Kelly Waltrich, Author at Intention.ly

Intention.ly

Designed Marketing Engine

Author: Kelly Waltrich

Why Sales Can’t Own Marketing

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Picture this: there’s a sales leader who thrived in a different era of selling—when relationships, a full Rolodex, and a great golf game could carry the quarter. He built a strong career on that model.  

But today’s environment looks different. The tools and processes that power modern revenue teams feel foreign to him. 

Meanwhile, his marketing team is fully dialed in, generating qualified leads, creating content that educates and converts, and feeding a data-driven funnel. They’re operating in a motion built for how buyers make decisions now.

But he’s still relying on the playbook that worked years ago. He’s not comfortable in HubSpot, isn’t sure how to collaborate with a modern marketing engine, and doesn’t have a clear sense of where leads are coming from or how to follow up with them strategically.

In leadership meetings, that disconnect can morph into a narrative that sales are down because “marketing isn’t delivering enough good leads.” 

It’s not that he’s unwilling or isn’t working hard. But the sales motion he mastered no longer translates to the way growth happens today. And when the person presenting the data is doing so through an old lens, the whole story can get distorted.

The Accountability Problem

When sales owns a firm’s marketing function, accountability breaks down entirely. The organization loses clarity about what’s happening in the funnel, and marketing becomes the scapegoat for sales teams that aren’t delivering. 

I’ve built my entire career on the unshakeable belief that marketing needs a real seat at the table. A healthy business depends on productive tension between sales and marketing; it’s the tension that creates balance.

Both sides need Service Level Agreements that answer these questions: 

  • What counts as a qualified lead? 
  • How many leads will marketing deliver? 
  • How many opportunities will sales convert? 
  • What does the handoff process look like?

Data needs to be shared transparently at the leadership level so everyone is operating from the same reality.  

Navigating an Agency Partnership

Sales shouldn’t own the marketing function period, whether it’s an in-house team, an outsourced agency partnership, or some combination of the two. With sales at the helm of an agency relationship, the same accountability issues arise. 

I’ve seen our team pressured to chase short-term lead volume instead of building sustainable growth. Blamed for a lack of demos booked when half the sales team was on vacation. Scapegoated when results are lackluster because fresh campaigns haven’t been reviewed and approved.

Ideally, an in-house marketing lead owns the agency relationship. They understand the strategy, the timelines, and the metrics that matter. In the absence of an internal team, the firm’s CEO should be involved in and very aware of the relationship, holding both sales and the agency equally accountable for results. 

CEOs: This One’s on You

I’ve talked a lot about sales and marketing, but leadership needs to be deeply involved in understanding what both functions are doing. 

When your salesperson claims marketing isn’t delivering, stop. Dig into the data. Ask hard questions:

  • Where’s the actual breakdown? 
  • Is engagement low? 
  • Is interest weak? 
  • Are the leads poor quality? 
  • Are the opportunities not converting?
  • Or is everything working fine and the problem is effort, the actual push to close?

Don’t let one side control the narrative. Look at the full funnel.

Build a More Inclusive Table

Full disclosure: I’m biased. I spent my career as a CMO. Now I sit in a seat where I do more sales than marketing, but I’ve watched this pattern play out too many times. It’s outdated, it’s destructive, and it needs to end.

CEOs, arm yourself with better information. Ask better questions. Make sure marketing and sales have equal seats at the table. That’s how you build a growth engine that actually works.

Buying Leads Is Not Lead Generation

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

In financial services, “lead generation” is a term that gets thrown around so often it’s lost its meaning. Everyone wants more leads, faster and for less money. But we often see firms falling for the illusion that buying a list of names is the same thing as building a pipeline of opportunities.

Buying leads is not lead generation. It’s an expensive distraction dressed up as a cheap shortcut.

The Problem with Purchased Leads

Buying leads is appealing because it feels efficient. Pay a vendor, get a list, and start dialing or emailing. But no one on that list asked to be contacted by you. They haven’t read your content, attended your event, or engaged with your brand in any meaningful way. They’re not your audience; in fact, they may have no idea who you are.

At best, they’re lukewarm contacts with no context for what makes you different or how you can help them. At worst, they’re recycled, unqualified, and shared with dozens of other firms just like yours.

You can’t build trust, the foundation of financial services relationships, when your first interaction is asking a complete stranger to open up to you about their finances. You’re interrupting, not providing the kind of value-driven marketing that inspires confidence and encourages engagement.

What Real Lead Generation Looks Like

True lead generation is a long-term game, which is the only kind that actually works in a sustainable way. It’s the disciplined, strategic process of creating awareness, building trust, and turning interest into action.

Generating real demand for your services from qualified leads takes time, effort, and resources:

1. Start with Strategy, Not Tactics

Real lead generation begins with establishing clarity about who you serve, the problems you solve, and why that matters. Until you know exactly who your ideal audience is, your marketing will always miss the mark. Every content decision, ad placement, and social post should tie back to your positioning, strategy, and audience understanding.

2. Build a Brand People Want to Engage With

Brand isn’t a logo or a color palette. It’s a promise. It’s the experience people expect when they interact with your firm.

Your brand should make prospects feel something. Confidence. Curiosity. Alignment. If your brand story is clear and authentic, people will want to know more before you ever reach out. That’s what turns attention into intention.

3. Create Content That Pulls, Not Pushes

Effective lead generation is built on value, not volume. That means creating content that educates, inspires, and motivates people to learn more.

Host a webinar that solves a real problem, publish thoughtful articles that challenge industry norms, and share insights that make your audience smarter. When you consistently provide value, leads start coming to you.

4. Nurture Relationships Instead of Forcing Transactions

The journey from awareness to conversion doesn’t happen overnight. Real lead generation is about consistent nurturing, not nagging.

Build email sequences that educate rather than sell, use retargeting to stay visible without being invasive, and continue to deliver useful, relevant content long after someone has joined your list.

People do business with brands they trust, and building trust takes time.

5. Leverage Data to Guide, Not Replace, Human Connection

Technology and data are critical tools, but they’re not a substitute for empathy or understanding.

Use analytics to learn what resonates. Implement automation to scale personalization. Never forget, though, that behind every “lead” is a human being making decisions about their money, their future, and their family.

The Payoff of Doing It Right

In terms of upfront cost, time, and effort, real lead generation is more expensive than buying a list of names. But the payoff is worth it.

Prospects come into conversations informed, curious, and open. They already trust your expertise because they’ve experienced it through your marketing. Instead of annoying people who never asked to talk to you in the first place (and doing potential reputational damage), you’re continuing an organic conversation they started.

Buying attention may be faster and easier in the beginning, but earning it will get you the results you’re looking for.

Building an Engine vs. Renting Attention

If your marketing strategy depends on a lead vendor, you’re not really generating leads, you’re renting them. When you stop paying, your pipeline dries up.

But when you build a brand that attracts, educates, and converts, your audience grows because they want to hear from you. Your pipeline becomes a flywheel that pays compound returns in the form of trust, interest, conversions, and referrals.

That’s real lead generation. It’s intentional. It’s sustainable. And it’s the only kind that lasts.

Marketing Is Having an Identity Crisis

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

If you’ve been in a marketing strategy meeting lately, you’ve probably heard some version of these three sentences:

  • “We can’t prove what’s working.”
  • “Everyone’s using AI but nobody knows how.”
  • “The old playbooks don’t work anymore.”

We hear them from financial services and fintech clients every week. And frankly, they’re all true.

Marketing is going through a full-blown identity crisis. But we think that makes right now one of the most exciting times to be in this business. When everything stops working the way it used to, you’re forced to build the future intentionally.

Attribution Is Breaking People

Marketers are drowning in data and starving for clarity.

Sales and marketing teams are often targeting entirely different audiences, but they’re both measured by a single metric: new revenue.

The problem is that attribution was never built for the way modern buyers behave.

The “source” of a customer might technically be a LinkedIn ad, but the real journey probably started months earlier during a conversation with their accountant, via a Reddit thread about alternative investments, or a colleague’s recommendation.

When leadership teams demand perfect attribution, they paralyze their marketing teams:

  • They stop taking smart risks.
  • They stop experimenting.
  • They start optimizing for easy-to-game metrics that look good on paper but don’t grow the business

Alignment is the only solution. Marketing and sales need to agree on who they’re trying to reach, why that audience matters, and how to define success beyond first-touch conversions. The data might not ever tell the full story, but your strategy can.

Everyone’s Using AI (But Hardly Anyone Knows How)

AI has moved from curiosity to chaos.

Every team is using it to draft email campaigns, generate social content, and summarize client feedback. But very few have been trained to use it well.

The result is an ever-widening gap between adoption and competency.

This isn’t just about prompts or tools. It’s about understanding what AI should (and shouldn’t) replace in an industry built on trust and regulatory compliance. Good marketers know AI isn’t a shortcut. It’s an amplifier. It can help you work faster, but it can’t tell you what resonates with a COO evaluating portfolio management software or a millennial comparing robo-advisors.

Without proper training, teams risk automating mediocrity.

Right now, winning firms are investing in upskilling. Rather than just using AI, they’re mastering the ability to build repeatable, on-brand workflows, teaching teams how to blend human insight with machine speed, and redefining modern creative strategy in an AI-driven world.

The Old Playbooks Are Dead

Remember when you could sponsor a conference, run some LinkedIn ads, maybe send a piece of direct mail, and call it a day?

That playbook is over.

Today’s buyers have evolved. They’re skeptical of anything that feels like a sales pitch, researching on platforms you’ve never advertised on, and asking peers for recommendations in Slack channels and private communities.

Paid social is getting more expensive and less effective. Content syndication is dying. Firms are experimenting with everything from founder-led content on Instagram to intimate roundtables for decision-makers.

Credibility and usefulness now form the foundation of marketing effectiveness. 

Prospects are looking for knowledge that matters to them from brands they trust. They don’t want paper-thin thought leadership or barely-veiled sales pitches; they want to understand immediately if you actually solve their problem.

In an era defined by AI, the future of marketing is getting infinitely more human.

It’s Time to Rebuild (Intentionally)

Attribution will never be perfect. AI won’t replace strategy. And the old playbooks are gone.

But that’s freedom, not bad news. 

You now have permission to stop doing what’s expected and start doing what works for your business, your audience, your growth goals.

This moment belongs to the marketers who are curious enough to test new channels, courageous enough to challenge the status quo, and collaborative enough to align their entire organization around deeply understanding their clients’ needs.

At Intention.ly, we’re helping fintech and financial services clients do exactly that by aligning teams, upskilling talent, experimenting with new approaches, and proving that the future of marketing isn’t about following formulas.

It’s about building a growth engine designed (intentionally) for what’s next.

The Marketing Funnel is Dead, But No One Came to the Funeral

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

For years, we visualized the client journey as a neat, orderly funnel. But that model is broken. It assumes a linear path that simply doesn’t exist today.

Of course, this isn’t the first time our models have been upended. Every major technological shift, from the birth of search engines to the rise of social media, has forced marketing to evolve. This is simply the next iteration. In place of the funnel, new circular models are emerging. HubSpot, for example, just replaced its own Flywheel with a concept they call The Loop, a framework designed specifically for the AI era. The core idea is that the client journey is no longer a straight line but a continuous, AI-powered conversation.

Consider your ideal client. Maybe it’s a tech founder with a liquidity event or a family with a new inheritance. They aren’t typing “financial advisor” into a search bar. They’re having a conversation with an AI, asking complex questions like:

  • “Who are the best advisors for pre-IPO tech founders with complex equity compensation?”
  • “How can I manage a recent inheritance to minimize the tax implications?”

Their journey doesn’t start at the top of a funnel. It starts in the middle, with a specific, high-intent question. Winning them over isn’t about pulling them down a prescribed path. It’s about becoming the definitive answer inside that new conversational loop.

Adapting to this new reality is built on three strategic layers:

1.

SEO makes you legible to the machine.

 2.

AEO makes you the answer to a direct question.

3.
GEO makes you the trusted authority the AI recommends.

 

The funnel is gone. The conversational loop is here. Are you ready to join the call?

Don’t bring flowers to the funeral. Bring a strategy. Get the new playbook: The Evolution of Search: A Financial Marketer’s Guide to SEO, AEO, and GEO.

10 Signs You’re Working for a CEO Who Gets Marketing

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Quick Summary: A marketing-minded CEO is the difference between random acts of marketing and a predictable revenue engine. This article shares 10 signs you’re working for a leader who values marketing, from putting marketing in the room where strategic decisions are made to acting as a brand evangelist. It also explores how leadership commitment impacts brand strength, lead generation, and ROI at RIAs, fintechs, and other financial services firms.

 

I’ve said this my entire career: marketing isn’t just a nice to have. In the right hands, it’s the growth engine of a business.

But I also know from personal experience that not every CEO believes that. Many treat marketing like a cost center or a support function instead of a powerful growth driver.

Over the years, I’ve realized there are several clear indicators of a CEO who believes in and values marketing. If your CEO checks most of these boxes, you’re in good hands:

1. They Put Marketing in the Room Where Decisions Are Made

If you’re a marketing leader and you’re not invited to meetings where business strategy, product direction, and budget decisions get made, your CEO probably doesn’t see marketing as having strategic business value. A marketing-minded CEO makes sure you have a seat at the table.

2. They Invest in Brand Like It’s a Revenue Driver

CEOs who understand the power of a strong brand don’t diminish it as “fluffy” or surface-level work. They understand that strong positioning, consistent messaging, and recognizable visual identity fuel trust, pipeline, and pricing power.

3. They Care About Outcomes, Not Activities and Vanity Metrics

A CEO who values marketing doesn’t care how many emails you sent or what the open rate was. They want to know if your activities moved the needle. They expect reporting tied to revenue, and they understand the difference between vanity metrics and business impact.

4. They Fund Marketing Before It’s Comfortable

They’re willing to invest in marketing ahead of growth by building the right team, tools, and campaigns now so the pipeline is full six months from now. CEOs who start prioritizing marketing resources only after sales slow down likely see it as a short-term fix rather than a long-term strategy.

5. They Hold Marketing to the Same Standards as Sales

They believe marketing should be accountable to revenue results, but they also understand and provide the resources, data, and authority necessary to deliver on that accountability.

6. They Value Consistency Over Campaign-of-the-Month Syndrome

CEOs who understand marketing recognize that real impact comes from steady execution, not shiny-object hopping. They give tactics time to work and invest in what they know will move the needle instead of chasing the latest trend or channel.

7. They Understand CAC and LTV

They can talk about customer acquisition cost and lifetime value without glazing over. More importantly, they understand the significance behind those metrics and use them to justify marketing spend, not cut it.

8. They Celebrate Marketing Wins Publicly

They give marketing credit when marketing sourced deals close, when brand awareness spikes, and when the firm earns media attention.

9. They Back Marketing in Cross-Functional Conflicts

When sales, product, or finance push back on marketing decisions, a good CEO steps in to protect the long-term strategy, even if it’s unpopular in the short term.

10. They Act as Brand Evangelists

They’ll get on stage at events, make guest appearances on podcasts, post regularly on LinkedIn, and use their position and platform to tell the company’s story. They understand the importance of building real connections with their target audience, and they don’t expect marketing to work without them.

I think it was Dave Gerhardt who said Life is too short to work for a CEO who doesn’t get marketing, and he’s right. When your CEO understands and values the role of marketing, you have the potential to build an incredibly powerful marketing engine at your firm, one that drives not only business success but personal growth and satisfaction. The opposite, though, is also true. If your CEO doesn’t check most of these boxes, you could be looking at a long and frustrating uphill battle. You get to decide if it’s worth it.

The Compounding Advantage That Defines Brands During a Downturn

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

In every economic downturn, a familiar story unfolds: companies pull back on spending, freeze growth initiatives, and slip into survival mode. And while this instinct is understandable—minimizing risk and protecting cash flow—it can create an unprecedented opportunity for bold brands to surge ahead.

If your competitor is pulling back while you’re leaning in, you’re not just gaining short-term market share. You’re setting off a chain reaction with long-term implications. This is the compounding effect of strategic investment during a recession. And for those brave enough to seize the moment, the returns can be exponential.

1. The Visibility Gap Widens

Marketing is often one of the first line items slashed during a downturn. That means the airwaves, inboxes, and feeds get quieter. Less noise. Fewer ads. Less competition for attention.

If your competitor scales back their marketing spend while you maintain or increase yours, your share of voice skyrockets. Not incrementally, but dramatically. With fewer brands vying for attention, your message goes further, costs less, and becomes more memorable.

Think of it this way: the same marketing budget now buys more impressions, more clicks, and more attention than it would in a crowded, bullish economy. That’s more than media, it’s valuable mindshare.

2. Customer Trust Compounds in Uncertain Times

In recessions, customers crave stability. They look for brands that show up consistently, even (and especially) when times are tough. If your competitor disappears from view, their reliability is questioned. But if you show up with confidence and consistency, you become the brand that stuck around when others didn’t.

Trust built in hard times becomes loyalty in the good times. And loyalty isn’t won with clever ads—it’s earned through presence, consistency, and value when people need it most.

3. Talent Becomes a Strategic Advantage

Recessions disrupt the job market. Companies that freeze hiring or lay off talent create a pool of highly skilled professionals looking for stability and vision. If you’re investing when others are cutting back, you become a magnet for top-tier talent.

Over time, this compounds into innovation, execution, and long-term growth that your scaled-down competitors will struggle to match once the economy rebounds.

4. The Innovation Window Opens

Necessity breeds innovation, and with markets in flux, customers’ needs shift rapidly. While competitors are busy protecting the status quo, a company playing offense can experiment, iterate, and move fast.

Products and services launched during downturns are often leaner, better aligned with market needs, and built with resilience. This gives you a first-mover advantage and in many cases, creates entire new revenue streams before your competitors even come up for air.

5. Market Share Is Easier to Win and Harder to Lose

When competitors retreat, their customers and prospects don’t vanish. They look for alternatives. By increasing your investment while others contract, you position yourself to acquire don’t just maintain your base—you acquire theirs.

What’s more, market share gained during a downturn is often “stickier.” Why? Because customers build habits around availability, reliability, and service. Once they’ve switched, they’re unlikely to return to a brand that abandoned them.

Recession Is the Ultimate Brand Differentiator

Everyone can look smart during a boom. But the brands that thrive long-term are those that use recessions to pull ahead while others pause.

When your competitors retreat, they’re saving monkey in the short-term, yes – while sacrificing visibility, trust, talent, and market position. When you double down, you’re not needlessly spending. You’re investing in a compound advantage that pays dividends long after the economy recovers.

Recessions don’t just test strategy. They define legacy.

How to Determine Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

One of the most important metrics for firms looking to grow effectively is the marketing-to-sales ratio (M:S ratio). This metric helps align your marketing and sales efforts by quantifying how much you’re investing in generating revenue. Whether you’re scaling a startup, optimizing a mature business, or navigating a new market, understanding and calculating this ratio can significantly impact your bottom line.

What Is the Marketing-to-Sales Ratio?

The marketing-to-sales ratio is the percentage of your total revenue that you invest in marketing. It measures how much money your business spends on marketing for every dollar of sales generated.

Formula:

M:S Ratio=(Revenue/Marketing Spend​)×100

For example:

  • If your annual revenue is $1 million and you spend $100,000 on marketing, your M:S ratio is 10%.

Why Does the Marketing-to-Sales Ratio Matter?

  • Budget Allocation: Helps to ensure you’re investing enough in marketing to drive sales growth without overspending.
  • Benchmarking: Provides a way to compare your spending against industry standards and competitors.
  • Performance Insight: Highlights how efficient your marketing efforts are in generating revenue.
  • Scalability: Guides you in scaling your marketing spend proportionally to revenue growth.

How to Calculate Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

Determining your M:S ratio involves a few simple steps:

Step 1: Define Your Marketing Spend

Include all costs related to marketing, such as:

  • Paid media (Google Ads, social ads, etc.)
  • Marketing technology (CRM, email platforms)
  • Content creation (blogs, videos, design)
  • Agency fees or outsourced services
  • Event sponsorships and trade shows
  • Internal marketing team salaries

Pro Tip: Be consistent with what you include as “marketing spend” to ensure accurate comparisons over time.

Step 2: Calculate Total Revenue

Use your gross revenue figure for the time period you’re analyzing (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually).

Step 3: Apply the Formula

Divide your marketing spend by total revenue and multiply by 100 to get your percentage.

Example:

  • Marketing Spend: $150,000
  • Annual Revenue: $2,000,000

M:S Ratio=(2,000,000/150,000​)×100=7.5%

Your M:S ratio is 7.5%.

What Is a Healthy Marketing-to-Sales Ratio?

The ideal ratio varies depending on your industry, business model, and growth stage. Here are some general benchmarks:

  • Early-Stage Startups: 10–20% (high investment to fuel growth and brand awareness)
  • Mature Businesses: 5–10% (steady-state growth with optimized spend)

Note: These benchmarks are not one-size-fits-all. Consider your specific goals and market conditions.

How to Adjust Your Ratio

Your M:S ratio should align with your business goals. Here’s how to interpret and adjust your ratio:

  1. High M:S Ratio (>15%):
    • Likely indicates heavy investment in marketing.
    • Works well for startups or businesses launching new products.
    • Consider whether your spending is driving proportional growth.
  2. Low M:S Ratio (<5%):
    • May indicate underinvestment in marketing, potentially stalling growth.
    • Focus on increasing marketing spend strategically, particularly in high-ROI areas like digital advertising or SEO.
  3. Balanced Ratio (5–15%):
    • A good starting point for most businesses.
    • Continuously monitor and refine based on ROI.

How to Evaluate Marketing ROI Against Your Ratio

Having a healthy ratio is only part of the equation. You also need to measure the effectiveness of your marketing spend:

  • Cost Per Lead (CPL): How much does it cost to acquire a new lead?
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much does it cost to acquire a new customer?
  • Lifetime Value (LTV): Does your customer value exceed your acquisition costs?

By tracking these metrics, you can determine if your marketing spend is generating a healthy return on investment (ROI).

Tips for Optimizing Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

  1. Start with Clear Goals: Define your revenue and customer acquisition goals before setting your marketing budget.
  2. Invest in High-ROI Channels: Prioritize tactics like SEO, email marketing, and paid ads that consistently deliver results.
  3. Scale Proportionally: As your revenue grows, ensure your marketing spend scales with it.
  4. Leverage Automation: Use tools like marketing automation platforms to reduce inefficiencies.
  5. Test and Refine: Continuously test campaigns to find the optimal spend for your target audience.

M:S Ratio: A Balancing Act

Use your marketing-to-sales ratio as a strategic tool to balance marketing investment and firm growth. By calculating and optimizing this ratio, you’ll gain better visibility into how your marketing efforts contribute to revenue and ensure you’re spending wisely to meet your objectives.

Are you tracking your M:S ratio? Let us know your biggest challenges or wins in aligning marketing spend with revenue goals!

Mapping Content to the Buyer Journey

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

When it comes to content marketing, we see many firms make the mistake of over-indexing on a single type of content—often at the Awareness stage—and neglecting the other stages of the buyer journey. This imbalance leaves prospects underserved, resulting in drop-offs during the Consideration and Decision stages.

To ensure your prospects have the information they need at every stage, you need a well-rounded content strategy that maps to their questions and concerns during the Awareness, Consideration, and Decision phases. Let’s explore how to deliver a seamless experience that keeps your prospects moving forward.

What is the Buyer Journey?

The buyer journey is the process your audience goes through when making a purchase decision. In general, it includes three key stages:

  1. Awareness: The buyer realizes they have a problem or need.
  2. Consideration: The buyer explores potential solutions.
  3. Decision: The buyer selects the product or service they believe is the best fit.

Creating content that serves each stage ensures you meet your audience where they are, providing the right information at the right time.

Awareness Stage: Helping Buyers Identify Their Problem

At the Awareness stage, your prospects are just starting to identify their challenges or needs. They’re looking for educational content, not a sales pitch.

Common Pitfall:

Many companies focus heavily on blog posts and social media content at this stage, failing to create deeper, more engaging content that keeps the audience interested.

Content Goal: Build trust and educate your audience.

Content Types That Work:

  • Blog Posts: Educational articles that answer common questions. For example, “5 Ways to Improve Your Investment Strategy.”
  • Infographics: Visual summaries of data or concepts that make complex ideas easier to digest.
  • Videos: Quick, engaging content that highlights key pain points.
  • eBooks and Guides: Comprehensive resources that your audience can download in exchange for an email address.

Consideration Stage: Showing Buyers Why Your Solution Stands Out

In the Consideration stage, your audience has identified their problem and is researching potential solutions.

Common Pitfall:

Many companies neglect to create detailed content for this stage, causing prospects to stall or turn to competitors.

Content Goal: Demonstrate expertise and build credibility.

Content Types That Work:

  • Case Studies: Real-world examples that showcase how you’ve solved similar problems.
  • Webinars: Live or recorded sessions where you share valuable insights and interact with prospects.
  • Comparison Guides: Side-by-side breakdowns of how your solution stacks up against competitors.
  • Whitepapers: In-depth analysis or research that validates your authority in the industry.

Decision Stage: Giving Buyers the Confidence to Act

By the Decision stage, your audience is evaluating whether to commit. They want assurance that your product or service will deliver on its promises.

Common Pitfall:

Overlooking trust-building content like testimonials, product demos, or risk-free trials can leave buyers feeling uncertain.

Content Goal: Reduce friction and inspire confidence.

Content Types That Work:

  • Testimonials and Reviews: Real client stories that highlight your success.
  • Product Demos: Interactive or video walkthroughs that show your solution in action.
  • Free Trials or Samples: Let prospects experience your offering risk-free.
  • FAQs: Address common objections or concerns in a clear, concise way.

Why Many Firms Fail to Serve Every Stage

A common reason for drop-offs in the buyer journey is a lack of balanced content across all stages. For example:

  • Focusing solely on Awareness content (e.g., blog posts) without supporting the information with deeper Consideration content (e.g., case studies) means prospects won’t see the value in progressing.
  • Providing Decision-stage content too early can overwhelm prospects who aren’t ready to commit.

How to Fix This:

  • Conduct a content audit to identify gaps in your buyer journey coverage.
  • Map each piece of content to a specific stage of the buyer journey.
  • Continuously optimize your content to ensure it aligns with audience needs.

Bonus: Don’t Forget Post-Purchase Content

The buyer journey doesn’t end with a purchase or signed contract. Retention and advocacy are key to long-term growth. Content that supports your clients post-conversion includes:

  • Onboarding guides
  • Exclusive content for existing clients
  • Referral program details

The key to a successful content strategy is balance. By serving the needs of your buyers at every stage of their journey, including after they become clients, you’ll reduce drop-offs, build trust, and ultimately drive conversions.

Are you ready to create a content strategy that delivers results? Let us know where your biggest content gaps are—we’d love to help!

Beyond Direct Leads: The Compounding Power of Paid Advertising

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

If you’re running paid ads but aren’t seeing your leads convert immediately, it’s easy to get frustrated and wonder if you’re wasting your budget.

But before you give up, read this first.

Don’t Abandon What’s Working Behind the Scenes

Let’s take a closer look at the bigger picture and the momentum these ads are actually driving for your business. Because the truth is, ads do much more than generate direct leads; they fuel growth across multiple touchpoints:

  • Web Traffic: Your ads are bringing new visitors to your site, giving them the chance to explore your services and learn more about your brand.
  • Engagement: Impressions and clicks deepen your reach, keeping your business top-of-mind for future opportunities.
  • Newsletter Sign-ups: Even if prospects aren’t ready to buy yet, your ads draw interest and create opportunities for building connections via consistent outreach.
  • Contact Us Form Fills: People are asking questions and engaging with your team—a key step in their buyer journey.
  • Content Downloads: Your ads are helping you educate your audience and build trust through your valuable content. 
  • Competitor Disruption: Your ads are capturing the attention of prospects who might otherwise land on a competitor’s site, redirecting their focus to you instead.
  • Social Follows and Engagement: Ads are increasing your visibility on social media, growing your audience, and encouraging meaningful interactions that build brand loyalty over time.

All of these actions create the lift necessary to drive sustainable, long-term growth. While ads might not produce instant conversions, they’re paving the way for future clients to find you, engage with you, and trust you when they’re ready to take the next step.

Instead of pausing ads or abandoning a paid strategy entirely, consider what you can do to optimize their performance. Maybe it’s a tweak to your targeting, a shift in messaging, or fresh creative that better aligns with your audience’s needs. We’ve seen major momentum swings from swapping out content offers and adjusting targeting parameters.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the data from your paid campaigns or brainstorm ways to improve your results, let’s set up a time to chat! We’d love to make recommendations to enhance your strategy and help you get more out of your marketing investment. 

Don’t Do That: Don’t Ask Your Marketing Team to Set Your Goals

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Your marketing agency can’t tell you what your goals are.

It sounds obvious, but I talk to prospective clients every day who can’t articulate their growth or overall business goals. Worse, they ask us to come up with them. I’ve heard questions like “What’s a good growth target for an RIA?” or “How many leads should we be getting?” without any context about their current AUM, capacity, or market position.

In these situations I’m always reminded of the contestants on Shark Tank who can’t answer the most basic questions about customer acquisition costs or sales projections, in spite of the show being on the air and following the same formula for the past 15 years. 

Maybe we’re in the agency minority, but we hold ourselves accountable to metrics and results, not deliverables for the sake of deliverables. And to do that, we need to know what we’re working toward. My team is the best in the business at taking a number (revenue, qualified leads, event attendees, cost per lead, you name it) and mobilizing around pulling all the right levers to reach it. 

When clients give us a challenge, we’ll figure out how to solve it. Even a thoughtful qualitative objective, like being the most visible firm in a certain category, allows us to establish goalposts to work toward. We can track metrics like share of voice, media mentions, engagement rates, and website traffic against competitors to measure progress.

But the work we do for our clients should always be tied to a broader strategy that levels up to established business goals. Otherwise, we’re running a playbook with no idea where we are on the field – and that’s a waste of time, energy, and money.

As a growth consulting agency, we can:

  • Tell you if your goals are wildly unrealistic (or not aggressive enough) 
  • Develop the roadmap and mile markers for achieving your goals
  • Set the metrics necessary to keep our team and yours on track 

We cannot:

  • Tell you what your goals should be
  • Determine your ideal client profile without your input
  • Set your growth targets without understanding your capacity and resources

As we head into the new year, now is the optimal time to strategize with your team about your growth objectives for 2025. Establish where you are now in terms of pipeline, revenue, and customer retention, and analyze your resources and budget to determine a percentage increase to shoot for next year. Ask yourself:

  • What’s your average client size and how many new clients can you realistically service?
  • What’s your client acquisition cost and lifetime value?
  • What’s your current conversion rate from prospect to client?
  • How much are you willing to invest in marketing to achieve your goals?

Then come talk to us. 

We’ll help you get there by building a strategic marketing plan aligned with your specific growth targets and business objectives.