Tag: Blog

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.

AI has dramatically reduced the time it takes to build a website, develop messaging, and create a brand. The challenge is that those same capabilities are available to everyone. As a result, advisory firms are beginning to sound alike. Their websites make similar promises, their messaging follows the same formulas, and their visual identities often feel interchangeable.

Technology has made it easier to execute marketing activities, but harder to create a brand people remember. That’s the problem Intention.ly’s Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) was designed to solve.

More Than an AI Branding Tool

Advisor Brand Builder combines artificial intelligence with financial services marketing expertise to help advisors launch a differentiated brand, website, and content strategy in a fraction of the time traditional branding projects require.

Speed is certainly part of the value, but it isn’t what sets ABB apart. Every recommendation is grounded in strategy before AI ever enters the process. Before AI generates a logo, website, or piece of content, ABB helps advisors define who they serve, what makes their firm different, and how they want to be positioned in the market. Those strategic decisions become the foundation for everything that follows.

A Brand Built Around Your Firm

Once your positioning is established, ABB creates a complete marketing ecosystem designed specifically for your business, including:

• A custom visual identity with logos, color palettes, typography, and brand assets
• Strategic messaging, including your value proposition, differentiators, service descriptions, and advisor biographies
• A responsive website built around your brand and messaging
• Marketing assets like business cards, email signatures, presentation templates, and social media graphics
• A 12-month content strategy with monthly content packs to keep your marketing consistent

Instead of starting from a blank page every time you need a new marketing asset, your brand becomes a system that works together across every channel.

Built Specifically for Financial Services

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.

Human Strategy Makes the Difference

AI is a powerful tool, but it’s most effective when guided by experienced marketers.

Every ABB project is supported by Intention.ly’s team of financial services marketing specialists, who review, refine, and strengthen the AI-generated outputs. The combination of technology and human expertise helps ensure your brand reflects your firm’s unique value while maintaining the quality and strategic thinking clients expect.

The outcome is a stronger brand, delivered faster without compromising strategy or quality.

A Strong Brand Is More Than a Logo

A brand is much more than its visual identity. A brand should influence how prospects view your firm at every stage of their journey. It shapes how you’re perceived online, how your advisors communicate your value, how consistently your content is delivered, and whether prospects remember your firm over the dozens of others competing for their attention.

Advisor Brand Builder was created to bring all of those elements together into one connected system, giving advisors the tools to market with greater consistency, confidence, and efficiency.

A strong brand is one of your firm’s greatest competitive advantages. Advisor Brand Builder helps you build it faster, with the strategy and expertise needed to support long-term growth. 

Ready to see what’s possible? Learn more about Advisor Brand Builder today.

For many RIAs, one of the most common marketing questions is: “What does lead generation cost?

It’s an important question, but cost alone doesn’t tell the whole story. A more useful question is: What does it take to consistently generate qualified leads that become clients? Those are two very different conversations.

A low cost per lead means very little if those prospects never become clients. Likewise, paying more for qualified prospects can produce a much stronger return if they’re a real fit for your firm. Lead generation isn’t about collecting names. It’s about creating a predictable pipeline of people who are ready to have meaningful conversations.

The Cheapest Leads Are Rarely the Best

Many firms are tempted by purchased lists, one-time lead packages, or services that promise hundreds of prospects overnight. The problem is that attention can’t be bought indefinitely. Purchased leads often lack context, trust, and genuine interest in your firm. Advisors spend valuable time chasing contacts that never convert, while marketing budgets disappear with little to show for them.

Those tactics may generate contacts, but they will rarely build a reliable pipeline. The firms that consistently grow are building systems that attract prospects before the sales conversation ever begins.

Real Lead Generation Starts With Trust

Financial decisions are deeply personal. Most people don’t choose an advisor after seeing one advertisement. They spend time researching, comparing firms, reading educational content, and looking for someone they believe understands their situation.

Effective lead generation has to do more than capture contact information; it needs to build credibility. That’s why successful financial services marketing combines multiple touchpoints into one coordinated strategy, including:

• Educational content that answers real client questions
• Landing pages designed to convert visitors into prospects
• Paid campaigns that reach the right audience
• Email nurture campaigns that build relationships over time
• AI-powered prospecting to identify new opportunities
• Ongoing optimization that improves results month after month

Each piece supports the others. Together, they create a system that continues generating opportunities long after an individual campaign ends.

Cost Per Lead Is Only One Metric

CPL is worth tracking, but it shouldn’t be the only measure of success. A campaign generating leads at $55 each sounds impressive until you ask how many became clients.

The real goal is improving the entire journey from first click to signed client.

Sometimes that means increasing conversion rates. Sometimes it means improving landing pages. Sometimes it means refining messaging so you’re attracting better-fit prospects from the beginning.

The firms that focus only on reducing CPL often sacrifice lead quality. The firms that focus on improving the entire funnel typically see stronger long-term returns.

Good Marketing Gets Better Over Time

One of the biggest misconceptions about lead generation is that it’s something you launch once and never revisit.

The strongest programs improve with time. As performance data accumulates, you gain a clearer understanding of which audiences convert, which messages resonate, and which channels produce the best results. Landing pages are refined, budgets shift toward top-performing campaigns, and optimization becomes an ongoing process rather than a reaction to poor performance.

This helps prevent what’s commonly known as “CPL creep,” where acquisition costs slowly rise because campaigns are left unchanged while ad fatigue sets in or audience behavior evolves. Consistent optimization keeps marketing working harder, even as competition increases.

Building a Sustainable Growth Engine

Paid advertising can generate qualified activity within 60 to 90 days. Email nurture programs and long-term content strategies often begin influencing the pipeline over the next three to six months.

Both matter.

Short-term campaigns can generate immediate opportunities, but long-term brand building creates a pipeline that continues delivering results. The most successful RIAs invest in both because sustainable growth isn’t built on one campaign. It’s built on a repeatable system that continues attracting, educating, and converting ideal clients.

At Intention.ly, that’s exactly how we approach lead generation. We measure success by building marketing systems that consistently create qualified opportunities and produce measurable business growth.

The strongest lead generation strategies don’t interrupt prospects. They give them a reason to engage.

Executive Summary

AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are fundamentally changing how buyers research, compare, and choose financial services providers. The traditional marketing funnel is compressing, and brands that fail to adapt risk becoming invisible before prospects even know they exist. Three priorities should guide your next moves:

• Optimize for AI inclusion, not just search rankings. Structure your content so AI tools can identify, summarize, and credit your expertise. Publish substantive insights rather than keyword-driven filler.
• Make your brand easy to cite. AI condenses information ruthlessly. If your differentiators aren’t clear and distinct, they disappear. Create accurate, current content that machines and humans can reference confidently.
• Measure what matters now. Traditional metrics like page views and click-through rates don’t capture AI visibility. Track whether your brand appears in AI-generated recommendations and curated lists.

This article was originally published in Citybiz on January 15, 2026: AI Is Rewriting the Buyer’s Journey, and Most Marketing Funnels Aren’t Ready | citybiz

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The way people buy has changed completely.

Your future clients aren’t using Google for short searches or browsing endless review sites. Instead, they’re talking to ChatGPT and Gemini, asking complex questions that used to take days of research to answer.

This fundamental behavioral shift is reshaping the funnel that marketers and business leaders in financial services have spent years optimizing.

What’s really happening? What does it mean for your strategy? And what can you do right now to stay visible, relevant, and chosen?

Let’s take a closer look at the modern buyer journey:

Stage 1: From Search to Conversation

Buyers used to start with simple Google searches: “Best CRM for RIAs.” “How to market to next-gen investors.”

Now they open ChatGPT and ask layered questions. “Which CRMs integrate best with Orion and support advisor-client collaboration?” “What marketing strategies help advisors grow with millennial investors?”

And even if they are asking Google these questions, AI summaries offer instant insights without ever sending users to your site.

Top-of-funnel traffic is shrinking, and traditional SEO is losing its grip on discovery.

Use it to your advantage: Optimize for AI inclusion, not just search rankings. Structure your content so AI can easily identify and credit your expertise. Publish deep insights rather than keyword filler. AI rewards clarity and authority over fluff, so approach your thought leadership content as training data for both humans and machines.

Stage 2: From Exploration to Curation

Buyers used to explore different options after discovering their problem. They visited review sites like Capterra and G2, scrolled through your pages, and compared features with your competitors.

Now they ask AI to compare options for them. “List the top five marketing agencies for financial services.” “What are the best advisor tech stacks for client engagement?”

AI delivers a shortlist. If you’re not on it, you never enter the buyer’s awareness.

Use it to your advantage: Make sure your brand exists in AI’s data ecosystem. Create accurate, current information that’s easy to summarize, and sharpen your differentiators. AI condenses information ruthlessly, meaning if your story isn’t distinct, it vanishes. Build brand authority so your name appears organically in AI-curated lists.

Stage 3: From Research to Prequalification

Prospects used to engage early. They downloaded guides, requested demos, and used your website as a learning tool.

Now they arrive fully informed. They’ve already asked AI to create customized requirement lists, budget ranges, and feature comparisons tailored to their firm size and tech stack.

You’re seeing fewer demo requests, not because interest is down, but because AI does the early education work. By the time prospects reach you, they’ve already decided what they need, and they know who can provide it.

Use it to your advantage: Shift your efforts down funnel from lead capture to lead conversion. Prepare for highly informed buyers by creating detailed comparisons, use cases, and technical insights that influence how AI defines your category. Train your sales team to go deeper, faster. Today, first calls are about validation, not discovery.

Stage 4: From Evaluation to Justification

Teams used to build business cases through spreadsheets, internal reviews, and long discussions.

Now they ask AI to build the case. “Compare the ROI of hiring a fractional CMO versus an internal marketing team for a $2B RIA.”

The buying cycle is fast and narrow. Once AI forms a preference, it shapes the buyer’s narrative before your proposal even arrives; winners close quickly, and others disappear.

Use it to your advantage: Differentiate early. Make your unique value simple enough for AI to articulate and humans to understand. Provide case studies, benchmarks, and ROI models that support internal justification. Build quantifiable proof points that strengthen your inclusion in AI-generated recommendations.

The New Funnel: Smaller at the Top, Smarter at the Bottom

The funnel isn’t dead, but AI has significantly compressed it.

Buyers still move from awareness to decision, but the journey is faster, filtered, and heavily automated. You’re no longer competing for clicks; you’re competing to be included in the conversations that shape perception and preference.

Your marketing must evolve from lead generation to credibility engineering. You need to become the obvious, trustworthy answer in a machine-mediated world.

Your Five-Step Roadmap

1. Audit your digital footprint. How clearly do your differentiators appear when AI summarizes your brand?
2. Reframe your content strategy. Build for interpretation over consumption. Create data-backed insights that machines and humans can cite confidently.
3. Equip your sales team with smarter tools. Help them meet informed buyers with richer insights and personalized guidance.
4. Measure visibility differently. Track inclusion in AI results, not just page rankings or clicks.
5. Lead the conversation. Be the voice shaping what the next generation of advisors and fintech leaders learn from AI.

Think AI Algorithms Over Ad Spend

Your next wave of growth won’t come from outspending competitors; it’ll come from out-teaching the algorithms that guide your audience’s decisions.

AI changes what people believe about you before they ever visit your site. Shape that story early and you won’t just survive the shift; you’ll be the brand AI recommends.

About Kelly Waltrich

For 20 years, Intention.ly Co-Founder and CEO Kelly Waltrich has been championing the role of marketing in the financial services industry. As former Chief Marketing Officer at eMoney Advisor and Orion Advisor Solutions, she built powerhouse marketing teams from the ground up, developing the engines that would fuel the highest periods of growth for both firms.

Waltrich designed the strategy behind several successful rebrands, acquisitions, and product launches, including spearheading the development of two advisor marketing products, while creating unmatched overall brand visibility and helping to turn company executives into industry thought leaders. Through forward-thinking demand generation, PR, and product marketing, she created a consistent inbound pipeline for both firms, driving CAC down and SOV up. Her exceptional leadership and innovative approach earned her recognition as CMO of the Year by WealthManagement.com.

Today, Intention.ly represents the culmination of every lesson Waltrich has learned in her tenure as a marketing disruptor. Under her leadership, the growth engine design agency has experienced remarkable growth of its own, serving 100+ fintech and financial services firms while establishing itself at the forefront of AI-powered marketing innovation. Waltrich conceptualized and brought to market Intention.ly’s groundbreaking Advisor Brand Builder initiative, a generative AI solution that revolutionizes how financial firms approach brand development and marketing strategy.

Named one of 2025’s Top Women in Wealthtech and serving as an advisor to several high-growth tech firms, Waltrich continues to shape the industry’s marketing evolution. She’s also a frequently requested contributor to major trade publications and host of the “Don’t Do That” podcast, which has struck a resonant chord across the fintech, financial services, and tech leadership communities by delivering unique “what not to do” lessons from real-world leaders.

Intention.ly is born from Waltrich’s passion and persistent belief that when it’s done right, marketing is the accelerant firms need to transform their growth trajectory. Through cutting-edge AI innovation and proven strategic expertise, she continues to disrupt an industry ready for transformation.