Marketing without finance is like Holmes without Watson. You can’t get good results from your campaigns if both are working in silos.
Why? Because marketing requires enough spend to support their strategy and finance (whether that’s a team or one person holding the purse strings) needs to understand the benefits of the plan to justify and release the investment.
In this blog, we team up with Helen Fleet – our trusted business partner and financial strategist for Managing Directors – to show you how igniting powerful collaboration between marketing and finance will boost your business’ growth.
Clash of the Departments
Whether you own a big business with structured departments or a small business with individuals running the show, traditionally, the perspective is that marketing wants to spend while finance wants to save and this creates an ‘us v.s them’ mentality.
This is unhealthy for business. Marketing and finance need to share the same commercial vision and appreciate each other’s value. So they can work together to:
- Track sales trends
- Budget accurately for campaigns
- Allocate resources efficiently
All of the above is essential for financial success because the business gains a cohesive strategy where growth happens in the right areas. The key to achieving this result lies within effective communication and a deeper level of understanding.
Creating an alliance between finance and marketing
Success can only happen when marketing and finance understand each other, the overall business objectives and how working together can galvanise outstanding results.
The following tips will help you achieve this:
A monthly meeting that matters
Both sides need to have an initial sit-down meeting. To strip away perceptions that finance is there to block expenditure or that marketing isn’t appropriately measured on performance.
This can be achieved by combining their knowledge of the business to agree on:
- Which areas of the business they both want to grow
- How the growth plan will dovetail in the overall business plan
- What growth means in terms of profitability impact
- How much is appropriate to spend to achieve this growth
With these particulars hashed out, finance can justify and plan for the initial spend while factoring in the impact on the rest of the business to support growth. And marketing have the backing needed to move forward with a valuable strategy.
Note: both teams or individuals need to be realistic in terms of the return they expect from that investment and the timescale in which they will achieve it.
These inter-departmental meetings need to be a regular occurrence. So communications don’t break down and both sides can respond to strategic changes quickly.
Finance contributing to the marketing strategy
To get your finance team or director emotionally invested in marketing, allow them to add their input to the strategy. Have marketing ask them:
- What are the ideal growth targets for the business in terms of clients and sales?
- What is appropriate to spend to achieve this growth?
- Which services or products are the most profitable?
- How is the client spend split across your products or services?
- Which clients or regions are the most profitable?
This has a huge added benefit: finance have unique insight into your clients, products or services. They can use this knowledge to help marketers create more targeted and lucrative campaigns.
Share success stories
Without evidence of marketing success, a financial director will simply see the expenditure as a vacuum on the business’ profits. And then they’ll do what they’re paid to do: cut costs to save money.
Give marketing the opportunity to share the success they gain from campaigns. Like data on how much website traffic was generated from last month’s campaign, and the subsequent percentage increase in sales. Or how creating and advertising a free tool drove new customer enquiries.
That way, finance have the evidence they need to justify a healthy marketing budget.
The far-reaching benefits of teaming up
Finance and marketing can use this partnership to catapult performance and improve job satisfaction.
Marketers gain:
- a budget to spend how they wish – they don’t have to repeatedly ask for approval
- clear timescales so they are not under pressure to deliver to unreasonable deadlines
- autonomy to make their own decisions once the budget is approved
- an understanding of the results the business expects from the start
- an ability to track the results and ensure their plans evolve accordingly as they progress
Finance gains:
- certainty of expenditure so they can accurately budget for the business’ cashflow
- extra time as they don’t need to constantly review expenditure when the initial budget is set
- agreed KPIs from from which they can measure success
- the ability to plan changes for the rest of the business when growth is delivered
All of these benefits boost the business in dramatic ways:
- The relationship between the two teams or individuals is improved, driving their performance and the value they bring to the business
- Owing to a cohesive strategy, growth for the business becomes much more certain and future-proof
- Appropriate funding in place means planned growth is adequately supported
In other words, everyone wins. But to get to this sweet spot, it’s essential that you have a solid marketing strategy in the first place.
Need help building a lucrative marketing strategy?
We’ve got you covered. Get in touch here.
