The infamous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys lasted 13 years. But that’s small potatoes compared with the ever-present tension between marketing and finance departments. The two functions have long had a fractious relationship, with each casting a suspicious glare at the other for failing to understand their value to the organization. This wariness and, at times, outright hostility, cuts across all industries and company sizes. Here are some ways to end the grudge match and bring marketing and finance closer together:

1. Identify shared objectives. According to an article by strategic communication consultants Jonathan Knowles and Richard Ettenson in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, marketers “often fail to realize that the measures of value they find important — like customer awareness, preference, brand equity, and loyalty — don’t translate easily for the finance types.” But even if you can’t put a definite dollar value on brand equity, you can frame the impact that marketing activities have on shared financial objectives — organic growth, cash flow and profits, reducing earnings risk, etc. Keeping loyal customers happy, for example, reduces earnings volatility.
2. Agree on common terms. One of the biggest disconnects between marketing and finance is terminology. “For example, marketing and finance often have two very different ideas of what return on investment means,” says Brian Giamo, managing partner of Channel Economics, a consulting firm in Evanston, Ill. “Simply establishing a common definition for ROI may save significant miscommunication and potentially wasted marketing dollars.”
3. Conduct a financial marketing audit. Simply put, this is a comprehensive review of your company’s integrated marketing environment, objectives, strategies, and activities, with an eye toward the factors that play a key role in financial decisions. Waltham, Mass.–based marketing consultants Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg suggest that the review include market changes that could affect profitability; whether marketing is achieving its stated financial goals; the extent to which financial executives are involved in marketing strategy development; and the current value of customer and brand equity for each brand in the product portfolio.
4. Consider a liaison. Appoint someone on the marketing team to project, track, and measure marketing performance, and have this person work closely with finance on planning, budgeting, and measuring. “In some cases it may make sense to ask finance to assign a financial analyst to work alongside the marketing team,” Giamo says.
5. Be transparent both ways. Implement processes and systems that give marketing a window into the specific product lines and customer segments that yield the highest levels of profitability. At the same time, giving finance access to campaign performance metrics may help persuade them to increase the budget for specific marketing tactics.
6. Ask finance to weigh in. Choose a project where your finance team can incorporate its input early; then share recognition.
7. Find natural opportunities to work together. “Perhaps there is a group that marketing would like to target, but they’ve been shut out because of restrictive credit rules,” says Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia Business School in New York. “See if finance can help unblock those barriers.”
8. Walk in their shoes. Short-term job rotations lasting anywhere from a few days to a few months can create well-balanced managers and bridge relationships between functional groups, says Michael Kanazawa, chief executive of Dissero Partners, a consulting firm in Oakland, Calif.
9. Project realistic returns. Finance likes projections. However, projecting unachievable or unrealistic returns can damage marketing’s credibility. Marketing should consider factors outside its sphere of influence, such as the cost of resources required to drive campaign responses to close sales. Factoring in operational metrics, such as lead or sales conversion rates, is key in providing realistic projections.
10. Two words: risk mitigation. Marketing can win points by quantifying any possible downsides and suggesting ideas to mitigate them. “Slow sales response time or lack of sales follow-up is often the cause of wasted marketing investments,” Giamo says. “Marketing can show finance that it has worked with the sales organization to establish the processes and technology to improve sales follow-up.”

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