Insights

Founders fire agencies. Rarely do they fire the brief. But most agency underperformance traces back to a vague or missing brief — no ICP, no clear pipeline target, no definition of what a qualified lead looks like.

Before you brief a new agency, answer these three questions: What does a good month look like in numbers? Who specifically are we trying to reach, and what do they care about? What does the agency own, and what do we own? If those aren't nailed, you'll have the same conversation with the next agency too.

Marketing teams report on what they control: reach, clicks, leads generated. Boards care about what they're accountable for: revenue pipeline and payback period.

The gap between those two conversations is where marketing credibility goes to die. If you can't connect your marketing activity to a pipeline number your CFO believes, you're always one bad quarter away from budget cuts. Build the bridge or someone else will — usually in your favour.

The logic feels right: hire someone, then figure out the plan together. In practice, a junior hire without strategic direction just executes random acts of marketing with extra enthusiasm.

Strategy first. Even a rough one. Define the ICP, the one or two channels worth owning, and what you're trying to achieve in the next 12 months. Then hire someone whose job is to execute that — not invent it. You'll get better candidates, better output, and a much cleaner brief.

Fintech sits at the intersection of regulated, trust-dependent, and complex. You can't just push a product — you're asking someone to change their relationship with money or their financial infrastructure. The sales cycles are long, the compliance guardrails are real, and the buyer is often a risk-averse CFO or ops lead, not a trend-chasing founder.

That means content, trust signals, and proof points matter more than they do in most SaaS categories. The companies that get it right don't shout louder — they demonstrate credibility earlier in the funnel, and build the kind of reputation that shortens a 6-month sales cycle to 3.