Do not Google it…you won’t find it. That fifth P of marketing is “PAISA”. As it is rightly said “everything boils down to numbers…. my friends”. If you cannot “quantify” you do not “qualify”.
How many times you as a marketing person complained or cribbed about finance department for non approval of budget saying “finance guys do not understand marketing”? Quite often!
But we have never tried to ask ourselves the same question other way round “do we understand finance”. The most obvious and outrageous question on your reddened face after this statement would be: why in the God’s name do we need to understand finance? Let me illustrate a simple example…there is a new liquid mosquito repellent in the market which is priced equivalent to a popular French perfume (>Rs2000). The next day’s newspaper says people flocking the departmental stores to buy the mosquito repellent. Would you believe it? You definitely need to be living in 23rd century to believe this. The reason: the product is not “worth it”.
“Worth” is the word that answers the question for knowing finance. If we understand worth at a personal level then why is there a difference in opinion at the corporate level? You might have the best product in the world and your emotional attachment may be greater than Romeo and Juliet’s affection for each other. But the ground reality is one cannot stretch the budget to market it beyond limits. It is a simple profit and loss analysis: the demand for the product, probable sales to be generated, margin expected on it. So whatever is left should be the ideal marketing budget…no rocket science. It is better to understand this and sort it out with the finance department rather than getting frustrated later on.
The expenses for marketing which do not generate profits later on are not marketing expenditure but CHARITY. And we are here to do business…..any second thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment