The Marketing without finance is like Holmes without Watson. You can’t get respectable results from your campaigns if the two don’t work together.
Why? Because marketing requires sufficient spending to support its strategy, the finance department must understand the plan’s benefits to justify and unlock the investment.
Whether you have a large company with structured departments or a small company with people running the show, the traditional view is that marketing wants to spend. In contrast, finance wants to save, creating an “us versus them” situation.
It’s not healthy for business. Marketing and finance must share the same business vision and appreciate the value of the other. So that they can work together to
- Track sales trends
- Accurately budget campaigns
- Allocate resources efficiently
All of the above is critical to financial success as the company achieves a cohesive strategy where growth occurs in the right areas. The key to achieving this result lies in effective communication and a deeper understanding.
Create An Alliance Between Finance And Marketing
Success can only happen when advertising and finance understand each other, understand the overall business goals, and how working together can drive exceptional results.
Both parties must have the first meeting. To eliminate the perception that finances are there to block spending or that marketing is not adequately measured against performance.
This can be achieved by combining your knowledge of the business to suit:
- What areas of the business do you both want to grow?
- How will the growth plan fit into the overall business plan?
- What does growth mean in terms of impact on profitability?
- How much is suitable to spend to achieve this growth?
With this data in hand, finance can justify and plan for initial expenses while also considering the impact on the rest of the business to support growth. And marketing has the support to move forward with a worthy strategy.
These inter-departmental meetings must be regular. So that communications are not broken, and both parties can react quickly to strategic changes.
Finances contribute to marketing strategy
To get your finance team or manager emotionally invested in marketing, let them add their input to the strategy. Ask marketing to ask them:
- What are the ideal growth goals for the business in terms of customers and sales?
- It needs to be disbursed to achieve this growth?
- What services or products are the most profitable?
- How is customer spending distributed among your products or services?
- Which customers or regions are the most profitable?
This has a great added benefit: Finance has a unique view of your customers, products, or services. They can use this information to help marketers create more targeted and profitable campaigns.
Finance and marketing can use this association to increase performance and improve job satisfaction.
The marketing department earns:
- A budget to spend as they see fit. They don’t have to ask for approval repeatedly.
- Clear deadlines so they are not forced to meet unreasonable deadlines.
- Autonomy to make their own choices once the budget is approved.
- An sympathetic of the results the business expects from the start.
- The ability to track results and ensure your plans evolve accordingly as they progress.