Fractional CMO · Financial services
Growth that survives compliance review.
I’ve spent 14 years leading marketing inside regulated financial businesses — Axos Financial, Alumni Ventures, Top Flite Financial. Now I do it fractionally for owner-led mortgage brokerages, regional lenders, RIAs, credit unions, and fintech startups: strategy, execution, and a number your board can audit.
AXOS FINANCIAL
ALUMNI VENTURES
TOP FLITE FINANCIAL
Case study · mortgage lending
They were renting their borrowers. We built them their own.
THE PROBLEM
A national lender was dependent on bought third-party leads, competing for the same borrower several other lenders had already purchased. Marketing to credit-challenged audiences carried real compliance exposure, so campaigns kept stalling in review.
WHAT I DID
Built a compliant first-party acquisition strategy designed around the constraints instead of against them, and installed data-driven decision processes so the team could tell which sources produced funded loans, not just applications.
+20%
First-party leads in 3 months
Less exposure to aggregator pricing, and a pipeline the lender actually owned.
“Pamela is a strategic thinker and an innovative marketer with a rare blend of strategic insight, operational expertise, and interpersonal skills.”
Top Flite Financial
Who I work with
Owner-led firms. Not committees.
If you have a full marketing department and a VP running it, you don’t need me. If you have a compliance officer, a couple of vendors, and nobody who owns growth — that’s the seat I fill.
Mortgage & lending
Independent brokerages and regional lenders. Cost per funded loan, LO co-marketing, and life off the aggregator treadmill.
RIAs & wealth
Growth-minded advisors and breakaways. Testimonials and endorsements are allowed now — most firms still aren’t using them well.
Fintech & startups
Pre- and post-raise. CAC discipline, positioning, and a growth story investors believe.
Where regulated marketing budgets leak
Compliance isn’t why your marketing underperforms. It’s the excuse.
Regulated firms don’t have a creativity problem. They have an accountability problem wearing a compliance costume.
Campaigns die in legal review
Built after the fact, they arrive at compliance as a problem to be solved. I bring compliance in at the brief, so what ships is already approvable — and velocity stops being the tax you pay for being regulated.
You’re buying the same lead as everyone else
Aggregator leads are sold several times over and set your economics for you. Every dollar moved into first-party acquisition compounds; every dollar left on the treadmill doesn’t.
You measure applications, not funded revenue
Lead-to-application is a vanity metric if the loans don’t close. Attribution has to run all the way to funded — or you optimize toward the wrong borrower.
Speed to lead is treated as a sales problem
In lending it decides the deal. The firms that win aren’t buying better leads — they’re answering faster and following up longer.
Nobody owns the consent trail
TCPA exposure lives in how leads were captured, not how they were called. If you can’t produce the consent record for a given lead, that’s a liability sitting in your CRM.
Rate cycles get treated as weather
Demand swings are forecastable. Flat budgets through a rate move overspend into a dead market and underspend when the phone would have rung for free.
Why not a financial marketing agency
They’ve never sat in a compliance meeting.
THE FINANCIAL MARKETING AGENCY
ME
Sends creative to compliance and hopes.
Builds the brief with the constraint already in it.
Reports leads and cost per lead.
Reports cost per funded loan, per account, per closed client.
Sells you more aggregator volume.
Builds the first-party engine that gets you off it.
Has never carried a revenue number.
Has been the VP of Marketing answering to a board.
Assigns you an account manager.
Is one executive who keeps the client list short.
Stops at strategy, or stops at execution.
Does both, and owns the number either way.
Financial services FAQ
What regulated firms ask me first.
Do you understand our compliance requirements?
Our compliance team slows everything down. Can you actually work like that?
We rely on purchased leads. Is that wrong?
What does a fractional CMO cost?
We already have a marketing person. Where do you fit?
Do you work with home services companies too?
Are you local to us?
Next step
Twenty minutes. I’ll tell you where your growth is stuck.
Bring your numbers — spend, lead sources, application rate, close rate. You’ll leave with a straight read on where the money is going and what compliance is actually costing you, whether or not you ever hire me.