How I stepped into a leadership gap to redesign GTM strategy, agency architecture, and advanced media measurement (MMM + MTA) for a Tier-1 PE-backed wealth management firm.
Client Profile
Top-Tier Wealth Management Firm
Top-Tier AUM (Tier-1 PE Sponsor)
Engagement
Interim Head of Media & GTM Strategy
May 2025 – March 2026
A true VP Growth / Head of Media story: I was brought in to redesign the firm's media strategy from the ground up — shifting from demand capture to demand creation for a high-value, hard-to-reach audience.
The mandate was to build a defensible investment architecture that could justify scaling a legacy paid search budget into a sophisticated, scaled full-funnel media engine targeting Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) households.
The firm had grown through hyper-efficient, conversion-focused media—capturing people who were already searching for wealth advisors. The problem: Rising UHNW prospects don't search. If we aren't in their awareness set before they need advice, we never make their consideration list.
Demand Capture
Demand Creation
Board-level investment required board-level accountability. I designed a strategic operational dashboard view to map the multi-year media forecast against an advanced measurement framework.
Modeling the 4.5x ramp and the shift to Demand Creation.
Spend Pacing
On Target 98%
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
-15% YoY
Qualified Leads
+42% YoY
Pipeline Value Lift
+65% YoY
~1.2M UHNW HHs in US
Finite Hyper-Targeted Universe
100% at 20-25x Qtr Freq
Instead of spraying budget across broad demographic targets, we isolated the exact Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) and treated it as a finite universe. The objective shifted from "reaching as many people as possible" to "achieving 100% saturation and perceived omnipresence with the right people."
Target Universe
100% Saturation
Total Scale Ramp
4.5x by Year 3
Brand Target (Y3)
60% Mix
Performance Target (Y3)
40% Mix
Baseline
Inherited
Year 1
Pilot
Year 2
Scale
Year 3
Optimized
Primary Model
Meridian (MMM)
Tactical Model
Multi-Touch (MTA)
Brand Tracking
Quarterly Panel
Lookback Window
36 Months
Deployed Google's open-source Meridian MMM to measure holistic long-cycle contribution and justify upper-funnel brand spend against bottom-line AUM impact.
Maintained MTA purely for short-cycle channel accountability and tactical, weekly performance optimizations (not broad budget setting).
Quarterly baseline studies serving as leading indicators to ensure the finite target audience was building trust and brand recall prior to a triggering life event.
Why the combination of GTM strategy design, agency management, and rigorous measurement architecture separates a budget decision from a defensible growth investment.
MTA alone undercounts the contribution of brand investment for long-cycle, high-trust B2C decisions (like choosing a wealth advisor). The three-layer architecture was the infrastructure that made a scaled budget defensible. Without all three, the board conversation is about gut feel, not evidence.
The strategic insight was treating the Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) as a known, finite universe to be saturated—not a broad audience to be reached. Perceived omnipresence with the right audience produces trust that performance media alone never builds.
This execution is vital for organizations scaling media investment past $20M and entering new audience segments—particularly in financial services or any category with long trust-building cycles and high Average Customer Value (ACV).