3 ways finance and marketing can be successful partners (and not just coexist)

I’ll be honest: before I joined Rillet, I was a marketing skeptic. Could someone seeing a billboard or LinkedIn post actually show up in the numbers — and justify the budget?

I’ve seen finance butt heads with marketing more than any other department throughout my career. Finance sees careless spend; marketing sees blockers. But after joining a startup where marketing falls under my remit, I’ve come to see how powerful it really is — and how much it influences buying decisions, even for someone like me who’s grounded in numbers and logic.

So how can finance and marketing get on the same page to build a productive partnership? Here are three keys:

Explain how marketing decisions impact financials

Disagreements between finance and marketing often come down to a lack of understanding. Finance should educate GTM teams on the downstream impacts of seemingly small decisions, like signing a contract with unfavorable terms or renewing an agreement to sponsor a small tradeshow without pre-approval.

Examples can really drive this home. At Rillet, CAC payback period is our north-star marketing metric. When a campaign exceeds our target CAC, I show the math: how it hits the bottom line and reduces cash runway. I’ve even taken this a step further, showing how this would affect our valuation and thereby the value of employees’ equity. All of this builds mutual understanding and trust.

Default to ‘yes, if’ instead of ‘no’

Many think finance is allergic to spend. That’s not true. In fact, we love to spend money if there’s proof it’s driving results for the business. Just like a marketing leader, finance wants to see the business grow — but we’re looking for sustainable growth.

Shift the posture from “no, it’s not in budget” to “yes, if you can show expected outcomes and a path to assess and learn quickly.” I give marketing the leeway to take big swings with certain guardrails: they need to outline a clear hypothesis, set a defined test period, and explain the metrics they’ll use to determine whether we double down or move on. If someone presents an idea that feels like a smart bet but the size of the investment makes it riskier, we often agree to fund a smaller version first and go from there.

Work to understand marketing’s thinking and goals

Just as marketing is often not attuned to how their work moves the numbers, a lot of finance professionals don’t understand the rationale or goals behind marketing campaigns. Especially — wait for it — brand marketing campaigns (every controller reading this just shuddered). Like I said, I was in that camp just 18 months ago.

While marketing may take the lead here, finance should take the time to build a real partnership with this team. Ask questions, understand their thinking, and define what “good” looks like before launch. Asking for KPIs is totally fair, but know not everything will have perfect attribution and you may have to settle for proxies in some cases. For brand awareness, that could be mentions on sales calls, direct traffic lift, press mentions, or increased social engagement.

Seeing the results firsthand

At the start of this year, our co-founder and I committed to posting consistently on LinkedIn and the results honestly shocked me. It sparked conversations with companies that became some of our biggest customers and increased Rillet’s brand awareness among our target audience in a big way.

I realized that if you're not telling your story, either somebody else is or no one is hearing it. Marketing definitely matters. And when finance brings the same rigor and curiosity we apply everywhere else, we don’t just fund marketing — we amplify its impact.