B2B fintech marketers are often asked to generate more leads, create more content, launch more campaigns, and prove exactly how every activity contributes to revenue.
The problem is that the marketing activities that are easiest to measure are not always the ones driving the strongest business results.
A gated ebook might produce hundreds of leads. A badge scanner at an event might fill your CRM with new contacts. But how many of those people become qualified opportunities? And how many eventually become customers?
That is what I wanted to explore with Megan Bowen, CEO and majority owner of Refine Labs. Megan has spent two decades building go-to-market teams, and Refine Labs has worked with more than 300 B2B companies.
Throughout our conversation, she shared practical frameworks for understanding what is actually working, earning leadership buy-in, investing in brand, and using AI without outsourcing the strategic thinking that makes marketing effective.
Why lead volume can give fintech marketers the wrong answer
One of the biggest themes from our conversation was the difference between what is easy to measure and what is important to measure.
Many marketing teams are still evaluated using top-of-funnel metrics such as leads, MQLs, form submissions, or content downloads. These numbers are visible, easy to place in a dashboard, and straightforward to report to leadership.
But they can also create a misleading picture.
A marketing channel might generate a large number of leads while producing very little qualified pipeline or closed revenue. Meanwhile, another activity might create fewer leads but attract people who are far more likely to buy, which matters particularly in fintech.
Fintech sales cycles are often long. Buying committees can include finance, compliance, legal, risk, security, and procurement. The buyer is rarely making a casual decision. Choosing a payment provider, banking platform, or financial infrastructure partner carries real operational and reputational risk.
That means marketers cannot judge success by counting form fills alone. We have to understand what happens after the form is submitted.
How the split-the-funnel analysis connects marketing to revenue
Megan calls one of Refine Labs’ foundational frameworks the split-the-funnel analysis.
The idea is simple: take every inbound marketing lead, separate those leads by source, and then follow each source through the complete funnel.
You do not stop at lead volume. You look at:
- Qualified opportunities
- Pipeline created
- Conversion rates
- Closed-won revenue
The analysis then separates lead sources into two broad categories: low intent and high intent.
Low-intent leads might include people who downloaded gated content, registered for a webinar, or had their badges scanned at an event.
High-intent leads are what Megan calls “hand raisers.” These are people asking to speak with sales, requesting a demo, or directly indicating that they may want to buy.
Every time Refine Labs conducts this analysis, Megan says the pattern is clear: low-intent sources convert into qualified opportunities and revenue at a dramatically lower rate than high-intent sources.
This does not mean that every ebook or webinar should disappear.
Someone who gives you an email address in exchange for useful research may still be a valuable audience member. But they should not be treated in the same way as someone who has actively requested a sales conversation.
Their intent is different. Their position in the buying journey is different. The way you follow up with them should also be different.
The real value of the analysis is that it gives marketers evidence.
Often, the marketing team already suspects that low-intent leads are not converting. The challenge is convincing the CEO, CFO, CRO, or board. When leadership sees the pattern in the company’s own data, budget conversations become much easier.
How to make a stronger financial case for brand
Once a company understands which activities are creating meaningful pipeline, the next question is where to invest.
Megan explained that many companies are too focused on demand capture. They spend most of their resources trying to reach the small percentage of the market that is actively looking to buy today.
Demand capture is important. You want to be visible when someone is searching for a solution.
But there is a limit to how much existing demand you can capture.
Most potential customers are not ready to buy right now. That is why companies also need to invest in building awareness, trust, and preference before the buyer enters the market.
Megan frames this as brand, demand, and expand:
- Brand builds awareness and future demand.
- Demand captures buyers who are already in the market.
- Expand supports retention, cross-selling, upselling, and customer growth.
The brand element is often where fintech marketing leaders struggle to secure buy-in. A CFO may understandably ask how brand investment will be measured and how it will contribute to revenue.
The answer is not that brand cannot be measured. It simply requires a broader measurement approach.
Megan suggested looking at indicators such as:
- Share of search compared with competitors
- Total marketing investment and new customer acquisition
- Contribution margin
- Sales-cycle length
- Average contract value
- Outbound performance
- Self-reported attribution
- Net revenue retention
- Cross-sell and upsell performance
Brand awareness may show up through faster sales cycles, larger contracts, stronger outbound conversion, or more buyers searching specifically for your company.
Instead of asking a CFO to “trust marketing,” marketers can build a financial story around how the whole system is performing.
What the marketing maturity model can reveal
Another framework Megan shared was Refine Labs’ marketing maturity model.
She developed it partly because so much of the current marketing conversation is focused on AI, agentic workflows, AI SEO, and generative engine optimization.
These areas may be important, but they can also become distractions when the core marketing fundamentals are not in place.
The maturity model assesses companies across seven dimensions, including brand, demand, expansion, market research, organizational readiness, and measurement.
Each area falls into one of four stages:
- Reactive
- Informed
- Integrated
- Market-led
What I find useful about this model is that companies do not receive one overall label.
A business might have a highly developed paid acquisition engine but very little customer research. It might have strong brand awareness but poor CRM infrastructure. It might understand its market but lack alignment between sales and marketing.
Refine Labs uses an assessment to identify where the company sits across each dimension. From there, it creates a prioritized roadmap for the next 24 months.
That roadmap considers which projects should happen first, which initiatives depend on others, and where early improvements can produce compounding gains.
It also creates clarity around ownership. The company can see what the agency will own, what the internal team must own, and where both sides need to collaborate.
For a new CMO or marketing leader, this can be especially useful. It gives them a structured way to explain priorities to the executive team or board instead of presenting a disconnected list of campaigns.
Why fintech customer research can change the sales process
One of the most interesting fintech-specific insights from the episode came from Refine Labs’ customer research.
Megan explained that some of the fintech clients they assessed had invested very little in formal market research or customer insight.
When they interviewed CFOs and finance buyers, they discovered that these buyers often needed two things before they felt confident making a purchase.
The first was a proof of concept that directly addressed their concerns or skepticism.
The second was access to someone they perceived as a credible finance expert.
A traditional salesperson could sometimes make the buyer feel that they were simply being sold to. A subject-matter expert helped build trust and showed that the company understood the buyer’s world.
The clients adjusted their sales process by adding a proof-of-concept stage and bringing finance experts into relevant conversations. They also reflected this understanding in their website messaging and marketing programs.
Those relatively focused changes created meaningful improvements across both marketing and sales.
The lesson is that marketing is not only about communicating why your product is valuable. It is also about understanding how your buyers want to evaluate, validate, and purchase that product.
Where AI belongs in B2B fintech marketing
AI is already changing how buyers research products.
People are using ChatGPT, Claude, and other tools to understand problems, compare solutions, and identify potential vendors. B2B fintech companies need to consider whether they will appear when buyers ask those questions.
But, as Megan pointed out, succeeding in AI-driven discovery still comes back to the same fundamentals.
You need clear positioning. You need differentiated messaging. You need useful original content. And that information needs to be communicated consistently across your digital presence.
Internally, marketing teams should distinguish between work that can be AI-enabled and work that must remain human-led.
AI can be incredibly useful for:
- Synthesizing sales calls
- Analyzing CRM data
- Diagnosing paid-media changes
- Identifying patterns across large datasets
- Editing content
- Repurposing podcasts and events
- Accelerating research
Refine Labs, for example, used AI to process a year’s worth of sales-call recordings and closed-won and closed-lost opportunity data.
AI helped analyze and synthesize the information. But the team still used human judgment to decide which findings were relevant and what actions to take.
That distinction is crucial.
AI can give you ten possible explanations for a change in campaign performance. A skilled marketer still needs to decide which possibilities are nonsense, which deserve further investigation, and what the business should do next.
Why marketers should not outsource their thinking
Megan also spoke about experimenting with AI for LinkedIn content.
She trained it using previous posts and writing preferences, but ultimately found that she did not want to outsource the thinking behind her content.
There is a useful middle ground.
You can begin with an original idea and use AI as an editor or writing partner. You can ask it to improve clarity, organize your thoughts, or help you repurpose a strong piece of original content.
What becomes less valuable is copying and pasting a generic AI-generated post that does not contain a real perspective.
This is something most of us have already seen on LinkedIn. The language may be technically correct, but it is obvious that no meaningful human thought has been added.
Megan’s advice was to stop beginning with the question, “How can I use AI for everything?”
A better question is: “What are the most important things I need to accomplish, and where can AI help me do them more effectively without putting creativity, taste, or strategy at risk?”
What fintech marketers should expect from agencies
The final part of our conversation focused on agencies.
As AI makes execution faster and cheaper, marketing leaders are understandably questioning which work should remain outsourced.
Megan believes there will always be some market for execution. But the opportunity for execution-only agencies will continue to shrink.
The agencies that survive will need to operate as genuine strategic partners.
They should help clients choose the right priorities, connect their work to financial outcomes, and accept accountability for meaningful results.
When evaluating an agency, fintech marketing leaders should ask:
- How will this agency help us make better strategic decisions?
- What point of view does it bring?
- How will its work affect pipeline, revenue, or retention?
- Which outcomes is it prepared to be accountable for?
- How will it collaborate with our internal team?
- Can it clearly define the return on our investment?
AI can produce more deliverables. It cannot automatically tell a company which deliverables are worth producing.
That strategic judgment is where strong marketers and strong agency partners will continue to create value.
Key takeaways
- Do not evaluate marketing solely through leads, MQLs, or other top-of-funnel metrics.
- Track each lead source through qualified pipeline and closed-won revenue.
- Treat low-intent leads differently from buyers who actively request a sales conversation.
- Use broader financial and market-based metrics to demonstrate the value of brand.
- Invest in customer research to understand how fintech buyers evaluate risk and make decisions.
- Use AI to accelerate analysis, editing, and repurposing, but keep positioning and strategy human-led.
- Choose agencies that can prove strategic and financial value, not simply produce more output.
Show notes
In this episode, I speak with Megan Bowen, CEO and majority owner of Refine Labs, about:
- The split-the-funnel analysis
- Low-intent versus high-intent leads
- How to secure leadership buy-in for brand investment
- Measuring marketing through share of search and contribution margin
- Cleaning up CRM and attribution infrastructure
- The marketing maturity model
- Customer research for CFO and finance buyers
- How AI is changing product discovery
- Where AI belongs in content and campaign analysis
- Why strategy should remain human-led
- What companies should expect from agencies in the AI era
Episode timestamps
- 00:03:10: How the split-the-funnel analysis works
- 00:07:09: Examples of low-intent and high-intent leads
- 00:09:49: Rebalancing investment across brand, demand, and expansion
- 00:12:19: Making the case for brand to CFOs
- 00:16:54: CRM infrastructure and measurement
- 00:19:17: The marketing maturity model
- 00:26:16: Customer research insights from fintech clients
- 00:30:25: How AI is changing B2B marketing
- 00:35:40: Using AI to create and repurpose content
- 00:39:38: The future of marketing agencies
Show links
- Refine Labs on LinkedIn
- Megan (White) Bowen on LinkedIn
- Araminta Robertson on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios on LinkedIn
- Mint Studios Website
- Mint Studios Newsletter
About Araminta Robertson
Araminta is the Founder and Managing Director at Mint Studios, a content marketing agency that helps financial services and fintech companies acquire customers and position themselves as experts with content marketing.
