The Relationship Between Marketing and Accounting

Mar­ket­ing and account­ing teams rep­re­sent two seem­ing­ly oppo­site realms of a com­pa­ny; but in real­i­ty, they’re speak­ing to the nec­es­sary par­ties in the lan­guages that their respec­tive lis­ten­ers understand. 

Let’s take a look at how marketing and accounting work together in any company and how to maximize the fruitfulness of their relationship.

Campaign ROI, repeatability and timing

When mar­keters com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with the account­ing depart­ment, they work togeth­er to cap­ture the costs of cam­paigns and ana­lyze them. While a mar­ket­ing team might point to con­sumer con­ver­sions, the account­ing team might point to an ROI that is not impres­sive enough to jus­ti­fy the ini­tial cost. If the dia­logue is open, mar­keters might make a case for repeata­bil­i­ty and future ROI, for which account­ing can find suf­fi­cient bud­get and opti­mal tim­ing for funding. 

When it comes to tim­ing, the con­ver­sa­tion between account­ing and mar­ket­ing is key. Account­ing has access to all depart­men­tal needs and sched­uled invest­ments. When a mar­ket­ing team has a cun­ning new idea or strate­gic devel­op­ment in spring 2019, account­ing can point the infea­si­bil­i­ty due to anoth­er department’s needs dur­ing that same time frame. By com­mu­ni­cat­ing the over­lap, mar­ket­ing under­stands the lack of bud­get. Togeth­er, mar­ket­ing and account­ing can find a win­dow of tim­ing that works both for the mar­ket­ing objec­tive and for the company’s bank account. 

Communicating through returns and results

Unless you have expe­ri­ence in sev­er­al com­pa­ny depart­ments, it can be dif­fi­cult to prompt­ly under­stand the val­ue and ROI in each team’s projects, strate­gies and efforts. 

By com­mu­ni­cat­ing the logis­tics of mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, mar­keters invite the account­ing team to see the return on invest­ments through increased clients and brand recog­ni­tion. Account­ing may not oth­er­wise have tak­en the mar­ket­ing cam­paign seri­ous­ly and can now under­stand how much busi­ness the strat­e­gy brings back to the company. 

Con­verse­ly, not every mar­ket­ing cam­paign is a home run and not all mar­keters are quick to see the finan­cial deficit they incur when a cre­ative plan goes awry. Some­times, accoun­tants need to ana­lyze costs and sales so that mar­keters under­stand why an answer is yes or no.

If there is a cam­paign a mar­ket­ing team wants to exe­cute or recre­ate, the account­ing depart­ment can point out how a sim­i­lar cam­paign or the pre­vi­ous­ly exe­cut­ed ver­sion did not bring in high enough num­bers to jus­ti­fy a repeat. By see­ing the cost of the cam­paign on the com­pa­ny, the mar­ket­ing team under­stands the neces­si­ty of pur­su­ing ROI-focused strategies. 

Under­stand­ing the rela­tion­ship between account­ing and mar­ket­ing is impor­tant because it har­mo­nizes two branch­es of your busi­ness that all too often for­get how intri­cate­ly they are inter­wo­ven and how work­ing togeth­er can improve the busi­ness from both teams’ endeavors. 

Devel­op­ing a healthy long-term rela­tion­ship between account­ing and mar­ket­ing can help your com­pa­ny grow with open, trans­par­ent dia­logue and a more holis­tic under­stand­ing of all busi­ness endeavors. 

The experts at Rosy Strate­gies can guide your mar­ket­ing and account­ing depart­ments through a con­sul­ta­tion and set some begin­ning strate­gies for work­ing more advan­ta­geous­ly together.