CSM @ Skale.so | B2B Business Dev Strategist & Founder at frontBrick

🌟 Business Developer | Revenue Growth | GTM+ AI | Former Goalkeeper 🧤

Stan Stojanovic

Great practical sessions on growth and marketing at unlockit conference here at Microsoft office in Belgrade ⚡️

Thanks a lot for sharing all the insights Ravish Agrawal, Enrique Hoyos and Vukasin Vukosavljevic 

Luka Dolic Stefan Savanovic

Founder @ frontBrick.io | Building Your Pipeline. Brick By Brick. | Architect of sophisticated pipeline generation strategies for ambitious B2B teams 🟢 | Founder @ unbooth.io

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We added one thing to our ABM campaign last month for one of our clients.
A human voice.
Here's what happened ↓

We were already running:
→ LinkedIn Ads to our ICP
→ Multi-channel sequences (email + LinkedIn)
People were engaging. Accepting invites. Replying here and there.
But a lot of them just went quiet after the first touch.
So we had an SDR start calling - but only the people who already engaged.
Not cold outreach. Warm follow-up.

They'd seen our ads. Accepted our invite. Maybe even replied once.
The call didn't feel random. It felt like a next step.
The piece that made it possible: BetterContact

We needed verified phone numbers at scale - and the accuracy was genuinely remarkable. No bad numbers, no wasted dials. Just real conversations with the right people.

February results:
→ 1,252 prospects in the funnel
→ 87 replies across channels
→ 51 interested leads and 65% - 70% converted to booked meetings

Calling a warm audience is a completely different game.
When someone already knows who you are, picking up the phone closes the gap faster than any sequence ever will.

If you're running ads and outreach but not following up by phone - you're leaving meetings on the table.

Performance Marketing | B2B Marketing | Digital Marketing | Demand Generation | Growth Marketing

Most fintech paid media fails for the same reason: you're targeting "decision makers" generically while your buyers - CFOs, Heads of Treasury, Compliance, CTOs - all need different messages.

I fix that.

I'm the founder of Humble Roots, a paid media agency that works exclusively with B2B fintech companies.

Before Humble Roots, I spent 10+ years in B2B paid media - agency side and in-house. I've generated £230M+ pipeline, scaled campaigns from £120k to £4.4M annual spend, and managed £50M+ in client budgets at companies including American Express Global Business Travel, GE Digital, and Neo1.

Now I help growth-stage fintech companies (Seed to C) spending £10k+/month on paid media who are tired of agencies that don't understand their market, their buyers, or their sales cycles.

If your paid media is generating MQLs that sales ignores, let's talk.

Macloud Moyo

Jonathan Nyst told me something that changed how I think about B2B messaging:
"Let's cut the bullsh*t on cloud-based, blah blah. What does cloud-based mean? It means wherever you are, you'll always be able to see what's happening at your shop. So you can finally take holidays".

And I mean, he's right.

Most B2B fintech companies talk like this:
- "Cloud-based infrastructure"
- "Real-time payment processing"
- "Multi-currency support"
- "API-first architecture"

Cool. What does that actually mean for the person reading it?

Here's how Jonathan's team at StoreHub translates it:
- "You can finally take holidays and still monitor your shop"
- "Your customers pay faster, you get money sooner"
- "Serve international customers without the headache"

Same features. Completely different language.

The thing is, StoreHub serves 15,000 merchants across Southeast Asia. Small business owners. Restaurant operators. People who don't care about your tech stack.

They care about outcomes. Can I go on holiday? Can I serve more customers? Can I make more money?

Jonathan's team gets 99% inbound leads. Their cost per sales-qualified lead is "unlike anything you'd see in a B2B environment".

Why? Because they communicate like a B2C brand while being a B2B company.

Nobody in their market has been able to replicate it.

And honestly, I see this constantly in fintech marketing. We hide behind feature lists because that's what feels safe. But whether you're selling to a CFO or a CTO, they're asking the same question: "What does this actually do for me?"

Feature lists don't create emotional connections. Outcomes do.

So here's my challenge: take your homepage. Read your product descriptions. Would your actual buyer understand what you do for them? Or would they see "cloud-based" and move on?

Cut the bullsh*t. Talk about what it actually means.

Founder at Humble Roots | I help fintech companies turn paid media into pipeline

We ran PMax for 3 months on a fintech account. Then we tested Google's AI mode on our paid search campaigns for one week.

Guess which one we turned off?

PMax over 3 months:.

Optimised heavily throughout:
- 49,000 search terms triggered
- Added 41,900 placement exclusions
- Excluded sensitive content, types, labels, and content themes
- Result: Reduced inventory by 47%, impressions dropped 5-9%, traffic quality improved

That's not the algorithm learning. That's us teaching it what fintech actually looks like.

But once we found the sweet spot? PMax works brilliantly for brand awareness and demand creation. It gets you in front of buying committees at scale.

Just don't expect it to perform like paid search on direct response metrics.

Then we tested AI mode on paid search for one week.

Complete disaster.

Google's AI ignored brand guidelines. Irrelevant keywords jumped 33% despite us providing everything - brand guidelines, tone of voice, messaging frameworks.

The ads it created? Completely off-brand. The targeting? Even worse than unoptimised PMax.

We turned AI mode off after one week. Left standard paid search running.

Why the distinction matters...

Standard paid search (without AI mode) delivered 53% more demo requests than PMax. Does that mean PMax failed? No.

They serve different purposes.

Paid search: Bottom-funnel. High intent. Someone actively searching for your solution. Converts to demos.

PMax: Brand awareness. Demand creation. Getting in front of buying committees before they're actively searching. Builds familiarity.

When someone finally searches your company name (direct traffic), PMax is part of why they know who you are.

The thing is, we can see why AI mode works great for e-commerce. You're selling trainers? Google can figure out "running shoes" and "sneakers". Fine.

But fintech? The nuance matters. "How to open a bank account" is not the same as "enterprise banking infrastructure API". Google's AI doesn't understand that distinction yet.

What we learned.

PMax for fintech can work, but:
- Expect to add thousands of exclusions to find your sweet spot
- Measure it on brand awareness/demand creation, not direct response
- Run it alongside paid search for bottom-funnel conversion

AI mode for paid search? Not ready for regulated industries.
- Ignore brand guidelines
- Create off-brand ads
- Drive irrelevant traffic despite your constraints

If you're running PMax or AI mode for fintech (or thinking about it) and want to understand whether it makes sense for your strategy, drop me a DM. Happy to walk through how to set it up properly or whether your budget is better spent elsewhere.

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Stan Stojanovic

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taplio

The Battle

Stan Stojanovic

Macloud Moyo

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Stan Stojanovic's LinkedIn Performance

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