Healthcare & Life Sciences Panel: The Budget Cut Question — What the C-Suite Thinks of Marketing
Updated: 3 days ago
A CFO, a Chief Growth Officer, and a CEO from healthcare and life sciences on how they judge marketing, where trust breaks down, and what makes a marketing investment worth renewing.
Meet the panel
Tony Proctor, CFO, Emerald Clinical
Jillian Tygh, Chief Growth Officer, Inspire
Viraj Narayanan, CEO, Cornerstone AI
Vidhi Goel, Sirona Marketing (Moderator)
About the panel
Marketing in healthcare and life sciences is supposed to be strategic, yet it’s often the first budget line to get cut. At our CMO roundtable last season, marketing leaders worked through why their metrics weren’t landing with leadership. This time, we asked the executives directly.
Tony, Jillian, and Viraj shared how they evaluate marketing, what erodes their confidence in a marketing leader, and what good collaboration looks like from their side of the table. The session closed with audience questions on pipeline pressure, measuring AI experiments, and what to do when leadership wants more leads right now.
“What gets cut is those things that can’t ultimately prove their value.” — Tony Proctor, CFO, Emerald Clinical
Key takeaways
Report outcomes, not activity. Executives act on pipeline, accounts, and return, not impressions and followers.
Show what you learned. Pair every result with what you’ll change next, and what the company loses if it doesn’t invest.
Stay connected to the commercial engine. Marketing, sales, BD, and product should be telling the same story.
Earn trust through time together. Walk your CFO through what the numbers mean, including their limits.
Key questions from the webinar
What does a CFO look for in a marketing report?
A: Evidence that marketing is reaching the right accounts and feeding pipeline and revenue, plus guidance on where to invest the next dollar.
Which marketing metrics should you report to executives?
A: Outcomes over activity: what was spent, what it returned, and the data behind it.
Why do marketing investments get cut?
A: Investments that can’t show a connection to business results go first, especially when marketing drifts away from sales and the rest of the commercial team.
How can marketing leaders build trust with a CFO?
A: Spend time with them. Walk through what the numbers mean, be upfront about attribution limits, and use that conversation to decide where to invest next.
Should an early-stage company prioritize positioning or demand gen?
A: Viraj Narayanan would choose positioning first, since demand gen amplifies a story that needs to be sharp already.
Want to learn more? Check out the CMO's pespective
Our CMO roundtable season explored why marketing metrics weren’t landing with leadership. Read the CMO report.
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