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Interdependence of Marketing and Finance

Prof. Priyanka Patel

There is a short story which I would like to narrate Marketing, Finance: Opposites attracted, went on a Date but Love never Happened!!! This in itself is a story. Yes, an incomplete story on Marketing and Finance. Two areas which are extreme opposites but never marry. Someone correctly pointed out that combination of marketing and finance is like a failed marriage. Even if you try to get into an arranged marriage, it will still fail because of lack of love.

Why I selected this topic is because the most difficult part of my teaching career is to teach finance to marketing students. The teaching part is still taken care by few years of experience that I have but actually making them understand importance of finance in marketing is the most challenging part. Why I say this? Since out of the 50 odd students, 50% take marketing because they don’t want any other specialization, 30% take marketing because someone else has taken it too, rest 20% are genuine students who have selected marketing BY CHOICE and not BY CHANCE. Similarly many of the Finance Post Graduates have job offers from big broking houses, but for Sales profile which they are hesitant to take it up.

Nick Araco, CEO and Founder of The CFO Alliance found in one of the research that a number of CFOs are spending more time directly interfacing with key customers or key client relationships than ever before. On the same lines, all strategic marketing decisions have to taken in alliance with the Finance Department. These are two inseparable departments always working separately.

So there is a tremendous need for an interface because in recent years there has been a call for more financial accountability in marketing. Traditionally marketing activities only focused the impact on sales and profitability of the company. But recently there have been studies which have tried to analyze impact of marketing activities on financial indicators like Return on Investment. This practice of measuring and analyzing marketing performance to optimize ROI is known as MARKETING ANALYTICS and its going to be the future. Also, with expansion of e-commerce business, Return on Marketing Investment has become the most important tool to measure the success of the marketing activities taken up by the company and hence DIGITAL MARKETING ANALYTICS plays a big role.

Hence, businesses are definitely going to prefer a candidate with broader horizons. So all you future Marketing Grads and Finance Grads buck up and face the reality. Marketing is going to be part and parcel of EVERY INDIVIDUAL. Even the CEO of the company has to be a good salesman. Isn’t it?