There are many important areas of a business. These areas are very familiar with the natural give-and-take between them, but none seem to struggle quite as much as the departments of finance and marketing.

Return on Investment

The goals that the financing department abides by are to save money for the business, and invest money into good opportunities. Most investments have a clear return on investment, but marketing gets a little more tricky than static percentages.

Marketing is a dynamic investment. This means that it is not always easy to put marketing efforts into dollars and percents. Even tools like Google Analytics can fail to express the full return on investment that marketing can bring to an organization.

While many tools like Google Analytics and the Facebook Ad Manager can measure impressions, clicks, and conversions, they still may fall short. For example, a user may see and click on your company’s Facebook ad, but not convert. They may however, convert later by going directly to your site and making a purchase.

Marketing does not get any recognition for this conversion. Instead, it appears to be a wasted impression and click, and a separate organic purchase. This is why individuals with a finance perspective can view marketing and advertising as a waste of money.

Finding a Solution

The first step to solving this problem is creating awareness within your organization. Try to bring a fresh perspective to each department. Help everyone understand that they are not competing against each other, but instead are supposed to be working together to achieve the overall goals of the business.

An article by MarketingWeek.com discussed many of these same issues. They spoke with Zoe Clapp, the CMO of UKTV, who gave great insight into how their company handles this kind of tough situation.

UKTV decided to fully integrate a member of their finance team into the marketing team. This way, the two departments could work together in meeting important objectives.

Clapp spoke positively about the experience by saying, “Rather than us coming to finance blank with this list of ‘here’s what we want to do, give us a chunk of money’, finance had been all the way through the process and we found that really helpful. That made us come to a better and more rounded decision.”

Final Observations

Of course, this solution is not one-size-fits-all. There may be other ways in which your company can overcome these kinds of interdepartmental hurdles.

The major takeaway from this is to remember to maintain good communication. Keep everyone on the same page and in the same boat. You want to absolutely avoid any kind of war between two of your biggest internal departments, and effective communication is the best way to do it.

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