Just because your marketing and accounting teams are two different departments doesn’t mean they can’t work together. In fact, of all the teams within your company, these two are the most interlinked. The marketing team is in charge of the sales aspect of a business, managing and developing new strategies and driving profit. The accounting team, on the other hand, monitors the delicate finances of your business based on monthly, quarterly, or yearly reports. Yet, how exactly do these departments co-operate with one another, and are there ways to improve this collaboration?
Let’s find out.
Measuring Results
Without concrete results, there can be no real progress. Yet, how does a marketing team find out whether their latest social media campaign was successful or not? Simple — you ask the accounting department! After all, their main goal is to measure monetary gains and present them in great detail. How else would you know exactly which online tactics and strategies you ought to employ if you can’t quantify their success?
In short, when the accounting and marketing team work together, you get to use only tried and tested methods, proven many times over. You have a better focus on your objective and you know which content converts with your target audience, and how. Meaning, you invest less money on hopeless pursuits and more money on strategies that’ll pay off in the long run. It’s a win-win for both teams.
Price Assessment
Correct price assessment is an important — if not the most important — marketing decision your business can make. Simply put, you want to know the minimum acceptable price of a product or service so you can plan your marketing goals accordingly. Otherwise, you’ll be shooting in the dark. Besides, the optimal price tag also ensures that your business is going to make a profit by selling that product (at that price).
As an example, 99p Stores achieved great success by undercutting Poundland by just 1p! That’s all it took to make a profit.
Now, in order to make sound pricing decisions, you need to work closely with your accounting department and use the appropriate tools that they have at their disposal. Find the most prudent price tag and inadvertently bully your competition into submission!
Budget Readjustment
It’s hard to stay focused on your marketing efforts when you can’t keep proper track of your budget. This warrants the use of some clever accounting apps that allow you to view your cash flow in real-time. For instance, you can integrate smart Xero add-ons with your business to gain a better understanding of your overall finances, track inventory, and get automated reports. That way your marketing team can focus on the task at hand and readjust their budget — when the need arises — with only a few clicks.
This will save you both valuable time and money. Also, you won’t have to run your marketing campaigns on a shoestring budget indefinitely. In addition, you can keep good track of your expenses and funnel resources into more successful campaigns whilst pulling the plug on the less effective ones.
Product Design
How much time did it take to perfect self-driving cars, and at what cost? If not enough funds were allocated for this project, we wouldn’t have this technology right now; at least, not in its current state. The same is true for any prototype in any company across the globe. Depending on their level of involvement in the process of creation, the accounting department can heavily influence the finished product. It could mean the difference between a rushed half-baked idea and a stable sought-after product.
One example of this is the Dyson brand of vacuum cleaners. Its innovative design revolutionized the whole market to the point of defining what an exceptional vacuum cleaner should look like for years to come. Could this miracle have been accomplished by the marketing team alone? Not without proper financing, no.
Accurate Forecasting
Proper forecasting is essential in the world of marketing, and I don’t mean the weather! When the report comes in — from the accounting team — with the results of the previous marketing campaign, the marketing department can slowly start planning their next course of action. Looking at the supplied data, they can figure out exactly how, and where, to allocate their resources to get the best result. This means working together with the accounting team on a joint mission to establish a proper budget for future campaigns.
There’s nothing worse than running a brand-new marketing campaign only to realize that half-way through — you’re all out of funds. Unexpected things are bound to happen; for instance, more attendees show up than previously planned, higher demand for promotional material, and so on. The more these two teams co-operate, the better the forecasting; sometimes these incidents can even be avoided altogether.
In conclusion, to run a successful business, your marketing and accounting departments need to work in complete unison. That way you have better control over your resources and where you allocate them. Funneling them into the wrong campaigns could spell the end of your business.