Are You a Marketing Leader for the Past or the Future of Financial Services?

Across the financial services searches I’m working on at Hanover, especially in wealth management and financial advice, there’s a growing divide between the marketing leaders businesses have relied on in the past and the ones they need for the future.

The expectation increasingly is for someone who can identify what matters most, where the real commercial opportunities lie and how marketing can help unlock them. That requires a deep understanding of the drivers of the business, not simply the marketing plan.

Senior marketing briefs are far more commercial these days, with clients looking for people who can transform businesses, unlock new revenue streams and drive measurable value creation.

They want people who can show how they have helped build and scale a business, what changed from where it started to where it is now and, crucially, what their personal contribution was.

That means having the commercial nous to challenge the business, question assumptions and identify opportunities others may not yet be considering.

Put simply, if you can’t position yourself as a commercial growth leader, you risk becoming irrelevant.

What FS firms are looking for in marketing directors today

The clients I work with want Marketing Directors or CMOs who think like business leaders. To that end, they’re paying close attention to whether candidates can:

• Influence the business beyond marketing
• Lead transformation and turn strategy into measurable growth
• Use initiative to spot and act on growth opportunities
• Leverage data and insight to make commercial decisions
• Bring strong acquisition and demand-generation expertise
• Improve conversion and create scalable routes to growth
• Stay curious as technology and customer behaviour evolve

Candidates must also be able to scale at pace, which is particularly important in private equity-backed environments, where the urgency and focus on commercial outcomes can be intense.

Across many of these searches, clients want to move towards a more modern marketing model, built around experimentation, testing and measurable ROI, with clear accountability for growth. One of the biggest gaps they talk to me about is marketing teams that execute well but struggle to show senior leadership how that activity contributes to commercial outcomes.

There is a premium on marketers who can grab hold of the function and make things happen, bringing greater commercial discipline to marketing and creating a much clearer link between what the team does and what the business is trying to achieve.

In many businesses, marketing budgets don’t reflect the growth ambitions of the organisation, often because ROI has historically been difficult to prove. The opportunity for a new CMO or Marketing Director is to build a clear case for investment, demonstrate measurable impact at pace, and give the business confidence to invest further.

Growth and acquisition need to be part of the story 

Wealth management and financial advice firms still rely heavily on adviser-led, intermediary, B2B and B2B2C growth. But clients increasingly want marketing leaders who can build on those channels by creating scalable acquisition, opening new routes to market and developing direct-to-consumer opportunities.

For some firms, this means building D2C capability almost from scratch while continuing to strengthen B2B and B2B2C channels. That requires an end-to-end understanding of the customer journey, the metrics governing each stage and where marketing can improve acquisition and conversion.

Be ready to discuss:

• Acquisition strategy, channel choice and budget allocation
• Demand generation, conversion performance and lead nurturing
• Paid media, SEO, GEO and content
• Referral, partnership and direct-to-consumer growth
• Measurable campaigns, with clear before-and-after metrics
• The commercial rationale behind your decisions

Customer understanding matters enormously, too. Wealth businesses can be serving very different groups, from younger, less affluent customers through to those accumulating significant wealth and older, highly affluent clients. They do not behave, buy or engage in the same way. Strong marketers understand those behavioural differences and translate them into different journeys, propositions, channels and messages.

What clients are really testing

Something I’m seeing a lot in interviews is clients testing the depth behind the CV. They don’t just want to hear that you “led customer acquisition”, “used data” or “improved the pipeline”. They want to get underneath exactly how you did it.

On acquisition, expect them to drill beneath the headline numbers: Why did you make those choices? What worked, what didn’t and what did you change as a result? Ultimately, what happened to pipeline and revenue?

The same applies to data. Saying you are “data-led” is no longer particularly interesting. The question is: 

• What did the data actually tell you?
• What insight did you draw from it?
• What decision did you make as a result?
• Finally, what was the commercial impact?

And expect clients to separate what you personally delivered from what happened around you. They will want to understand what you owned, what your team or agency delivered, which decisions were yours and how those decisions affected the outcome.

The best candidates can move comfortably between the strategic and the granular. They can talk about the growth strategy and then go straight into CAC, conversion, pipeline, revenue and ROMI without losing sight of the bigger commercial picture.

How you communicate all of that matters. Clients are testing whether you can answer a question directly, make a complex subject simple and get to the point. At this level, clarity is part of leadership.

How you lead still counts

Marketing’s influence inside a business depends heavily on the person leading it, so clients care deeply about how someone leads.

Strong marketing leaders create confidence around them. They motivate their teams, build productive relationships with senior stakeholders and communicate with clarity, without hiding behind jargon or self-promotion. The best candidates tend to combine warmth and collaboration with substance, showing enough confidence to lead while retaining the humility to listen, adapt and bring people with them.

Another theme that comes up consistently in these searches is the importance of product communication in helping to direct where the organisation focuses its attention. Done well, it provides a clear view of what needs to be communicated and when to communicate it, as well as when not to.

Strong brand experience remains important for a Marketing Director or CMO, but that does not necessarily mean experience of large-scale brand spend. For many clients, it is about having the strategic depth to shape brand architecture and positioning: a clear sense of who the business is targeting, how its propositions fit together and what the brand stands for, all backed by insight.

Does your experience tell the right commercial story?

For senior marketers thinking about their next move, I would look hard at the story your experience tells. Can you show that you helped a business grow and changed how marketing is valued? Can you prove your judgement led to better commercial decisions?

And, importantly, can you articulate what you personally did to make that happen?

That is often where the distinction between a good marketing CV and a genuinely compelling senior leadership story becomes clear.

Contact me directly if you’re a senior marketing leader considering your next move and want to understand how your profile stacks up in the current market. Or, if your business is planning a senior marketing hire, I’d be happy to discuss what the strongest candidates look like right now.