Why is it that marketing is sometimes considered a secondary or discretionary discipline in some companies? It’s the first departmental budget to get cut when times get tough. Everyone has an opinion, often critical, about the latest creative for a marketing campaign.

Part of this is the fault of marketer’s themselves. If they want their business function to be considered as essential as accounting, then marketers need to provide measurements showing ROI on marketing dollars spent. If they want to be as essential as sales, then they must demonstrate that recent sales originated with qualified leads that marketing generated for the sales team.

Marketing can only be taken more seriously if marketers take a disciplined, systematic approach to their function. That means articulating a marketing strategy that aligns with business strategy, developing and executing a marketing plan in support of the marketing strategy, measuring the results of each campaign and making adjustments to improve performance.

Marketing can’t just be creatively oriented; it also must be numbers oriented. Think in terms of measurement. In that regard, to be as essential as accounting, marketing may have to be more like accounting.