Successful Marketers Are Busy Learning A New Language

That language is finance. And the reason marketers are learning the language of finance is that it is increasingly the only language that upper management understands. Ditto for boards of directors. If marketing is going to enjoy a seat at the C-suite level of organizations, they need to be able to talk in terms of accountability for their budgets and the measured results of their efforts. That is the conclusion of a new study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

According to that research, marketing executives are increasingly relying on “sophisticated numerical models” to measure, report and affirm the efficacy of their programs and their marketing mix allocations. Nowadays, the operative words for upper management affirmation seem to be: “Prove it.” Many of the marketers who are using this language of finance to justify their marketing spending reported that they are expecting their marketing budgets to rise in the next year.

It appears that senior-level marketers are also no longer separating return-on-investment activities from brand-building efforts. In other words, what works and returns the highest sales or number of leads, can be healthy indicators of a growth in brand equity.This makes sense. Brand equity means resonating with the customers’ wants and needs to create affinity for the company and/or its products and services. The language of finance provides a clear and compelling way to demonstrate that effective communication is taking place. Actually, this concept isn’t all that far from an old, now famous slogan for the Benton & Bowles advertising agency back in 1974: It’s Not Creative Unless It Sells. The difference, of course, is there are now many rapid and sophisticated ways to find out if marketing and advertising is working and how well.

The language of finance is rapidly becoming the lingua franca of marketing. I’m not saying that is necessarily 100% healthy for the marketing function, but it is nevertheless the reality. Marketers who want the funding needed to grow their programs had better become fluent in this new tongue if they are to engender the management support that will be needed for success.