Fall. It’s that time again. All over the business world, marketing executives are rallying their strength to make it through the end of the year while planning for the next one. The objective is the same: Try to find the right mix of internal and external resources to reach the company’s goals without breaking the bank – or getting robbed on the way to it.

And all the while, the people on the finance side of the business are looking for ways to cut the budget even more. And so is the struggle of the business life: “It takes money to make money,” we tell our CFOs. “Yeah, how much?” they ask.

There’s a simple solution to this age-old conundrum: Marketing must position itself as a profit center, instead of a cost center. To achieve this goal, three important things must happen:

• Marketing has to have a seat at the board room table and be able to understand – in order to impact – the core business case of the company.
  
  
• Marketing must operate from a cost efficient model that makes sense to the CFO.
  
  
• There must be a direct and transparent line from expense to revenue.
  

The first issue here is largely a cultural one. Some companies value marketing enough to give it a seat at the table – while some just see it as a cost center, a “necessary evil.” Usually, when marketing doesn’t have a seat at the table, it’s often due to the finance and/or operations side of the business not understanding, or agreeing with, the model that the company has historically used for its marketing. CFO’s sense that marketing isn’t as efficient as it could be, but not being marketers themselves, they lack the language to articulate its shortcomings.

What we’ve found is that the Interactive Marketing Model makes sense both to the marketing and finance sides of a company. Why? Because there’s a high level of transparency and accountability built into the model. And with the level of transparency and accountability of Internet-enabled tools, like voice casting and rich e-mail, the line between expense and revenue becomes quickly evident.

In the nine years that Smith Content has been in business, a lot has changed – but our core philosophies haven’t: The message makes the sale and growth comes from targeted communication.

See, every growing company needs a Strategic Marketing Advisor – someone who can see the forest through the trees and act as a guide through the maze that is today’s marketing mix. Sometimes that’s all you need.

But, situationally, you need that advisor to create a MAP (Marketing Action Plan), which bread crumbs the ideas that have been generated and marks the path for the rest of the company and its creative and technology partners to follow. From there, as a company, you need to be able to conjure up the words that will light the way in front of you and allow others to find their path.

Finally, you need to have communication tools – like this blog – that narrowcast your message to tell your company’s story.