5 TIPS TO GROW MARKETING INFLUENCE IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY WITH STEVE STANO
When someone says finance, what do you think of?
There’s a good chance you’re thinking about Wolf of Wall Street. Or dudes in Patagonia vests in Manhattan.
TBH, those two things aren’t wrong. You’re just missing some pieces…Marketing included.
Money is personal and financial choices are a big deal. Marketing helps people trust financial brands by sharing clear messages and having useful content.
Have a banking app or credit score app? There’s a good chance that brand marketed it to you.
BUT, some people in the financial industry don’t see that Marketing and think that it happens naturally. It doesn’t.
And that’s where Steve Stano and his team come in.
As the B2B & SaaS Marketing Leader, he has the opportunity to prove Marketing’s worth (and place) in the financial services industry.
Steve’s Take: “We speak from a data-driven perspective. If we are making a decision to go out with X message or produce Y piece of content... it has to be rooted in data.”
Marketing is misunderstood by non-marketers.
So, Steve mentions we have to shift that perception by making sure we have data to back up our decisions.
Business leaders, finance teams, and sales executives care about business impact. Think: conversion, revenue growth, sales readiness, and account progression.
Steve’s team tracks and reports on:
- Account penetration (which companies are being reached)
- Signal and intent levels (which accounts show buying readiness)
- Content engagement rates (what’s resonating)
- Sales follow-up rates (are warm leads being contacted?)
This lets them not only demonstrate past impact, but build stronger business cases for future budget or strategy changes.
Takeaway: Build dashboards that match the mindset of your audience.
Don’t just track metrics. Translate them.
Use sales language with sales. Use finance language with finance. Use boardroom language with execs.
The more relevant your reporting, the more seriously your work gets taken.
Steve’s Take: “The biggest mistake marketers make is not knowing how to tell the story in a way that business, finance, and other leaders will understand.”
Marketing isn’t the problem.
Translation is.
When you report metrics without context, it’s easy to get brushed off.
When you tailor your story to each team’s goals, you get buy-in.
Steve’s team doesn’t just dump data.
They customize reporting based on who’s in the room:
- Sales gets account intent and engagement
- Finance gets efficiency and ROI
- Leadership gets impact on revenue and growth
Takeaway: Your job isn’t just to do the work.
It’s to SELL the work internally.
Learn what each team values.
Frame your insights around those goals.
That’s how you turn marketing into a strategic partner. Not a line item.
3️⃣. Internal Marketing Is Your Most Underrated Growth Channel.
Steve’s Take: “We host a monthly marketing meeting featuring business leadership...to ensure they understand what marketing is doing in the terms and the words that they use.”
One of the most overlooked strategies for growing marketing influence is doing for your internal stakeholders what you do for customers: market to them.
Steve mentions strong internal relationships come from regular, clear communication, not just one-off updates.
You need to keep marketing visible and valuable so people remember the impact you're making. Here’s some ways Steve does that:
- Monthly Marketing Meetings: Steve’s team hosts monthly sessions with business leadership (not just execs, but also their teams) to discuss campaign results, learnings, and priorities in plain business terms.
- Two-Tiered Reporting: One dashboard for internal marketing teams (focused on tactical metrics), and another for business stakeholders (focused on business impact, like account progression and sales engagement).
- Repetition of Core Messages: Steve encourages repeating key marketing narratives over and over, just like external brand messaging. Internal “frequency” builds trust and recall.
Takeaway: If you want more influence, act like your own internal demand gen team.
Keep marketing top of mind across the org.
Show up with the right message, for the right audience, at the right cadence.
And just like any great campaign - frequency builds trust, and trust builds power.
4️⃣. Smarter ABM Isn’t About Who You Want. It’s About Who’s Ready.
Steve’s Take: “It is far more powerful to utilize different data points to really hone in on those accounts via ABM... that are really showing signs of making that purchasing decision.”
Traditional account-based marketing (ABM) has become a common playbook in B2B marketing.
But the next step? The next evolution is smarter ABM: it’s more focused, intent-driven, and it aligns with both sales strategy and business goals.
Smart ABM prioritizes accounts based on real-time buying signals and behavioral data.
Steve’s team uses a multi-layered ABM strategy:
- One-to-Many: Broad outreach to hundreds of strategically selected accounts (ex. promoting virtual events to 500–600 private companies).
- One-to-Few: Focused follow-ups and virtual forums with high-priority accounts that show meaningful engagement.
- Intent-Driven Targeting: Instead of stopping at MQLs, ABMs enrich those leads with intent signals (search behavior, content engagement, keyword patterns) so they know which accounts are truly showing buying readiness.
Takeaway: Use real signals to prioritize outreach and give sales teams data they can act on. The result? Less waste, better alignment, and more meaningful impact.
Smarter ABM goes beyond who you want to sell to. It focuses on who’s actually ready to buy.
5️⃣. Want a Seat at the Table? Start by Asking Better Questions.
Steve’s Take: “I would meet with business leadership and better understand their priorities real quick…if the business is looking to focus more heavily on the quality that’s coming in, then.. it is far more powerful to get that 100 high-quality leads than a much larger number.”
Marketing can’t operate in a silo.
A great way to grow marketing’s influence is to connect it to the company’s goals from the very beginning…and keep meeting with leadership on a regular basis.
Start by talking to leaders to learn their goals and what success means to them.
Define marketing’s “reason to exist” in relation to the business’s mission. Steve recommends frameworks like the McKinsey Strategy House to organize marketing’s mission, priorities, and strategy.
As Steve said, you may need six months or more of consistency before others fully change their perception of marketing’s value.
Takeaway: Talk to leaders early, learn what matters to them, and explain how marketing helps. Keep repeating this to become a true business partner and not just a support team.
IN A MEME
Still waiting for Ari to call a traffic light a robot… 1 day.
Your friend,
Daniel
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