Category: Blog

The Problem With “Just Start Creating Content” 

One of the biggest mistakes companies make with content marketing is starting at the wrong end.

They start writing blog posts. Then another blog post. Then a social post about the blog post. Then an email promoting the blog post. Months later, they have dozens of pieces of content and very little to show for it.

The problem usually isn’t the quality of the content but the strategy behind it.

Blog posts tend to cover broad industry trends, general best practices and big-picture ideas meant to appeal to everyone – the kind of content that’s great at building awareness but rarely helps someone who is ready to buy.

Every prospect sits somewhere on the path to a decision. Some have never heard of your firm and haven’t even started thinking about the problem you solve. Some understand they need to make a change and have started researching answers. Others know the problem, know what they need to solve it, and are actively searching for who to hire to help them. 

Each group asks different questions, so each group needs different content. A thought-leadership piece that sparks curiosity in a newcomer does little for a buyer comparing providers. A pricing breakdown means nothing to someone who doesn’t know they have a problem yet.

If you want your marketing to drive business, map your content to where people are in their decision-making journey. Then build it in the right order: start with the people closest to buying and work backward.

Start With the People Who Are Ready to Buy

When your marketing budget is limited, you don’t have the luxury of spending all your time building awareness with people who may or may not ever become customers.

Start with the people who already know they have a problem, know they need a solution, and are actively considering their options.

These are your hot prospects.

They may be searching for a specific service, pricing information, a comparison between providers, answers to a time-sensitive problem, reviews or proof, an explanation of how your process works, or information about what happens if they choose to work with you.

Building content for this audience can have an immediate business impact.

Instead of asking, “What should we write about this month?” ask: “What questions does someone ask right before they decide to buy?”

Those questions should become content.

Then Move to the Warm Audience

Once you’ve addressed the people who are ready to buy, move backward to the people who are problem-aware but not decision-ready.

These prospects know something isn’t working. They may even know they need help, but they’re not ready to choose a provider yet.

They need nurturing.

Your marketing should help them understand the problem they’re trying to solve, their options, what mistakes to avoid, what the process looks like, what questions they should be asking, how to evaluate potential providers, and what results they should realistically expect.

The goal isn’t to constantly tell them to buy. The goal is to give them the information they need to feel confident enough to decide.

Good nurturing doesn’t force someone down the funnel. It helps them move through it.

Finally, Go After the Colder Audience

Only after you’ve built content for your hot and warm audiences should you spend significant energy creating content for people who aren’t actively looking for you.

This is your cold audience.

They may have never heard of your company. They may not even realize they have a problem you can solve.

This is where educational, thought-leadership, and awareness content can play a powerful role.

But cold-audience content usually takes longer to turn into revenue, which is why companies with limited budgets can get frustrated when they start here. They create content designed to build awareness, but they haven’t built the infrastructure to convert people who are already interested. They’re filling the top of the funnel but leaving those prospects with nowhere further to go.

The Key Is to Work Backward

Think of your marketing strategy as at least three audiences.

Hot: “I’m ready to solve this.” Your marketing should help them decide.

Warm: “I have a problem, and I’m researching solutions.” Your marketing should educate and nurture.

Cold: “I’ve never heard of you, and I’m not thinking about this yet.” Your marketing should create awareness and interest.

The mistake is assuming you have to start with the cold audience. You don’t.

Work backward.

Start with the decision. Then identify what someone needs to know before they’re ready to make that decision. Then identify what they need to understand before they even begin evaluating solutions.

Now you have a content strategy.

Your Content Should Compound

A strong marketing engine is a connected system.

A hot-audience article might answer: “Do I need this service?” 

That article can lead to: “How much does [service] cost?” 

Then: “What should I know before starting this process?”

Then: “How do I choose the right provider?”  

Now you’ve created a path.

One piece of content supports another. Your website starts answering the questions prospects have at different stages of the buying journey.

Your sales team can send prospects useful resources instead of recreating the same explanations over and over. Your email marketing has something valuable to distribute. Your social content has something substantive to point toward.

And, increasingly, your content can help search engines and AI platforms understand exactly what your company knows and what problems you solve.

That’s a marketing engine.

Don’t Ask, “What Should We Post?” Ask Better Questions.

Instead of sitting down every month and brainstorming random topics, start with your customers.

Ask: What are people asking right before they hire us? Those are your hot topics.

Ask: What questions do people ask while they’re researching their options? Those are your warm topics.

Ask: What does someone need to understand before they even realize they need us? Those are your cold topics.

This approach creates content with a purpose.

Every article has a job. Every resource fits somewhere in the customer journey. And every piece of content has a reason for existing.

The Long-Term Payoff

Working backward isn’t necessarily the fastest way to produce a mountain of content, but it’s the fastest way to build useful content.

Over time, those resources begin to compound.

Your website becomes more authoritative. Your sales team has better resources. Your prospects become more educated before they ever talk to you. Your marketing becomes less dependent on constantly creating something new.

And eventually, you can go after colder audiences with much more confidence because you have an entire system waiting for them when they’re ready.

That’s the real goal of content marketing.

Not more blog posts. Not more traffic for the sake of traffic. Not a bigger content calendar.

A marketing engine that moves people from “I’ve never heard of you” to “You’re exactly who I need.”

And the smartest way to build that engine? Start at the end. Then work backward.

 

 

There are plenty of places to hear predictions about the future of financial services marketing.

The CMO Collective is different.

We created it to give senior marketing leaders across wealth management and fintech a place to talk candidly about what’s actually working, where new challenges are popping up, and where they’re investing next.

At Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, that conversation continued with a packed room of more than 120 marketing leaders discussing some of the issues shaping growth right now: how brands build credibility, the growing role of reviews and third-party validation, the changing economics of video, AI-driven discovery, marketing talent, and the pressure to prove ROI.

This year, the Collective took an important step forward.

The CMO Collective Is Becoming More Than an Event

Since launching the CMO Collective, our goal has been simple: create a community where financial services marketing leaders can learn from each other.The conversations at Future Proof reinforced why that matters.

Marketing leaders are being asked to do more than ever. They’re responsible for brand, demand, client experience, recruiting, AI adoption, technology, growth strategy, and, increasingly, proving how all of it connects to business results.

Those are hard problems to solve alone.

That’s why we were excited to announce the next evolution of the community at Future Proof: the new CMO Collective app.

Apple | Google Play

The app gives members a place to continue the conversations that happen at events throughout the year, connect directly with peers, ask questions, share ideas and tap into a community of marketers who understand the unique challenges of growing financial services firms.

The goal isn’t to create another place to scroll.

It’s to create a place to solve problems.

Visibility Is No Longer Enough

One of the strongest themes from our conversations was the difference between being visible and being believable.

Financial services firms have more ways than ever to get in front of prospects. The harder challenge is giving people a reason to trust what they see.

That means reviews, client stories, earned media, executive thought leadership, and third-party validation are becoming increasingly important parts of the marketing mix.

This matters even more as AI changes how people research firms.

Prospects aren’t necessarily moving neatly from a Google search to a website anymore. They’re reading reviews, consuming content, checking social profiles, seeing media coverage, and asking AI platforms to help them make sense of it all.

Marketing leaders have to think about the full body of evidence their brand creates.

Video Keeps Moving From “Nice to Have” to Core Infrastructure

Video was another major part of the conversation.

For years, many firms treated video as a special project: something produced occasionally for a campaign, executive message or product launch.

That model is changing.

Marketing teams increasingly need to produce video consistently and at scale, while still protecting quality, brand standards and authenticity.

And as AI makes content creation easier, the human side of video may become even more important.

People want to hear from real advisors, executives and subject matter experts. The technology should make those voices easier to capture and distribute, not replace them.

Reviews Are Becoming Part of the Growth Engine

Client reviews and testimonials also played a major role in the discussion.

Their value goes well beyond reputation management.

Reviews can help prospects validate a firm, reinforce positioning, strengthen conversion and give search engines and AI platforms more independent evidence about who a company serves and what it does well.

That changes the way firms should think about review programs.

The question is no longer simply, “Should we ask clients for reviews?”

It’s: How do reviews fit into our broader growth, content, search and credibility strategy?

Our Sponsors Help Make This Community Possible

The CMO Collective would not be what it is without partners who believe in the value of bringing financial services marketing leaders together.

We were proud to have the support of Amplify Reviews, StreetCred PR, Allspring Global Investments, WiserAdvisor/Indyfin and YT Era for this year’s Future Proof experience. Intention.ly highlighted all five as CMO Collective sponsors ahead of the event.

Each brings a different perspective to the challenges marketers are navigating, from reputation and earned media to advisor discovery, content and investment management.

More importantly, their support helps us create the kind of environment the Collective was designed for: candid conversation, useful ideas and relationships that extend well beyond a single conference.

Thank you to all of our sponsors for helping us continue to grow the CMO Collective. We couldn’t have made this possible without their support!

The Conversation Doesn’t End in Huntington Beach

The best part of the CMO Collective has never been a single panel or event.

It’s what happens when smart marketers who face similar challenges start sharing what they know.

That’s why the launch of the CMO Collective app is such an important next step for us.

Future Proof gave us the opportunity to get everyone together in one room.

Now we have a way to keep that room open all year.

If you lead marketing, growth or communications for a wealth management, fintech or financial services organization and want to be part of the conversation, we’d love to have you.

Join the CMO Collective by applying through the app.

Apple | Google Play

Future Proof has always been a useful snapshot of where wealth management is headed. This year, the signal felt especially clear. Marketing is becoming more central to growth. AI is forcing firms to rethink how work gets done and how trust gets built. The technology landscape is becoming simultaneously more capable and more overwhelming. 

And as more firms adopt the same tools, channels and language, differentiation is becoming harder, and more valuable. After several days of conversations with CMOs, CEOs, advisors, fintech leaders and growth executives in Huntington Beach, a few themes kept resurfacing. 

 

Marketing’s role inside the firm is getting much bigger 

One of the clearest takeaways from Future Proof was how rapidly the definition of “marketing” is expanding. That was especially evident on day three at our CMO Collective event, where we brought together marketing leaders from across wealth management to talk about what’s driving growth right now. The conversations ranged from credibility and client reviews to segmentation, video, AI and the challenge of deciding which opportunities deserve attention in the first place.

A few themes stood out. Visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. Brands need to be believable, which means building a clear point of view, creating strong client experiences and giving clients, partners and other third parties reasons to advocate for them. At the same time, more activity doesn’t automatically mean more growth. Several leaders emphasized the importance of narrowing the audience, choosing the channels and priorities that matter most, and having the discipline to say no to everything else.

AI added another layer to that conversation. Giving a marketing team access to AI tools is very different from building the skills, processes and judgment required to use them effectively. As the technology becomes embedded across the organization, marketers are increasingly helping determine not only how AI is used in campaigns, but how it affects search, reputation, personalization, content and the overall client journey.

That reflects a much broader change we’re seeing. The strongest marketing leaders aren’t simply responsible for campaigns, content and brand anymore. They’re increasingly involved in business development, organic growth, advisor recruiting, client experience, retention, technology decisions and AI adoption.

In many organizations, marketing is becoming one of the connective functions between what the business wants to accomplish and how the firm actually gets there.

That changes the profile of the modern marketing leader. The job increasingly requires someone who understands the business model, client journey, technology, data, sales and operations, not simply communications.

For growing RIAs and fintechs, marketing is moving closer to the center of enterprise strategy. And the firms that recognize that shift are likely to expect much more from the function than a full content calendar.

AI is everywhere, and it’s making the human advantage clearer. 

AI was an undercurrent of almost every panel, keynote and conversation we encountered. Its ability to reshape productivity, search, content creation, client service and operational efficiency is no longer theoretical. Every firm in the industry is going to have to determine how AI changes its growth model and how its people work.

We got to experience some of that momentum firsthand on day one. Our Advisor Brand Builder was selected from more than 200 submissions as one of just seven companies featured in Future Proof’s opening AI Demo Drop. We were grateful for the opportunity to share what we’ve been building with a packed crowd and show how AI can help advisors get to a stronger, more strategic brand foundation faster.

What surprised us most was what happened afterward. Throughout the rest of the event, people continued seeking us out to ask questions, learn more and talk about how the technology could fit into their own growth efforts. For us, that interest reinforced something bigger than the demo itself: firms are actively looking for practical ways to use AI that make their people more effective, not less important.

Because something else is happening at the same time. The more AI becomes capable of producing information, the more valuable distinctly human capabilities become: judgment, contextual understanding, empathy, experience and wisdom. Financial advice has never simply been about having access to information. It’s about knowing what information matters, what it means for a specific person and what someone should do about it. AI will dramatically expand what advisors and marketers can accomplish. But it may also make the human elements of great advice, and great marketing, even more important.

The technology problem is shifting from access to overwhelm 

There has never been more technology available to wealth management firms. That’s exciting,  and exhausting. Walking through Future Proof, you could see hundreds of companies solving legitimate problems across prospecting, data, AI, portfolio management, client experience, marketing, compliance and operations. 

The challenge is no longer finding technology. It’s deciding what deserves your attention. CEOs and CMOs are being asked to evaluate an increasingly crowded landscape while simultaneously integrating those tools into workflows, proving ROI and avoiding the operational drag that comes from adding technology without a clear strategy. The firms that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the most technology. They’ll be the ones that know what they’re trying to accomplish before they start buying it. 

Differentiation is becoming a business requirement 

The crowded technology landscape points to a larger challenge across financial services: sameness. As firms adopt similar technology, offer similar services and communicate using similar language, it becomes increasingly difficult for a prospective client or advisor to understand why one company is meaningfully different from another. That makes positioning and brand strategy even more important. 

Differentiation isn’t about manufacturing a clever tagline. It starts by understanding what is legitimately distinctive about your firm: your people, expertise, capabilities, philosophy, client experience or way of solving a problem. Then marketing has to make those differences visible. If you don’t decide what you want the market to remember about you, the market will usually default to seeing you as another version of everyone else. In a more crowded industry, blending in becomes increasingly expensive. 

Marketing needs change as firms grow 

Another theme reinforced throughout the week: there is no universal marketing playbook for RIAs. That came through clearly during day two’s The New Playbook for RIA Growth panel, where we joined other marketing leaders to talk about what’s driving growth now, what’s becoming less effective and where firms should be placing their bets as AI, changing referral patterns and increased competition reshape the market. One takeaway was especially clear: the right marketing model depends heavily on where a firm is in its growth journey.

A smaller firm below roughly $100 million in AUM rarely needs an elaborate omnichannel strategy. A few channels executed consistently around a clear audience and proposition can accomplish a lot. As firms move into the $200 million to $800 million range, the equation starts to change. Marketing becomes a more formal business function. Firms begin hiring internal talent, investing in technology and building more sophisticated, multichannel programs.

Closer to $500 million and approaching $1 billion, another challenge appears: one marketer can rarely execute everything the organization now expects marketing to accomplish. Content. Social. PR. Events. Digital. Lead generation. Automation. Advisor recruiting. Analytics. Brand. Client communications. That is where we increasingly see successful firms combining internal leadership with specialized outside execution. The goal isn’t simply to do more marketing. It’s to build the right mix of strategy, talent, technology and execution for the firm’s next stage of growth.

And the mandate can run in two directions: organic growth focused on attracting investors, and inorganic growth focused on attracting advisors, teams and additional AUM to the platform. Some of the fastest-growing firms are now building both engines simultaneously. The broader lesson from the panel was that the old playbook of relying heavily on referrals, occasional campaigns and a handful of disconnected tactics is becoming harder to sustain. Growth increasingly requires a marketing model that evolves with the business itself.

In an AI search world, belief matters as much as visibility 

For years, digital marketing emphasized being discoverable. The next challenge is being believable. Prospective clients rarely evaluate a financial firm based on one interaction. They search, compare, read reviews, visit social profiles, consume articles, encounter media coverage and increasingly ask AI platforms to help them synthesize what they find. That means firms need a broader credibility footprint. 

Client testimonials, reviews, earned media, executive thought leadership, third-party validation and authoritative content all help prospects answer an increasingly important question: 

Can I believe what this company says about itself? 

This also changes how we should think about top-of-funnel marketing. PR, reviews and thought leadership aren’t simply awareness tactics anymore. They help build the body of evidence that both humans and emerging AI-driven discovery experiences can use to understand who your firm is and whether it appears credible. Brand building and demand generation are becoming harder to separate. 

Growth ambitions and marketing investment remain disconnected 

One tension we heard repeatedly at Future Proof was the gap between how aggressively firms want to grow and how much they’re willing to invest in creating that growth. Many firms we spoke with are spending only a small percentage of revenue on marketing, even while setting aggressive growth objectives. You cannot consistently ask marketing to become a growth engine while funding it like a support department. 

Firms serious about growth need to determine what level of investment is actually required to build the people, technology, media, content, events and infrastructure necessary to create demand. There isn’t one percentage that makes sense for every firm. But there is a fundamental question every leadership team should answer: Does our marketing investment match our growth ambition? 

Too often, the answer is no. 

Experiences still matter, maybe more than ever 

For all the discussion about AI and digital transformation, one of the strongest marketing channels at Future Proof was sitting directly in front of us: the event itself.

Sponsors weren’t simply setting up booths. Many were building experiences designed to pull people in, keep them there and give them something worth remembering. That showed up everywhere, from happy hours like Zocks on the Rocks, along with booth activations featuring graffiti wine tumblers, monogrammed flip-flops, custom hat presses and, yes, puppies.

Those details may sound small, but they’re part of what made certain brands more memorable. They gave attendees a reason to stop, talk, participate and spend time with the people behind the logo. A booth tells people what you sell. An experience gives them a reason to engage with your brand.

Whether the audience is investors or advisors, events remain one of the few channels capable of creating concentrated attention, human interaction and emotional connection at the same time. And in an environment where everyone is competing for visibility, those moments can be far more powerful than another piece of collateral or another product pitch.

The best brands at Future Proof seemed to understand that. Their physical presence wasn’t treated as rented square footage. It was an extension of their positioning, personality and overall brand experience.

Twelve months from now will look very different 

Perhaps the most striking takeaway came from looking backward. Think about the technologies that have become routine in just the last year. AI notetakers are an obvious example. Many of us now rely on tools every day that would have felt novel only a short time ago. They help us remember more, move faster, create better work and spend less time on administrative tasks. The version of ourselves working without those tools would already struggle to compete with the version working today. Now project that same rate of change forward another twelve months. 

We don’t know exactly what the marketing function inside a wealth management firm will look like by Future Proof 2027. But we can be reasonably confident about one thing: Marketing, communications and brand will play a larger role in determining which companies grow and which companies disappear into the noise. The technology will keep changing. The channels will keep changing. The tools will keep changing. The firms that succeed won’t be the ones that perfectly predict what comes next. They’ll be the ones capable of adapting quickly while remaining very clear about who they are, who they serve and why someone should believe in them. That may ultimately be the biggest lesson from Future Proof this year. The future of marketing isn’t about doing more marketing. It’s about becoming a more important part of how the business grows.

“Should we hire in-house or outsource our marketing?”

That’s a common question from financial services firms. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete. This framing assumes marketing is one job. In reality, a modern growth engine spans strategy, content, SEO, AI search visibility, demand generation, CRM, automation, analytics, web dev, design, events, and communications. 

No single hire can cover all that ground, and building an in-house team across the full spectrum of required skills is really hard and prohibitively expensive.

We ask a slightly different question of the firms we talk to: what capabilities does your growth strategy require, and what’s the smartest way to access them?

We’re Not in 2002 Anymore: Unpacking Today’s Growth Roadblocks

A decade or two ago, most advisory firms grew through ad hoc referrals and a handful of guerrilla marketing tactics that are no longer sustainable in today’s landscape: 

Financial services is more sophisticated. Less lifestyle practices, more major institutions with large teams, multiple business lines and revenue goals that look more like a consumer brand’s than a cottage service industry’s. The uptick in sophistication has transformed marketing into a legitimate business function at these firms, demanding the strategic leadership to match.

The client is more educated. Prospects have access to more financial information now than they ever have, and they’re more comfortable using it. They research firms and advisors independently, increasingly turning to AI tools to compare options and get quick answers before they ever pick up the phone. What used to be a simple client journey now runs through more touchpoints, each with its own expectations: visible without being aggressive, present without being pushy, educational without a sales agenda.

Advisors can’t double as their own marketers anymore. Growth at scale demands expertise in branding, content, digital, SEO, demand generation, CRM, automation and analytics, often all at once. Those aren’t skills many advisors possess in addition to their wealth management expertise, and few firms can justify building every one of those disciplines to expert depth internally. 

One Hire vs. One Agency Is an Oversimplification

Comparing a single internal hire to an outsourced agency on retainer, dollar for dollar, misses the important context that a modern growth engine can’t be run by one person.

A more realistic comparison looks at the difference between a small internal team and an outsourced partner delivering the same range of specialized skills. 

Industry benchmarking shows a single competent marketing hire, before benefits and overhead, commonly runs $80,000 to $120,000 in salary alone. Add benefits and payroll taxes and that figure climbs roughly 20%, putting one fully loaded hire well beyond $90,000 a year, before adding software licenses and subscriptions. 

Build out a team that covers content, design, SEO/PPC, web and CRM at the depth a modern agency provides, and the combined salaries can easily clear $500,000 a year.

By comparison, a full-service agency retainer typically runs $6,000 to $10,000 a month, or roughly $72,000 to $120,000 annually, often less than the cost of a single full-time mid-level hire.  

The Industry’s Underinvestment in Marketing Is A Clear Opportunity

Cerulli’s latest research on the RIA channel found that marketing typically receives just 5% of a firm’s total operating budget, and only 14% of RIAs have a dedicated marketing resource at all. Meanwhile, 56% of firms point to a lack of a cohesive marketing plan as a major or moderate obstacle to growth, and 83% cite limited resources and advisor time constraints as a barrier.

New client acquisition ranks as a top RIA challenge, yet marketing budgets are projected to stay flat through 2027, representing a real opportunity for firms exploring the question of how to hire to drive growth. 

While competitors stay underinvested, you can identify the smartest way to fill growth capability gaps and create an accelerated advantage.

Capacity Is a Capability

Even firms with existing internal teams can experience capacity constraints. Small teams are often simultaneously responsible for strategy, campaign execution, events, content, sales requests and reporting. 

Internal marketers also frequently get pulled into meetings, administrative work and cross-functional projects that eat into the time they have for output. A capable team with too little bandwidth can fall behind just as easily as a single marketer or an advisor trying to balance financial planning work with business development.

Outside support shouldn’t always be framed as filling a knowledge gap. Sometimes the most valuable thing an outsourced partner provides is capacity, freeing a strong internal team to focus on the work only they can do.

Why Outsourced Agencies Are More Accountable 

In an outsourced partnership, both sides have a real financial stake in the results. It’s much easier to fire an agency for not producing ROI than it is to let go of an employee or an internal team. 

Outsourcing comes with built-in accountability tied directly to performance.

Industry Expertise Changes the Outsourcing Equation

 “Outsource” doesn’t mean “hire any agency.” Choosing a partner with real financial services experience matters as much as the decision to outsource in the first place.

A partner who already understands the audience, the regulatory environment, the sales cycle and industry-specific language starts well ahead of the learning curve, translating into faster execution, fewer missteps and a lower overall cost, since the firm isn’t paying for a generalist agency’s education on your industry’s basics.

Why Growing Firms Should Consider a Hybrid Marketing Model

For most growing firms, the best answer may be an intentional combination of hiring in-house and outsourcing: own what creates lasting institutional advantage, and access specialized expertise where you need depth, scale and flexibility.

A common hybrid model can break down this way:

• Keep in-house: the people closest to your brand voice, client relationships and day-to-day sales alignment.
• Access externally: specialized skill sets like SEO, AI search optimization, paid media, web development, design and CRM automation, where the learning curve and tooling investment are steep and constantly shifting.
• Combine intentionally: build a model where internal and external teams operate as one growth engine instead of two disconnected workstreams.

For firms whose growth needs have outpaced what a lean internal team can realistically cover, a hybrid model often produces the best results, without requiring a firm to hire a large department before it’s ready for one. 

At Intention.ly, we act as an extension of our clients’ internal marketing teams, backing in-house expertise with the full horsepower of our growth engine across strategy and execution. See what that could look like for your firm. Set up a complimentary strategy call here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should RIAs outsource marketing or hire in-house? The decision to outsource marketing or hire in-house depends on the capabilities you need. Most growing firms benefit from a hybrid model: an internal team that owns brand, client relationships and sales alignment, paired with outside specialists for skills like SEO, paid media, web and CRM automation.

What marketing roles should stay in-house? Roles that require deep, ongoing knowledge of your firm’s clients, culture and sales process, including brand stewardship, internal stakeholder alignment and day-to-day coordination with advisors or sales teams.

When does outsourcing marketing make sense for a financial services firm? Outsourcing makes sense when a capability requires specialized expertise your internal team doesn’t have, when internal capacity is the bottleneck rather than skill, or when a function needs scale and flexibility that’s expensive to build and maintain internally.

Why does industry expertise matter when choosing a marketing partner? A partner with financial services experience already understands your audience, the regulatory environment and the advisor sales cycle, reducing ramp-up time and lowering the risk of compliance or messaging missteps that a generalist agency is more likely to make.

What is a hybrid marketing model? A hybrid marketing model combines an internal team that owns brand and client-facing work with external specialists who provide expertise, capacity or scale in specific disciplines like content, digital, SEO and automation. Rather than choosing between building and buying, firms build what creates lasting advantage and access the rest.

 

You know those things that happen over and over again—so often that you should no longer be surprised by them—but somehow, the shock never quite wears off?

For me, it’s watching smart people with great companies convince themselves that a basic organic content program will generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

They plan a webinar once a month. They promote it with several emails. They publish a handful of organic social posts. Maybe they write a blog or produce a quarterly report. Then they turn to their marketing team or agency and ask: How is this going to generate millions in new business?

It probably isn’t.

That doesn’t mean those activities are unimportant. It means they’re being asked to do a job they weren’t designed to do on their own.

Content Creation Has Never Been Easier, and That’s the Problem

We’re operating in a world where content creation has been simplified by a factor of a thousand. Anyone can create content. Anyone can mass-produce it. With AI, even a very small company can generate blogs, emails, social posts, videos and webinar materials at a volume that once required an entire marketing department.

Traditional roadblocks to content creation have effectively disappeared.

But when the barrier to entry disappears, merely showing up stops being a differentiator.

Your prospects aren’t struggling to find another webinar to attend. They don’t need more emails in their inboxes or more generic insights in their LinkedIn feeds. They are surrounded by content, much of it saying essentially the same thing.

Producing content, even good content, is no longer enough to guarantee that the right people will see it, engage with it or ultimately buy from you.

And yet, many companies are still building growth projections around the assumption that they can publish consistently, distribute organically and generate millions of dollars in revenue without making a meaningful investment in audience acquisition.

The math doesn’t work.

Organic Marketing Is the Baseline, Not the Entire Growth Strategy

To be clear, I still believe in organic marketing.

Companies need a credible website. They need a clear point of view. They need thoughtful content, consistent communication, strong social channels and programs that keep them visible to clients and prospects. Organic marketing efforts establish credibility, support the sales process and help people understand what the company stands for.

But they aren’t a complete client-acquisition strategy.

For Intention.ly’s first five years, we worked with many companies that wanted to build a stronger organic presence. We helped smaller firms develop a bigger voice. We improved the caliber of their ideas, their creative, and the way they showed up in the market.

That work mattered, and it still does.

But the market has changed. The tactics that once helped a firm stand out are now being used by everyone. What worked when relatively few companies were publishing thoughtful content will not produce the same results in a world where every company can publish something every day.

I’m not suggesting firms should abandon organic marketing, but they do need to stop assuming organic marketing alone is a scalable revenue engine.

Every Business Has a Cost to Acquire a Client

No matter what you sell, there is a cost to acquiring a client.

That cost might include paid media, events, sponsorships, partnerships, technology, data, salespeople, outbound programs, content production or the time of the people responsible for building relationships. It will look different for every business, but it exists.

Companies need to understand that cost, model it honestly and determine whether the economics of the business can support it.

If your firm can’t afford to acquire customers, your business-model problem is more significant than any potential marketing problem.

You can’t build a long-term growth strategy around the hope that enough people will happen to find your content, join your webinar, open your emails and eventually request a meeting.

Hope is not a distribution strategy.

At Intention.ly, I would never assume that we can invest no meaningful time, money or resources into acquiring clients and still produce predictable growth simply by sending emails and posting on social media. We invest in our brand, our relationships, our partnerships, our visibility, our sales team, our marketing infrastructure and the experiences that bring us closer to the companies we want to serve.

Why would we expect a different economic reality for our clients?

Even Influence Is Not a Free Pass

There are exceptions. A company with a true category-defining personality or major industry influencer may be able to generate significant demand through organic channels because that person has already built an audience.

But even that advantage is becoming harder to sustain.

Audience reach is less predictable. Algorithms change constantly. Organic distribution continues to decline. People are overwhelmed with information. Even well-known experts increasingly need paid distribution, partnerships, events, and coordinated campaigns to reach beyond the audience they already have, and most companies don’t have a top industry influencer sitting inside their business.

They have smart executives with valuable ideas, but those ideas still need a strategy, creative differentiation, and investment behind them if they’re going to reach enough of the right people to affect revenue.

Stop Asking Marketing to Manufacture Revenue Without Investment

If you’re asking your internal marketing team or your agency to generate millions of dollars in revenue without providing an acquisition budget, it’s time to take several steps back and analyze the expectation from a metrics standpoint.

How many qualified prospects need to see your message? How much will it cost to reach them? How long is the buying cycle? What percentage will convert? What is an acquired client worth? Which channels can create sufficient volume, and which ones primarily build credibility or support conversion?

Those are the questions behind a real growth strategy.

The next era of marketing will require more creativity, not less. Companies will need stronger ideas, more distinctive experiences, and more compelling reasons for people to pay attention, but creativity doesn’t eliminate the need for investment. Great creative that no one sees is still invisible.

Keep producing the content. Keep hosting the webinars. Keep sending the emails and publishing the organic social posts. Those channels remain essential parts of a credible, connected growth engine.

Just stop expecting them to generate millions of dollars on their own.

You can’t demand extraordinary revenue from an ordinary level of investment.

 

There was a time when marketers needed to remind executives that their brand was more than their logo. I don’t think that’s the most interesting conversation anymore.

Most sophisticated financial services execs understand that brand includes positioning, messaging, experience, reputation, and plenty of other elements beyond colors and typography.

But is any of it creating the intended meaning in the minds of the people you’re trying to reach?

Your biggest branding problem probably isn’t whether people recognize you. It’s whether they know what to remember you for.

A prospect can recognize your company name, see your advertising, follow your team on LinkedIn and even visit your website without developing a particularly strong idea about why your company matters. That’s just awareness.

Your brand has to do more. It should give people a shortcut for understanding who you are, what you stand for, and why they should choose you over the alternatives.

In other words, the job of a brand isn’t simply to make your company recognizable. It’s to make something recognizable about your company. In financial services, that’s harder than it sounds.

Observation 1: Most Financial Services Brands Suffer From Sameness, Not Ugliness

Spend enough time on wealth management, asset management, and fintech websites, and you’ll encounter a familiar collection of words.Trust me, I know them by heart. 

Independent. Fiduciary. Comprehensive. Personalized. Holistic. Client-first. Sophisticated.

None of those are bad things. In fact, many firms using those words to describe themselves can prove exactly how they live up to the definitions. But truth and differentiation aren’t the same thing. That’s where I think many financial services companies misdiagnose their branding problem.

They don’t have an aesthetics problem. Their websites look professional enough. Their logos are contemporary. Their presentations have been polished. Their executives photograph well.

They have a sameness problem.

The language sounds like everyone else’s language. The claims sound like everyone else’s claims. And when a buyer encounters five firms making some variation of the same argument, they have no reason to remember one over another.

Professionalism can get you into the consideration set, but it rarely tells someone why you should win it.

Observation 2: Differentiation Doesn’t Mean Nobody Else Can Say It

I’ve watched executives dismiss potentially strong positioning with some version of the same objection:

“But couldn’t one of our competitors say that too?”

Probably, but that’s not necessarily a problem.True differentiation doesn’t require finding a sentence that would be impossible for another company to claim too. It requires choosing an idea you can credibly own and then reinforcing it so consistently that the market begins associating that idea with you.

A current financial services example illustrates this well. Consider Altruist. The firm entered an RIA custody market dominated by enormous incumbents. Advisors already understood what a custodian was. Altruist didn’t have to invent a new category from scratch; the firm just had to get advisors to consider it in a different mental bucket.

For years, Altruist has consistently positioned itself around the idea of the modern custodian: technology-forward, purpose-built for independent RIAs and deliberately contrasted with legacy custodial infrastructure.

When it overhauled its brand identity in 2025, Altruist explicitly said it wanted the visual and verbal expression of the company to feel distinct from legacy competitors and represent what the custodial experience should look and feel like for modern advisors.

Then, on August 26th, Vanguard announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, with Altruist continuing to operate as a standalone business. I’m not suggesting branding caused a transaction of that magnitude. Acquisitions happen because of businesses, economics, technology, distribution, talent, strategic fit, and many other factors. However, the moment provides an interesting illustration of brand equity.

Altruist doesn’t simply identify as another custodial platform. For many advisors, the name represents an idea about what modern custody should become. That’s what a brand is supposed to do. Jason Wenk knew it early on, and so did his team. 

Schwab and Fidelity are significantly more recognizable names. But Altruist didn’t need to beat them at recognition; it needed the right audience to think:

Altruist? That’s the modern one.

That’s a mental shortcut. It’s brilliant, especially in an age where we burn too many mental calories absorbing a ridiculous amount of new information every day.

Observation 3: A Strong Brand Reduces How Much Selling You Have to Do

At a certain point, branding stops being a marketing exercise and becomes a commercial one. When your positioning isn’t clear, every interaction starts from zero. 

• Your salesperson explains the company.
• Your CEO explains the company’s vision.
• Your website explains the company’s ideal clients.
• Your PR firm explains the company’s thought leaders.
• Your ads explain the company’s value proposition.
• Your content explains the company’s point of view and process.

And every explanation sounds slightly different because nobody has a sufficiently strong idea around which everything else can organize. That’s inefficient and expensive.

When you’ve already established a strong brand, people enter those interactions with useful context that saves time and energy.

They’ve encountered the same perspective in an article. They’ve heard it from your executives. They’ve seen it reflected in your product. They’ve heard someone else describe you that way.

Now, your salesperson isn’t introducing an entirely new idea. They’re reinforcing one, and that has implications far beyond branding.

PR makes a bigger impact because reporters understand the story. Content compounds because each piece strengthens the same association. Referrals become easier because clients can easily explain what distinguishes the firm. Advertising becomes cumulative rather than a collection of disconnected campaigns. Sales conversations start further down the funnel.

Marketing creates exposure. Brand determines what survives the exposure.

Observation 4: Every Additional Sentence Creates Friction

Financial services suffers from another particular branding affliction: we confuse complexity with sophistication.

As companies grow, they accumulate: new capabilities, new audiences, new service models, new technology, acquisition, specialists, the list goes on. And because every one of those things matters internally, companies inevitably try to communicate all of them externally.

The homepage becomes a catalog. The pitch becomes a paragraph. The positioning becomes a list. The buyer gets handed the complexity and told to sort it out. Unlike the marketing efforts for advisors two decades ago, buyers don’t experience your company through your organizational chart.

They experience fragments of it. A headline. A recommendation. A conference conversation. A LinkedIn post. A Google search. A fifteen-minute introductory call.

They will never remember everything you want them to know. Which is why I increasingly think about brand as compression.

Your organization may consist of hundreds of people, capabilities, beliefs, products and proof points. Your market might retain three ideas. Brand strategy determines which three.

The best companies don’t make their businesses simpler just for the sake of marketing. They make complex businesses easier to understand.

That’s different, and in today’s RIA and fintech space, it’s enormously valuable.

Observation 5: The Real Test of Brand Is Recall

Most companies measure brand using things they can easily see.

Did awareness increase? Do people recognize our name? Does our website feel premium? Is our visual identity consistent?

Those are useful questions, but I’d add a much harder one:

When your ideal client encounters the problem you solve, do they think of you? And do they know why?

That’s the standard. Ask a client what you’re particularly good at. Ask a prospect what they believe differentiates you. Ask an employee to describe the company in one sentence or what they feel about working for the firm. Ask a referral partner when they would recommend you instead of somebody else.

If every answer is different, or the answers are generic, you’ve learned something important.

You might have recognition, but you haven’t created enough meaning, and recognition without meaning is a fragile advantage.

Make Yourself Easier to Choose

Financial services will always involve thorough decision-making.

People aren’t selecting wealth managers, custodians, asset managers, or enterprise technology platforms on the strength of a tagline. They’ll evaluate capabilities, look at performance, conduct due diligence, and look for evidence that they’re selecting the right partner.

A strong brand presence doesn’t eliminate any of that, but it does help someone move from:

I’ve heard of them.

to

I understand them.

to

I believe them.

to

I should consider them.

Brand is a shortcut to belief. That’s why I’d recommend starting your next brand conversation by asking: What do we want someone to remember about us after they’ve forgotten everything else?

Oftentimes, it’s also why I encourage our clients to name an emotion someone feels after engaging with them. Emotions and feelings stick with you and serve as shortcuts. 

Every company already has a brand. The strategic question is whether yours is making the buying decision easier or forcing your prospects to do the work of figuring you out.

People ask me fairly often why we call Intention.ly a growth engine design firm. 

Why not a marketing agency? We do marketing. Why not a growth agency? We certainly help companies grow. Why not a digital, creative, demand generation, or marketing technology firm? We have expertise across all of those areas too.

The answer goes all the way back to why I started Intention.ly in the first place.

Before founding this company, I sat in the CMO seat. And not just any CMO seat. I was fortunate enough to serve as CMO at two of the fastest-growing fintech companies in our industry. When you serve in that role during periods of tremendous growth, you learn something very quickly: growth is never the product of one great marketing tactic.

Your job isn’t to make one part work. Your job is to make everything work together.

At any given time, I had internal teams, agencies, specialist partners, technology partners, sales teams, leadership teams, budgets, revenue targets, campaigns, content, events, websites, CRM systems, data, and about a thousand other competing priorities. Any individual partner could be doing an excellent job and we could still have a growth problem.

My paid media team could show me fantastic campaign results. My creative partners could be producing exceptional work. My technology vendors could demonstrate all the valuable things their platforms were capable of doing. My internal team could be working incredibly hard. 

But from my seat, I had to answer the bigger question:: Is all of this working together to grow the business?

That broader perspective set the foundation for Intention.ly.

I Didn’t Need Another Silo. I Needed Someone Who Could See the Whole Thing.

As CMO, nearly everyone around me was looking at the business through the lens of their particular responsibility, and that’s exactly what they should be doing. 

The paid media team should obsess over paid performance. The creative team should care deeply about the quality of the brand. The demand generation partner should be focused on creating opportunities. The CRM provider should know its technology inside and out.

But CMOs don’t have the luxury of optimizing one piece at a time. If you’ve been in that role, you know your job is to sit above it all, trying to figure out how those pieces come together to produce business outcomes. I call that process growth engine design.

What Is Growth Engine Design?

Growth engine design is the process of designing, connecting, executing on, and continuously improving all of the components responsible for producing growth. It starts with the business outcome and works backward.

Simple to say, but a fundamental game-changer in practice.

Let’s say you’re behind your revenue goal. You could go to a marketing agency and say, “We need more leads.” And they may say, “Let’s put more money into paid media.” That isn’t a bad recommendation. More leads may be exactly what you need.

But if you came to Intention.ly, the question we ask would be different: “You have a $5 million revenue gap. What’s the fastest, smartest, most efficient way to close it?”

Maybe the answer is more leads. But what if you already have thousands of leads sitting in your database that nobody is effectively nurturing? 

What if you’re generating plenty of opportunities, but your conversion rate is terrible?

What if the sales cycle is unnecessarily long? 

What if your positioning isn’t resonating? 

What if your sales team isn’t telling the story effectively? 

What if your best growth opportunity is increasing share of wallet with the clients you already have? 

What if referrals are your highest-converting source of business, but you’ve never built an intentional strategy around generating more of them?

Looking at the goal through a more holistic lens, “spend more on paid media” may turn out to be the slowest and most expensive answer.

That’s growth engine design. We don’t start with the tactic we’re capable of selling you. We start with the growth problem you’re trying to solve.

20 Different Ways to Solve the Pitch Deck Problem

Imagine you come to us and say, “Our pitch deck needs to be redesigned to match our new brand.” 

We can absolutely do that. We have an incredible creative team. We build pitch decks all the time.

But I don’t want us to stop there. I want to know: Why aren’t you getting the outcome you want when you use this deck?

Maybe it is the design. Or maybe the messaging isn’t strong enough. Maybe the story takes 25 meandering slides to get to what your prospect cares about. Maybe your differentiation isn’t clear. Maybe the person delivering the presentation isn’t telling the story effectively. Maybe sales is using the deck inconsistently. Maybe prospects are receiving it after meetings and you have no idea whether they’re opening it, sharing it, or engaging with it.

The deliverable might still be a new pitch deck. But we’re solving a completely different problem. We’re not trying to make the deck prettier. We’re trying to make the sales process perform better. And because we understand the role that deck plays inside the larger growth engine, the work itself should be better.

The Same Thing Happens With Paid Media

You can ask a paid media partner, “How did the campaign perform?” That’s a perfectly reasonable question, and great paid media can be an incredibly powerful growth lever.

But from the CMO seat, I always had another set of questions. What happened after someone clicked? Did we attract the right people? Did they convert? What happened to the people who didn’t convert immediately? Did they enter an effective nurture journey? Did sales follow up? Did the message that generated the click carry through to the landing page and sales conversation? Did those leads ultimately become opportunities and revenue?

In other words: How did that campaign perform across the entire growth engine, not just inside the advertising platform?

That’s not a criticism of paid media specialists. A great specialist should be exceptional at what you’ve hired them to do. Our job is different. Our job is to make sure what they do connects to everything that comes before and after it.

Technology Isn’t the Answer on its Own

I feel the same way about marketing technology. I love technology. We use it extensively, implement it for clients, and partner with some fantastic technology companies.

But I’ve also seen firms spend extraordinary amounts of money building sophisticated tech stacks that aren’t producing anywhere near the value they should. Often, the technology works just fine. The system around it doesn’t.

Maybe nobody owns it. Maybe the data is bad. Maybe sales doesn’t use it. Maybe the right automation was never built. Maybe the strategy changed but the technology didn’t. Maybe the company bought five platforms that each solve a problem nobody had clearly defined in the first place.

A powerful marketing technology platform without the right strategy, processes, integrations, and people running it only causes more problems. So we don’t start by asking, “What tool should you buy?” We start by asking, “What does the growth engine need to do?” Then we determine the right combination of people, processes, technology, and execution to make that happen.

Agency Execution Is Still Part of the Growth Engine

I want to be very clear about this because calling ourselves a growth engine design firm does not mean we’ve somehow graduated beyond execution. Quite the opposite.

We run the campaigns. We create the content. We build the websites. We design the pitch decks. We create sales enablement materials. We develop messaging. We build automation. We execute digital strategies.

Because another thing I learned from sitting in the CMO seat is that strategy without execution is worthless.

Most firms are not sitting around with an abundance of time and people wondering what everyone should work on next. They’re short on hours in the day. They’re short on execution capacity. Their leaders and their marketing teams are stretched thin. Their salespeople need to sell. And there are always more good ideas than there are people available to execute them.

So yes, we absolutely do the agency work. The difference is that we’re doing it in the context of the broader system we’re building.

If we’re creating your content, we understand the demand strategy it supports. If we’re building your sales enablement collateral, we understand where conversion is breaking down. If we’re running your paid media, we understand what happens to prospects after they click. If we’re implementing your technology, we understand who needs to use it and what business process it is supposed to improve.

The execution isn’t separate from growth engine design. The execution is part of growth engine design.

So What Does Intention.ly Compete With?

Honestly, I don’t think our biggest competition is another agency. It’s fragmentation.

It’s the firm with seven smart partners, 14 pieces of technology, an internal marketing team, a sales organization, a long list of initiatives, and no one responsible for making the entire thing work as one system. It’s the company producing a tremendous amount of marketing activity but struggling to connect that activity to revenue. It’s the company that has a good strategy but can’t execute it, or great execution capabilities without a clear strategy.

It’s marketing handing a lead to sales and calling the job done. It’s tech that gets purchased but never operationalized. It’s the broken handoff process letting growth fall through the cracks.

That’s what we’re trying to fix.

What Should You Expect From a Growth Engine Design Firm?

Expect us to ask different questions. If you tell us you need more leads, we’re going to want to understand why. If you tell us you need a new website, we’re going to ask what the website needs to accomplish. If you tell us you need a campaign, we’re going to ask what business problem that campaign is supposed to solve. If you tell us your marketing isn’t working, we’re probably going to look beyond marketing.

You should also expect us to get our hands dirty. We’re not going to hand you a beautiful strategy deck and wish you luck. We can design the engine, help build the engine, and execute the work required to make the engine run.

And then we’re going to measure it, because the point isn’t to create more marketing. The point is to create more growth.

Why “Growth Engine Design”?

When I think back to my years as a CMO, the firm I needed wasn’t another company trying to sell me its particular hammer. I needed people who could look at the entire business with me. People who could understand the revenue goal, diagnose what was standing in the way, figure out which levers mattered most, connect the right people and technology, and then help execute the work.

That’s the company we’ve built.

That’s why “marketing agency” has never felt big enough to describe Intention.ly. We do marketing. We do strategy. We do technology. We do sales enablement. We do execution. But none of those things, individually, is the point.

The point is making them work together to create measurable, repeatable, scalable growth.

That’s growth engine design. And that’s why Intention.ly is a growth engine design firm.

There are a lot of agencies that can build a website, run paid media, write content or manage your social channels. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.

But if you’re trying to solve a bigger growth problem, the conversation should probably start somewhere else.

Maybe you’re generating leads, but they’re not turning into opportunities. Maybe marketing and sales disagree about what a qualified lead is. Maybe you’ve invested in HubSpot but aren’t getting much value from it. Or maybe your team is doing a ton of marketing, but no one can confidently say what’s contributing to pipeline.

Simply doing more marketing won’t solve any of those problems. Addressing growth challenges at the root requires a partner that understands your industry and your business well enough to figure out what’s going wrong, then bring the right people, strategy and execution to fix it.

What’s the Difference Between a Marketing Agency and a Growth Partner?

A marketing agency and a growth partner likely offer a similar suite of services: content, paid media, websites, SEO, brand, creative and so on.

The difference is where the conversation starts.

If you ask an agency to run a paid campaign, they’ll probably start thinking about audiences, creative and media strategy.

Your growth partner will first want to know why you’re running it.

What are you trying to accomplish? Where does this campaign fit into the larger growth strategy? What happens to a lead after they convert? Is sales equipped to follow up? What would have to happen for the campaign to be considered successful six months from now?

Sometimes a paid media campaign will still be the answer; sometimes that conversation will uncover a completely different problem. A growth partner is willing to diagnose before it prescribes.

So what should you be looking for as you’re evaluating potential growth partners?

1. They Know Financial Services

There’s a difference between an agency that has some financial services clients and one that understands the industry.

Your partner shouldn’t need three months to learn what separates an RIA from a broker-dealer, how an asset manager goes to market or why selling technology to advisors is different from selling directly to consumers.

They should understand that financial services buying journeys can be long and messy. Multiple stakeholders may be involved, trust carries an enormous amount of weight, and compliance is almost always part of the process. What works in another industry doesn’t always translate neatly into this one.

Industry knowledge saves time, but more importantly, it changes the quality of the strategy.

When you’re evaluating a partner, ask about the people who will work on your business. Have they worked with companies like yours? Do they understand your audience and distribution model? Can they talk intelligently about your competitive landscape?

A financial services logo on a case-study page doesn’t tell you any of that.

2. They Can Think Strategically, and Then Do the Work

Strategy only matters if someone can turn it into action. At the same time, execution without a clear strategy creates its own problems. That’s how teams end up publishing content because the calendar says it’s Tuesday, launching campaigns without a clear audience, or adding technology without knowing what they expect it to improve.

A good growth partner should be comfortable on both sides, able to identify the biggest opportunities, help you decide where not to spend time and money, and build what the strategy calls for.

Just as importantly, execution should feed back into the strategy. If a campaign isn’t working, you want a team that asks why and adjusts, not one that keeps delivering against a plan everyone knows isn’t producing the expected result.

3. They Can See Beyond Their Own Lane

Especially in financial services, growth can get complicated quickly.

A single client journey might touch paid media, content, a website, CRM, email nurture, sales outreach, and reporting before an opportunity ever makes it into the pipeline.

If the people responsible for those pieces aren’t looking at the whole journey, it’s easy to optimize one part while missing a problem in another area.

Say your paid campaigns are producing qualified leads, but very few are turning into opportunities. You could change the targeting, test new creative, or increase the budget.

Or you could look at what happens after someone fills out the form on your website.

How quickly does someone follow up? Is the lead getting routed to the right person? Is there a nurture sequence? Do you know why the prospect converted in the first place? Is the CRM giving anyone enough information to prioritize the lead? 

If the handoff process is causing friction, generating more leads is only creating more opportunities to lose them.

Your growth partner doesn’t necessarily need to own every part of the process, but they should understand it well enough to spot the problem.

4. They Make Your Internal Team Stronger

Bringing in an outside partner shouldn’t be an indictment of your internal team.

Quite often, it’s the opposite.

Your internal marketing leaders have context an outside firm can never fully replicate, even with a wealth of industry knowledge. They know the personalities, history, internal dynamics, products, and customers. That’s incredibly valuable.

What they probably don’t have is unlimited time, or specialists in every discipline they need.

A three-person marketing department shouldn’t have to become experts in paid search, HubSpot architecture, AI search optimization, conversion strategy, graphic design, video, PR and web development just because all of those things happen to fall under “marketing.”

A good partner helps fill those gaps.

That might mean becoming an extension of a small marketing team. For a larger organization, it could mean bringing in specialized expertise for a particular initiative. In other cases, the partner may handle execution, allowing an internal CMO to spend more time on strategy and leadership.

The model can change. The goal shouldn’t be that your internal team has more leverage because the partner is there.

5. They Care About the Numbers Your Leadership Team Cares About

Traffic is useful. So are impressions, clicks, email engagement, and conversion rates.

They’re just not the end of the story.

Eventually, somebody is going to ask what all of that activity did for the business.

Depending on the firm, the answer might be qualified pipeline, new clients, AUM, advisor recruitment, revenue, or something else entirely. Your growth partner should know what those numbers are and understand how their work is expected to influence them.

Ask potential partners what they’ll measure and how often they’ll evaluate it. Ask what they would do if the numbers aren’t moving in the right direction.

Reporting on what happened is easy. The more useful conversation is what you’re going to do about it.

6. They’ll Tell You When They Think You’re Wrong

You want to work with people who are responsive, collaborative, and easy to work with.

You also want them to disagree with you sometimes.

If you’re bringing in outside experts, part of what you’re paying for is perspective. They should be willing to tell you when the data doesn’t support your assumption, when they think you’re prioritizing the wrong initiative, or when there’s a better place to spend your budget.

Sometimes the answer really is a new website or another campaign.

Other times, the best recommendation might be to fix the sales handoff first, rethink the positioning, or stop spending money on something that isn’t working.

A partner who challenges you respectfully is doing their job. A partner who says yes to every request may just be taking orders.

Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Financial Services Growth Partner

You can learn a lot about a potential partner by asking questions that go beyond capabilities and pricing:

• How much of your work is in financial services, and with what types of firms?
• Who will be working on our account?
• How do you figure out what’s limiting a client’s growth?
• What happens if you think we’re focused on the wrong problem?
• Which capabilities do you have in-house, and where do you bring in outside expertise?
• How do you typically work with an existing marketing team?
• How do you connect marketing activity to pipeline and revenue?
• What should we realistically expect to accomplish in the first six to 12 months?
• Can you give us an example of something a client asked for that you recommended they not do?

And pay attention to what they ask you.

A partner who’s curious about your sales process, revenue goals, customers, team structure, technology, and previous attempts to solve the problem is probably trying to understand the business.

If most of the conversation is about their services, that’s useful information too.

Finding the Right Financial Services Growth Partner

The right answer won’t be the same for every firm.

A growing RIA hiring its first marketing leader has very different needs from a $20 billion wealth management firm with an established marketing organization. A fintech struggling to generate pipeline needs something different from a company that has plenty of leads but can’t convert them.

Start with the problem you’re trying to solve, then look for the team with the industry experience, strategic perspective, and execution capabilities to help you solve it.

That’s the model we’ve built at Intention.ly. We work exclusively in financial services, bringing together industry veterans and specialists across marketing and growth. Sometimes that means becoming an extension of an internal team. Sometimes we’re brought in to solve a very specific problem. And sometimes our work starts with helping a firm figure out what the problem is.

The definition of a growth partner is a team that first works to identify what will move the business forward, and then acts on it.

 

One of the first questions we hear from firms considering outsourced marketing is:

“What should we expect to invest?”

The answer depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Some firms need a one-time assessment to identify growth opportunities. Others may need ongoing marketing execution or executive-level leadership to guide long-term strategy. The right engagement model depends on your firm’s size, internal resources, and business goals. At Intention.ly, we offer several engagement options designed to meet firms wherever they are in their growth journey.

One-Time Marketing Assessment

Sometimes the biggest barrier to growth is a lack of clarity, rather than lack of effort.

Our Diagnostic Assessment is a comprehensive review of your marketing, operations, technology, and workflows designed to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement.

Investment: $10,000 one-time

This engagement is ideal for firms that want an objective assessment before committing to larger strategic initiatives.

Ongoing Marketing Support

For firms looking for consistent execution, ongoing marketing support provides dedicated expertise without building a large internal department.

Foundational Marketing

Starting at $6,500 per month

Designed for firms that need consistent marketing execution and a scalable foundation for growth.

Outsourced Marketing Team

Starting at $10,000 per month

Gain access to a team of marketing specialists without the cost and complexity of hiring multiple full-time employees.

Executive-Level Marketing Leadership

As firms grow, execution alone isn’t enough. Strategic leadership becomes equally as important.

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Starting at $12,000 to $15,000 per month

A Fractional CMO provides executive marketing leadership without the investment required for a full-time CMO. They help align marketing with business objectives, establish measurable growth strategies, prioritize investments, and create accountability across your marketing function.

Building a Complete Growth Engine

Some organizations need more than the normal range of marketing support, they need a fully integrated growth strategy.

Growth Engine Design

Starting at $25,000 per month

This engagement combines strategic planning, marketing leadership, operational alignment, and scalable systems to create a repeatable framework for long-term growth.

Custom Engagements

Most AI marketing platforms are built to serve every industry. Advisor Brand Builder was built specifically for financial advisors.

The platform has been developed with the language, regulations, and marketing challenges unique to the financial services industry in mind. It’s trained on FINRA and SEC marketing rules, helping reduce compliance-related revisions while supporting a more efficient content development process, so firms spend less time reworking marketing materials and more time putting them to work.

Every firm is different.

For organizations seeking Fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO) services, project-based work, or scalable advisor support, Intention.ly develops custom engagement plans based on your specific objectives and organizational needs.

Contact us to discuss pricing for these services.

Choosing the Right Investment

The right approach varies from one firm to the next. Some firms benefit from a focused assessment that uncovers opportunities for improvement. Others need a dedicated marketing team to execute campaigns, while growing organizations often require executive leadership to align marketing with broader business objectives.

The right investment depends on your firm’s goals, available resources, and stage of growth.

Rather than asking, “What’s the cheapest option?” a better question is:

“What level of support will help us achieve our growth goals most effectively?”

That’s the conversation we help firms navigate every day.

Ready to Explore the Right Fit?

Whether you’re looking for a one-time assessment, ongoing marketing support, or executive-level leadership, Intention.ly offers flexible engagement models designed specifically for financial services firms.

Let’s start the conversation and identify the engagement that’s right for your business.

 

The term “brand” gets thrown around a lot, especially today as branding enjoys a resurgence. In recent years, it was often viewed as being the domain of large household companies. When smaller businesses considered it, it was often secondary to digital strategies. 

However, as the digital landscape has become more crowded, as changes in SEO, email, and social media have eroded performance, and as AI has filled most channels with lookalike content, companies are again turning to branding. That’s because, when done well, branding is a competitive advantage. It’s what helps make your firm distinct and unique, separating you from a crowd of cookie-cutter companies vying for limited attention from the same audience. 

This can be particularly true in financial services, where branding has often been overlooked and undervalued. For those financial services companies willing to invest the time and effort, branding is an opportunity to shine.

First, Here’s What Brand Isn’t

You need to build a brand. 

Everyone says it, repeats it, screams it from the mountaintop. And yet the more I hear it, the more I’m left feeling that very few people truly understand what branding is. 

Before we go any further, let’s quickly check off what branding isn’t, because it too often gets reduced to one or two elements. 

• It’s not a logo
• It’s not a tagline
• It’s not a website
• It’s not social media
• It’s not your tone or voice or personality
• It’s not your colors
• It’s not your brand guide (the mere existence of a document does not mean you have built a brand)

All of those things are elements of a brand, and some, such as the logo and tagline, are so prominent that they can be inextricably linked to and confused for the brand. 

But a brand is much more than the sum of the individual parts. Not to get too philosophical, but imagine being asked, “Who are you?” You could answer with your name, personality traits, titles, and family role. You could go on and on, and each answer added to the next could get us closer to understanding who you are, yet it would still fall short. Because there’s something essential about everyone, an essence, that fills the gaps between list items, something ineffable that serves as the glue that helps shape our identity. 

Heady, right?

The best branding operates in much the same way. It’s your heart and soul. To be effective, it can’t just be manufactured.

Why Brand Matters in the Age of AI

AI makes it possible for us to do many things quicker than ever before. A one-person team can create all of the content you’d ever need for a website, emails, social media, and campaigns. 

The trouble is that, left to its own devices, AI content typically looks, sounds, and feels remarkably similar to everyone else’s AI content. Generative AI relies on probabilities. It predicts what the next output should be based on the most probable answer. You know the saying “zig when everyone else zags”? AI will always zag and, with lightning speed, head straight for the middle of the pack.

Zigging is a very human trait that defies expectation and prediction. It’s often born from individual human experiences, oddball choices, accidents, and even mistakes. (I always think of Stevie Nicks writing “Edge of Seventeen” after mishearing Tom Petty’s wife say they met at “the age of seventeen” in a thick Southern accent.)

Branding favors unexpected choices and outside-the-box thinking over predictability. AI’s default is to stay inside the box that has already proven successful. As the world adopts AI, most companies will zag. Branding allows you to zig and stand out in the process.

Where To Begin

There are many playbooks, frameworks, and processes for brand building. I use one that’s been modified to what I believe produces the best results. But just following the framework doesn’t produce a worthwhile brand. It’s valuable as a means of collecting information and details in a structured way that builds upon itself and reveals which directions to explore. 

Rather than share a framework, let me instead share three foundational exercises that you can start today, no branding experience necessary. They often work well as team workshops that encourage open discussion and exploration. 

1. Know yourself: Before you can build a brand that connects with customers, you need to know who you are as a business. At your core, who are you? What do you care about? What makes you you? What things make you different or special, and why should anyone care about them? How do you want the world to see you? This should involve a high level of self-awareness and authenticity. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. The most successful brands tend to have a degree of honesty and authenticity that makes them relatable. 

Common questions that can be used to explore your identity include:

• What do you sound like? Are you bold and daring? Helpful and human? Premium or accessible or relatable? Polished or personal? These decisions tend to get to the heart of who you are and your brand personality.
• What do you look like? This can include colors, types of photography (stock vs original), and even preferences about things like shapes (angles vs curves; boxes vs circles vs hexagons). What types of logos do you like?
• What brands do you admire and why? The point isn’t to copy them, but to get a sense of what you gravitate toward. It’s like admiring good qualities in others with the intention of developing them in yourself.

 

2. Know your audience: Many companies, especially in financial services, have never taken the time to create buyer personas or an ICP (ideal customer profile). Demographic data is useful. Psychographic information is everything. Step into your buyer’s shoes and try to truly understand their fears, dreams, aspirations, and goals, and the unique ways that you address those. 

3. Know your competition: Look at your competitors. Review their websites and their social media feeds. What are they saying? What’s their message? What’s the overarching story they’re trying to tell? What colors and design elements are they using? Note what they’re doing that’s working well and what’s falling flat. The idea isn’t to steal from them. It’s the opposite. You want to carve out some blue sky for yourself, a position that you alone can own. That can’t happen if you’re saying the same thing as your competitors and look exactly like them.

Branding Is an Opportunity in Financial Services

To be clear, branding has always been valuable. There are times when it’s been de-emphasized in favor of other strategies, but it has always represented an opportunity to create an emotional connection with your audience by clearly defining who you are, and living it across every interaction and touchpoint. As the foundation of your business, it also serves as the engine for all of your other marketing efforts. Everything you do flows out of your brand.

Outside of the industry’s biggest players, financial services has typically not embraced branding, relying instead on referrals and word-of-mouth. Even now, few pursue it, and even fewer do it well. That makes it an incredible opportunity. Just remember, simply having a brand doesn’t make it good or a competitive advantage. Having a strong brand does. 

Looking for guidance bringing your brand to life? Our Advisor Brand Builder experience blends the efficiency of AI data collection and synthesis with our team of human creative experts to tell your unique story through stunning visuals, compelling content, brand collateral, and a fully built website.