A financial services marketing agency scoped to one thing we can prove: earned media
What we do for financial services firms, and what we do not
Plenty of agencies will tell a bank they do everything. We would rather be specific, because in a regulated category the difference between a claim and a demonstrated result is the whole conversation.
What we can demonstrate in financial services is PR and earned media: getting a firm named, accurately and on the record, in publications its buyers already trust. The published example is WebStreet, an emerging micro private equity firm, placed on Go Banking Rates — a Domain Rating 90 publication — with a measurable lift in qualified website visits and the SEO benefit that came with it, at no media cost.
What we will not claim here is a full-service financial services marketing programme with a published financial-services result behind every channel. We run paid media, demand generation and fractional marketing leadership for clients in other categories, and we are happy to talk about whether they transfer. But on this page the proof is PR, so the offer is PR.
Why earned media is the channel that works hardest in this category
Trust is the product
A prospect choosing a bank, an advisor or a fund is buying judgement they cannot inspect. Third-party coverage is one of the few signals that carries weight, because you did not write it.
Compliance can live with it
Earned coverage is factual, quotable and reviewable before it runs. It clears internal review far more easily than performance creative that has to promise something.
The links are a side effect, not the pitch
A feature on a Domain Rating 90 publication moves organic search as a by-product. Buying that link directly would cost money and carry risk; earning it costs outreach.
It compounds where advertising resets
Paid stops the day the budget stops. A published feature keeps working, keeps getting cited, and increasingly gets read by the language models your buyers now ask for recommendations.
It feeds AI answers directly
The sources generative engines cite are overwhelmingly independent publications. Earned media is the same work that gets a firm named when someone asks an assistant who to use — see the AI search work.
How the PR engagement runs
1. Find the story that is actually there. Usually proprietary data, a contrarian read on something the category assumes, or a customer outcome nobody has written up. Not a product announcement.
2. Build the target list from evidence. The publications your buyers read and cite, not a generic media database dump. In financial services that list is shorter and more specific than most agencies assume.
3. Personalised outreach, one journalist at a time. This is the part that does not scale and the part that works. A blast to 400 addresses produces nothing in this category.
4. Route the coverage. A feature that sits unlinked and unshared wastes most of its value. Coverage gets pointed at the pages that convert, referenced in sales conversations, and tracked.
5. Report what it produced. Placements, referring traffic from the system of record, and where the coverage now surfaces in search and in AI answers.
Who this suits
Banks, credit unions, advisory firms, fintechs and investment firms that have something genuinely worth saying and no reliable route to saying it publicly. It suits you if compliance is a real constraint, because earned media is the channel that survives it best.
It suits you least if what you need this quarter is a performance media programme with a financial-services track record attached. We would be starting that from transferable experience rather than a published result in your category, and you should weigh that honestly.
If you need the artefact rather than the programme, the AP-style press release generator is free and on this site.
Fintech, banking and advisory — where this fits
The buyers who find this page are usually searching for a financial services digital marketing agency or a marketing agency for fintech, and they mean different things by it.
Fintechs tend to have the easier time of it. A newer company with proprietary data is genuinely interesting to a journalist, and compliance review is usually lighter than at an incumbent. Earned media compounds quickly from a standing start.
Banks, credit unions and advisory firms have the harder brief and the more durable payoff. Review cycles are longer, the story is usually sitting in data nobody has looked at, and a single placement in a publication your buyers already trust does more than a quarter of advertising.
What we do not claim is to be a full-service digital marketing agency for financial services, or a financial services content marketing agency with a published result behind every channel. The demonstrated work in this category is PR and earned media. Ask us directly about anything else and we will tell you which parts would be transferred experience.
Frequently asked questions
Broadly, it covers brand, demand generation, paid media, content and public relations for banks, credit unions, fintechs, advisory and investment firms, inside the constraints financial regulation and internal compliance impose. Different agencies specialise in different parts of that. Our published financial-services work is PR and earned media, and that is what this page offers — the rest of our service range exists but the demonstrated result in this category is coverage.
The published case study is WebStreet, an emerging micro private equity firm. Strategic Pete secured a feature on Go Banking Rates, a Domain Rating 90 publication, which drove a substantial increase in qualified website visits and delivered SEO uplift at no media cost. The full write-up, including the outreach process behind it, is on this site under case studies.
It works better than most channels, for the reason it slows everything else down. Earned media is factual and quotable rather than promissory, drafts and quotes can be reviewed before they go out, and the published piece is written by a journalist rather than by you. The practical adjustment is timeline: build one extra review cycle into the process and stop treating fast-turn reactive commentary as the main play.
Yes. The mechanics are the same — find the story that is genuinely there, build a target list from what your buyers actually read, and do personalised outreach. Fintechs usually have an easier time of it, because a newer company with proprietary data is more interesting to a journalist than an established institution with a product update.
Possibly, and it is worth a conversation — Strategic Pete runs demand generation, paid media and fractional marketing leadership across other categories, and Peter Murphy Lewis has worked as a fractional CMO for years. What we will not do is put a published financial-services result behind those channels on this page when the published result is PR. Ask us directly and we will tell you which parts would be transferred experience and which would be demonstrated.
Is there a story in your firm that nobody has written up?
Usually there is, and usually it is sitting in your own data. Twenty minutes is enough to find out whether it will place.