What Happens When Finance Actually Understands Marketing

Most CFOs view marketing as a necessary expense they don’t fully understand. Taylor Thomson represents something different: a finance leader who actively shapes marketing strategy because he understands how it actually works.

This isn’t typical. Finance and marketing usually maintain polite distance, each side slightly suspicious of the other’s priorities. Finance wants predictable ROI. Marketing argues that brand building can’t be reduced to spreadsheets. The disconnect leads to chronic underinvestment in activities that matter most.

Thomson bridges this gap through unusual background. Before leading finance at WITHIN, he worked in business development and sales. He’s reported to heads of marketing and heads of sales in previous roles. This gives him credibility neither side can easily dismiss.

His approach starts with technology infrastructure. “I live and die by Salesforce,” Thomson says, positioning himself as “the annoying person that’s like if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” This insistence on systematic data capture drives some colleagues crazy. But it’s foundational to understanding what works.

WITHIN’s tech stack includes Outreach for sales engagement, Pathmatics for competitive intelligence on social media spend, and OpenSense for signature marketing. But Thomson emphasizes that tools alone don’t create results—they enable better decisions if used systematically.

One area receiving particular attention: client satisfaction measurement. Thomson spearheaded survey initiatives that achieve over 50% response rates quarterly—unusually high for B2B contexts. The company designed dashboards that make survey results accessible across the organization rather than locked in research reports nobody reads.

This operational approach extends to how WITHIN thinks about marketing ROI. Rather than demanding immediate returns from every campaign, Thomson advocates for longer time horizons that allow brand-building activities to demonstrate value.

“You need six months, nine months maybe, depending on your sales cycle,” he explains. “That’s a hard pill to swallow.” But organizations that maintain patient capital eventually see returns that short-term tactics can’t match.

Thomson also leads cross-functional projects with data science teams to develop internal databases using generative AI technologies like GPT-4. These tools help the agency surface insights from client data that would be difficult to identify manually.

The work represents how modern finance roles are expanding beyond traditional boundaries. CFOs who only manage budgets and accounting miss opportunities to shape how their organizations actually create value. Those willing to engage with marketing, operations, and technology can become strategic partners rather than just financial gatekeepers.