Marketing employees often find themselves in the unique position of being at the centre of activities which require the cross-departmental involvement of almost every department within a business. 

We:

Generate hot leads for the sales team

Support those who work in product development to launch new products to the market

Work closely alongside the customer experience team to improve customer satisfaction and enjoyment of products and services

But what about the finance department?

If the Chief Marketing Officer is coming to the meeting, the Chief of Finance needs to be there too. Because if not, we’re not going to make any progress.

Zach Morrison, CEO – Tinuiti

Finance = Funding for the Marketing Department

While the cost of launching a viral ad campaign or working with popular influencers can do wonders for brand loyalty and product sales, these marketing activities come at a price.

When there is a lack of communication between the marketing and finance departments, such investments may seem like a quick way to put a large dent in the budget.

Working together to calculate and revise the potential for growth would be a much better way to work out what’s best for the organisation as a whole.

Make your spending habits clear

The finance department is in control of which departments get which level of funding.

While needing a £100,000 yearly budget to help build brand awareness may be perfectly justifiable to those working on the marketing side of things, the finance department don’t see the day-to-day activities which make it worthwhile and so could easily look towards decreasing the budget in future years if the investment doesn’t appear to be justified on paper.

In order to ensure the resources to allow you to fulfil your role to the best of your ability, it’s best to ensure a tight partnership between the Chief Marketing Officer and head of the finance function.

Creative overspending

As marketers, it’s our job to get creative and come up with ideas which will help to get our brand noticed.

While having the creative licence to create something with an impact is one of the greatest aspects of our job, sometimes we need someone to reign us in a little and bring us back down to reality when it comes to budget control. 

Big financial mistakes on behalf of a marketer could lead to a career-ending punishment.

So while it would be great to afford to have Hollywood movie stars showing off every product we are involved in launching, that’s simply not the reality for many organisations.

It is vital that we allow the finance team to come in and help us to find more cost effective alternatives to some of our bright ideas.

So, while the relationship between the marketing and finance teams may not have appeared obvious at first, the reality is that organisations in which the two work in close partnership with one another will have the power to make their brand thrive.

It is more important than ever to have Chief Marketing Officers sitting at the boardroom table.