Marketers Must Start with Sales Numbers – and Work Backwards
Marketing is often seen as a creative discipline, focusing on "getting the brand out there," running campaigns, and measuring success in impressions, clicks, and engagement. While these elements have their place, they often fail to connect directly to revenue. In early and growth-stage fintechs, where every dollar must be accountable, marketing must be tangible, measurable, and directly tied to business outcomes.
Yet, often, marketing strategies don’t start with the numbers that truly matter—sales targets. Instead of aligning with revenue goals, strategies focus on top-of-the-funnel activities without a clear line of sight to conversions. In my experience providing Fractional CMO services to fintechs (and being a Founder/ business owner myself for 16+ years), for those aiming to scale, marketing must work backward from sales numbers to establish realistic and effective marketing metrics.
Start with Sales Goals First
Every fintech startup or growth-stage company has a revenue target. Whether it’s $1 million, $10 million, or more, the marketing team must take this number as their starting point. If the company needs $10 million in sales and the average deal size is $100,000, then the business must close 100 deals annually. That means roughly 8–9 deals per month.
From here, marketing should work with sales to determine:
Sales cycle length – How long does it take to close a deal?
Win rate – What percentage of SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) convert to customers?
Conversion rates at each funnel stage – From lead to MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) to SQL to Closed-Won.
By answering these questions, marketing can establish exactly how many leads are required to meet sales goals. If the company needs 8–9 deals per month, and the sales win rate is 20%, then at least 40 SQLs are required monthly. If 40% of MQLs convert to SQLs, then 100 MQLs are needed per month, and so on. This is the level of clarity required for marketing to align with sales.
Understanding Marketing’s Contribution to Revenue
Once these numbers are clear, marketing must assess how it has historically contributed to sales. This means analyzing:
Which channels drive the highest-quality leads?
What has been the average lead-to-customer conversion rate across campaigns?
Which content, campaigns, and assets have influenced the most deals?
For fintechs, lead sources such as content marketing (reports, whitepapers, case studies), targeted paid media, and direct ABM (Account-Based Marketing) campaigns often yield the best results. By looking at past data, marketing can forecast which efforts will most effectively contribute to hitting the new targets.
Setting Marketing’s Tangible Targets
With a clear understanding of the sales funnel and past marketing impact, teams can now set their own marketing targets. These should include:
Lead generation goals – Number of MQLs and SQLs required per month.
Channel-specific targets – Expected contributions from organic, paid, referral, and outbound efforts.
Pipeline contribution metrics – Ensuring marketing is responsible for a set percentage of overall revenue.
Marketing-influenced revenue – Tracking how many deals were assisted by marketing efforts.
By setting these tangible metrics, marketing moves beyond vanity metrics like impressions and social media engagement and focuses on what truly matters—revenue impact.
Why Fintechs Can’t Afford Brand-Only Marketing
For early and growth-stage fintechs, marketing cannot exist solely to “get the brand out there.” Awareness alone does not pay the bills. While brand-building is essential, it must be accompanied by revenue-generating strategies.
Investors want tangible growth – Startups and scale-ups must prove that marketing dollars translate to revenue.
Sales teams need high-quality leads – Marketing must focus on delivering SQLs that fit the ideal customer profile.
Every dollar must be optimized – Especially in fintech, where customer acquisition costs (CAC) can be high.
A strong fintech marketing strategy ensures that efforts are measurable, repeatable, and scalable. Marketing’s role is to support sales, not operate in isolation.
The Takeaway: Marketing & Sales Must Be in Sync
Marketing that isn’t tied to sales is ineffective marketing. Fintechs that grow sustainably are those where marketing and sales work in lockstep, using revenue as their shared goal.
By working backward from sales numbers, setting clear marketing contribution metrics, and focusing on revenue impact, marketing transforms from a cost center into a revenue driver. It’s time for marketers to start with the numbers and ensure their efforts lead directly to sales success.
Interested in working with AttainX?
