight: I’ve yet to meet a CFO that is anti-marketing. But nearly everyone I’ve known has been decidedly fuzziness-phobic. Their world is built on measurable ROI, capital efficiency, and sustainable margins — not on “likes,” “shares,” or even ROAS without context.
According to Incubeta’s “Roadmap to Securing Investment” , a persistent challenge marketers face is the perception that marketing is a cost center, not a growth engine . That’s often because our reporting skews toward short-term channel metrics, lacks financial rigor, and doesn’t align to company-wide goals.
So how do we fix it?
We start by understanding what matters to our key internal audiences, and shifting our metrics to those that intellectually-align with how they track the health of their P&L or business. And we do so without comprising our need as marketers to have metrics that work for the tactical, necessary aspects of managing campaigns across channels, formats and funnel position.
Marketing metrics that actually matter (to the boardroom)
To reposition marketing as a profit center, we need to speak in metrics the C-Suite trusts. Based on my experience, I’ve found that the following five metrics are ones that every marketer should master:
1: Contribution Margin
This is your scoreboard metric. Contribution Margin = Net Revenue – Variable Costs (COGS, ad spend, agency fees, etc.). It shows how much marketing directly contributes to covering fixed costs and growing profit. Tie your channel or campaign performance to this, and you’re no longer reporting cost per click — you’re reporting profit per customer.
Translation for the Boardroom: “This channel mix drove $X in contribution margin this quarter — covering 68% of our fixed cost base.”
2: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is defined as Total Marketing Spend / Number of New Customers Acquired, and forecasting CAC at different budget levels allows finance to model cash flow, hiring plans, and inventory requirements. It becomes especially powerful when paired with Lifetime Value (LTV).
Boardroom Soundbite: “We’re acquiring customers at $47 each — and we can predict this cost within 10% variance at scale.”
3: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV / LTV)
Used correctly, LTV is the north star of profitability. The key is to report net LTV (i.e., after COGS and variable costs), not just revenue per user. Predictive LTV modeling — ideally at the individual level — allows marketing to prioritize quality over quantity in customer acquisition.
Boardroom Soundbite: “We’re shifting targeting to focus on high-LTV segments, not just low-cost converters.”
4: CLV to CAC Ratio
One of my favorites, this is your internal ROI metric. A ratio of 3:1 (LTV:CAC) means you’re generating $3 in value for every $1 spent acquiring a customer.
Translation to your CFO: “This is our marketing equivalent of return on capital. We’re compounding customer value at a 3.5x return.”
5: Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
While contribution margin and CAC/CLV ratios demonstrate past and current efficiency, there’s another financial metric that bridges the gap between strategy and capital allocation — and that’s IRR or Internal Rate of Return. In corporate finance, IRR is the go-to tool for evaluating investments in assets, technology, or new product lines. So why not apply it to marketing infrastructure? Here’s an example of how:
Imagine you’re proposing a $500,000 investment in new marketing technology — say, an advanced Customer Data Platform (CDP) or upgraded analytics suite. The benefits may include:
- 15% improved CAC efficiency due to better targeting
- Faster time-to-insight reducing decision cycles
- Improved CLV via personalization
You forecast the uplift in margin, model the cash flows over 2–3 years, and calculate the IRR of that investment. If the IRR exceeds your company’s hurdle rate (say 12–15%), the case is clear: this isn’t a “cost” — it’s a return-generating asset.
Boardroom soundbite: “We modeled a 3-year IRR of 29% for this investment in martech and analytics resourcing. That’s higher than most capital projects in the business.”
Internal Rate of Return (IRR) can be useful across all aspects of the Marketing function, including:
- Hiring decisions: Does investing in a data scientist or marketing analyst yield measurable lift in revenue per campaign?
- Agency partnerships: Can a performance-based retainer model deliver an IRR higher than traditional fees?
- Creative testing budgets: What’s the IRR of adding an extra $200K for asset variation to improve conversion rates?
- AI adoption: IRR can quantify returns on AI-driven personalization, automation, and decision-making tools.
When you present marketing investment options using IRR — with sensitivity to timing, risk, and ROI — you’re not asking for budget: you’re making a case for capital allocation, and this is something that every CFO and bean counter in your organization understands implicitly.
Shift the system: from reporting to modeling
This level of financial fluency requires more than new metrics — it demands a rethink of your measurement ecosystem. According to the “Marketing Profit Center KPI” framework , the most effective marketing teams:
- Build financial models that tie marketing activity to future cash flow
- Connect customer, campaign, product, and operational data
- Use media mix modeling and incrementality testing to isolate profit-driving levers
- Track daily and weekly KPIs tied to contribution margin, not just traffic or conversions
- Inform inventory planning and pricing decisions with demand signals from media
In short: marketing becomes part of the business operating system — not just a downstream support function.
Don’t get trapped in the short-term
While quick wins are satisfying, they rarely build the kind of social capital that comes from long-term, sustained performance. Over-indexing on near-term metrics like ROAS and particularly last-click conversions can lead to long-term stagnation (via an addiction to bottom of funnel spend allocation and over-reliance on performance marketing), wasted budget, and poor investment cases.
The more we anchor our strategies to incremental profit and long-term value, the more credibility and therefore social capital we build with our finance colleagues. By using their financial lexicon and language to communicate our marketing outcomes, we are shifting their perception of us (and by extension the marketing function) from a cost center to profit center on their P&L. Whenever they are scanning down the G&A list of expenses, they’ll see the marketing budget as somewhat ‘misplaced’, because they will know that every dollar allocated yields a clear multiple in return.
This has been proven out in Incubeta’s research, which shows that companies that shift from short-termism to long-term value creation as measured by financial-focused metrics see stronger alignment, greater marketing adoption, and — no surprise — bigger budgets.
A final thought...
Don’t just prove marketing works, prove that it’s worth investing in: Marketing has never had more power to drive growth — or more scrutiny over its spend. We don’t win that battle by shouting louder. We win by speaking the right language: the language of value, capital, and return. Metrics like CAC and LTV build trust. Contribution margin earns respect. But metrics like IRR make the case for future investment.
It’s time to stop reporting activity and start modeling outcomes. When marketing learns to speak fluent CFO, it becomes more than a function — it becomes a force multiplier.
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To gain more insights into proving the value of marketing, download our latest whitepaper – ‘From Cost, to Profit’ and identify the steps your business needs to take to turn marketing into a recognized source of profit.
