Financial services marketing is no walk in the park. You navigate financial services compliance along with limited ad targeting capabilities, long legal review cycles, and buyer journeys that stretch for weeks or even months. These challenges stall campaigns, waste media spend, and bury your ROI under layers of inefficiency.
That’s where the concept of “speed with intent” comes in. It’s about making your marketing not just faster, but smarter—ensuring every tactic is informed by data, driven by outcomes, and built to adapt. For marketers in finance, it’s the key to unlocking performance in a world that’s increasingly restricted and algorithm-driven.
In a recent interview with Alex Swope, Director of Strategy at Level Agency, he explained how financial marketers can move with both speed and purpose—by leaning on CRM data, training ad platforms with the right signals, and deploying creative that qualifies leads before they even click.
What is Speed with Intent marketing?
Speed with intent is critical when you operate in heavily regulated spaces like financial services compliance. If you’re in housing, employment, or credit (HEC), there are serious compliance guardrails around how you can target ads. You used to be able to go into platforms like Facebook and say, “Show this to Spanish-speaking users between 20–25 in Los Angeles with five credit cards.” That kind of targeting understandably raised concerns about discrimination and unfair practices.
So platforms removed those micro-targeting options. At the same time, they doubled down on their AI and machine learning capabilities. Now, instead of giving 50 criteria to filter by, you’re encouraged to go broad. Platforms like Meta and Google say, “Just give us good creative, and we’ll find the right people for you.”
And they’re right—these platforms have massive amounts of user data. They know who’s likely to convert better than you do. The key is training the algorithm with the right signals. That’s where speed with intent comes in: it’s not just about moving fast, but moving fast with the right data to inform optimization.
Where to Start: Building a Strategy Aligned with Financial Services Compliance
Start in two places: your CRM and your gut.
First, dig into the CRM. Who’s buying? What campaigns brought them in? What creative performed best? That gives you an objective view of what’s working.
Then, clarify internally or with your leadership team: who do you think your best buyer is? What’s your ideal customer look like? Sometimes they match the CRM data. Sometimes they don’t. But getting both perspectives helps build a better audience profile.
You also want to ensure forms capture key qualification data—like income, age, or net worth—so you can train ad platforms more effectively. The more feedback you give the system, the more accurate your optimization becomes.
Key KPIs That Matter in Speed with Intent Marketing
If you’re doing this right, you’ll start seeing your lead volume go up and your cost per lead go down—even if you’re spending the same amount.
That’s because you’re spending more efficiently. Algorithms are learning who’s likely to engage based on the creative and conversion signals you’re sending. So you start attracting better prospects, and fewer of the wrong ones.
But don’t stop at top-of-funnel metrics. You’ve got to look at:
- Qualified lead rate
- Cost per qualified lead
- MQLs and SQLs
- Pipeline velocity and deal quality
Because if your lead volume improves but your pipeline doesn’t, you’ve still got a problem. You also need to be sure to have the right amount of data available to make informed decisions. If you’re running out of statistically meaningful lower-funnel data, pull KPIs up the funnel to qualified form fills or something similar.
Scaling becomes easier too. When you stop targeting narrowly defined demographics and let the platform find qualified users in a larger pool, you avoid hitting saturation. Your frequency drops, your reach expands, and your efficiency keeps climbing—if you’re feeding the system good data.
How Agile Marketing Transforms Roles in Financial Services Compliance
Agile marketing is no longer optional when you’re operating within the boundaries of finserv compliance. Financial institutions must manage rigid regulations and approval processes, which slow down traditional campaign workflows. Agile strategies help teams shift their mindset from static planning to real-time iteration—allowing them to adapt to compliance delays without losing performance momentum.
When you embed agility into your processes, you’re better equipped to handle long legal reviews, reactive compliance edits, and market fluctuations without compromising on speed or effectiveness. It’s about creating a nimble system where feedback loops are short, approvals are anticipated, and performance can be optimized on the fly—even in a highly regulated space.
You’re no longer just generating leads—you’re generating revenue. Agile marketing forces you to think about qualification early. Every prospect should be seen through the lens of revenue potential. That means aligning KPIs with ROI. Stop optimizing for just CTR or raw lead counts.
You’ll also spend less time chasing “insights” and more time validating hypotheses. Instead of asking, “Why did CTR drop 20% this week?” you’ll ask, “Are we hitting our revenue goals? If not, where’s the leak?”
Sometimes it’s not the ad—it’s your operations. Maybe no one followed up on a lead for 24 hours. That’s where you fix the problem. This mindset simplifies things. You stop reacting to every surface metric and start focusing on real business impact.
Where Marketing Compliance for Financial Services is Headed Next
Marketing compliance for financial services isn’t just a box to check—it’s a strategic barrier that often slows campaigns down. With extensive legal review processes, content limitations, and regulatory scrutiny, marketers can’t afford to wait weeks to respond to market shifts.
Speed with Intent marketing provides a powerful workaround. By aligning data systems, training algorithms properly, and preparing pre-approved creative variations, you can stay agile even in a compliance-heavy environment.
AI is already changing the game. Everyone has access to tools like ChatGPT now, but marketers have been using AI for years without realizing it—because platforms like Meta and Google are built on it. Now, these generative tools are helping us get better creative, faster. They also let you do deep research—like identifying the emotional triggers your audience responds to, or surfacing market conditions and consumer sentiment in real time.
You can even feed anonymized CRM data into tools to help spot trends. For instance, maybe a campaign had low conversions but high downstream revenue. That tells you to revisit the creative and make it more engaging, without changing the offer.
AI lets you find insights faster, especially if you’re more creative than analytical. You don’t need to be a data scientist—you just need to ask the right questions and test your assumptions. In the end, you’ll spend less time analyzing and more time optimizing. And that’s the shift: from chasing clicks to driving outcomes. From noise to intent. From leads to revenue.
