--- title: Our Work - FF - Digital Star Marketing --- [Skip to content](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/our-work/functional-finance#main-content) [![Digital Star Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/digitalstar-theme/images/brand/digitalstar-logo-dark.svg) ![](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/digitalstar-theme/images/brand/digitalstar-logo-light.svg)](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/?hsLang=en) - [Home](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/?hsLang=en) - Services - [Marketing Consultation](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/marketing-consultation?hsLang=en) - [Digital Advertising](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/advertising?hsLang=en) - [SEO](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/seo-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Social Media](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/social-media-for-business-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Email Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/email-marketing-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Content Creation](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/content-marketing-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [HubSpot Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubspot-for-insurtech?hsLang=en) - [Website Design For Musicians](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/band-website-design?hsLang=en) - [Brand Design](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/brand-design?hsLang=en) - [Messenger Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/messenger-marketing?hsLang=en) - [Live Streaming](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/live-streaming?hsLang=en) - [Our Work](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/our-work?hsLang=en) - [About](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/about?hsLang=en) - [Blog](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/blog?hsLang=en) - [Inquire](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/contact?hsLang=en) [Get Started](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/our-work/functional-finance#get-started) - [Home](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/?hsLang=en) - Services - [Marketing Consultation](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/marketing-consultation?hsLang=en) - [Digital Advertising](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/advertising?hsLang=en) - [SEO](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/seo-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Social Media](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/social-media-for-business-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Email Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/email-marketing-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [Content Creation](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/content-marketing-wilmington?hsLang=en) - [HubSpot Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubspot-for-insurtech?hsLang=en) - [Website Design For Musicians](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/band-website-design?hsLang=en) - [Brand Design](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/brand-design?hsLang=en) - [Messenger Marketing](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/messenger-marketing?hsLang=en) - [Live Streaming](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/live-streaming?hsLang=en) - [Our Work](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/our-work?hsLang=en) - [About](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/about?hsLang=en) - [Blog](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/blog?hsLang=en) - [Inquire](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/contact?hsLang=en) [Get Started](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/our-work/functional-finance#get-started) ![Three people reviewing work at a desktop screen](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubfs/digitalstar-site/functional-finance.webp) ![Functional Finance](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/digitalstar-theme/images/clients/functional-finance.svg) # From 1 Lead a Month to 31. - 30xLead velocity increase - 677%Google Ads ROAS - $20MSeries A raised during engagement > “Alex is a man of many talents, who plays across many of our GTM efforts.” IMAGE NEEDED: Sasha Galina headshot **Sasha Galina** · COO, Functional Finance Functional Finance had built a financial operations platform purpose-made for insurance carriers, wholesalers, and MGAs—an industry where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in regulatory fines and collapsed trust. The product worked. Early customers believed in it. But there was no marketing function, no brand, no pipeline, and no system to reach buyers who weren’t already in the room. Digital Star became the full marketing department—fractional CMO, brand strategy, web development, HubSpot buildout, content, paid media, social, conference strategy, and sales enablement—managing 10 channels simultaneously with a team of five contractors and delivering 12+ documented playbooks over 17 months. The engagement produced a 275% increase in website conversions, 677% Google Ads ROAS, a 30x increase in lead velocity, 59 influenced pipeline opportunities, and the data infrastructure that supported a $20M Series A. From zero to every channel. From TBD to $20M. ## What “No Marketing” Actually Means When Digital Star began working with Functional Finance in April 2024, the company had a product that worked, customers who believed in it, and a CEO who could sell the vision in a room. What it didn’t have was any system to reach people who weren’t already in the room. One page. That was the website. No product pages, no audience-specific messaging, no conversion optimization. The company had collected 24 form submissions in 23 months—roughly one lead per month. HubSpot existed but sat empty: no lifecycle stages, no lead scoring, no deal mapping, no attribution, no automation. There was no brand strategy, no messaging framework, no content, no paid media, no PR relationships, no social presence, no conference system, no sales enablement materials. Every field in the marketing discovery questionnaire related to budget, KPIs, and customer acquisition cost was marked TBD. - **24**Form submissions in 23 months - **0**Marketing channels active - **TBD**Every KPI at engagement start Everything that follows was built from that starting point. Not optimized. Not improved. Built. ## Phase 1: Building the Foundation Before a single ad could run, campaign could launch, or lead could be captured, Functional Finance needed to know what it was saying, to whom, and why. Digital Star started with primary research and built every layer of the marketing stack from scratch. ### Brand Strategy & Positioning We conducted a full competitive audit against Functional Finance’s closest competitor, mapping site structure, content strategy, SEO performance, traffic sources, and keyword positioning. We documented where the competition was investing and where gaps existed that FF could own. We mapped customer pain points by reviewing industry forums, Reddit discussions, and real conversations with MGAs, carriers, and wholesalers. That research identified nine core pain categories—from manual reconciliation bottlenecks to scaling challenges—each documented with real buyer language and solution-oriented messaging tied directly to FF’s capabilities. From that research, we built the complete brand strategy: positioning, target audience definitions, competitive differentiation, messaging hierarchy, voice system, and brand guidelines. We wrote a copy library organized by theme—trust, efficiency, automation, compliance—giving the company a language system it had never had. And we made a strategic bet. Rather than positioning FF as another tool in a crowded insurance automation space, we framed the company around a category it could own: Insurance FinOps. That category creation work—consistent language across every channel, every piece of content, every campaign—eventually led to FF holding the #1 Google AI Overview result for the term. Not a ranking. An AI-generated answer citing Functional Finance as the authority. ### Website Design & Copy Digital Star wrote every word of copy on the new website, planned the complete site architecture, consulted on visual design, and created the product screen visuals. The site was built to do three things: establish credibility in the first five seconds, speak directly to five distinct buyer personas (CFOs, operations managers, IT teams, channel partners, and insured parties), and convert visitors into qualified leads. The information architecture included dedicated persona pages, product capability pages, a resource hub, and conversion paths optimized for each audience segment. Every page was written to address the specific objections and priorities of insurance buyers—not generic SaaS copy adapted to the vertical. ### The 30-Day Proof Point Within 30 days of the website relaunch—before any paid media was deployed—the results made the case: - **275%**Conversion rate increase - **340%**Direct traffic increase - **$0**Ad spend at time of measurement This was the moment the narrative shifted inside the company. Marketing went from TBD to measurable growth. Before the relaunch, the board couldn’t answer basic questions about lead volume, traffic sources, or conversion rates. After, those metrics were visible in real time. The 30-day results gave leadership and investors the first concrete evidence that structured go-to-market execution was working—and every subsequent investment in paid media, content, and PR was made with the confidence that came from watching the numbers move before a dollar of ad spend was deployed. ### CRM Infrastructure & Attribution HubSpot had existed at FF before Digital Star arrived, but it was effectively empty. We rebuilt the entire CRM infrastructure: custom lifecycle stages mapped to FF’s actual sales process, lead scoring models, deal stage definitions, automated workflows for lead routing and nurture, and complete attribution tracking integrated with Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and every social account. The upgrade that mattered most was HubSpot’s Operations Hub, which connected advertising revenue data directly to the CRM. Before that upgrade, paid campaigns could only be optimized for form fills. After, every campaign could be measured by revenue impact. The Google Ads specialist could optimize for deals, not clicks. The LinkedIn campaigns could be evaluated by pipeline contribution, not impressions. This infrastructure decision is why we can report a 677% ROAS on Google Ads with confidence: the attribution system was built to produce that measurement. New qualified leads triggered Slack notifications to the sales team within minutes of form submission. SQL definitions were standardized across marketing and sales. The friction between form fill and first sales touch—which had been undefined before the engagement—became a tracked metric with a target response time. ## Phase 2: Scaling the Engine With brand, website, and CRM infrastructure in place, Digital Star launched the full multichannel engine. Every channel reinforced the others. PR coverage was promoted through paid LinkedIn. CEO thought leadership videos were boosted to targeted audiences, then retargeted against companies that engaged. Blog content driving organic traffic was repurposed as paid retargeting creative. Conference attendee lists were layered with seniority targeting. This wasn’t channel-by-channel execution. It was a single integrated system. ### Google Ads: 677% ROAS We ran high-intent search campaigns targeting insurance operations buyers, demand generation campaigns on YouTube and Display using the CEO’s video content, and retargeting campaigns with case studies and blog posts. The campaigns were structured to capture the limited search volume in insurance FinOps—a category so niche that broad-match waste would have destroyed the budget. The Google Ads specialist working on the account called the results “outstanding,” noting they outperformed internal platform conversion benchmarks by 4x. | Campaign | Spend | Conv. | Value | ROAS | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Insurance Solutions (Search) | $16,853 | 29 | $89,625 | 5.32x | | Branded Search | $1,533 | 13 | $59,875 | 39x | | Display Retargeting | $936 | 19 | $19,000 | 20.3x | | Demand Gen (YouTube/Display) | $4,641 | 3 | $300 | 0.06x | | Demand Gen Retargeting | $989 | 1 | $100 | 0.10x | | TOTAL | $24,951 | 65 | $168,900 | 6.77x | $24,951 in. $168,900 in attributed conversion value out. In a market where most vendors struggle to generate inbound interest at all. Conversion value reflects CRM-attributed revenue and weighted opportunity value tied directly to Google Ads through HubSpot’s Operations Hub integration. ### LinkedIn Ads: $37 Per Conversion in a $150+ Market LinkedIn was architected as a multi-layered funnel, not a single campaign. The strategy ran six distinct campaign types simultaneously: lead generation targeting FinOps leaders at insurance carriers and MGAs, boosted CEO thought leadership content, free consultation offers for engaged prospects, retargeting against website visitors, conference attendee targeting with hook videos, and top-of-funnel thought leadership engagement. The CEO content boost campaign quietly became the most efficient pipeline driver in the entire account. $2,552 in spend generated 105 conversions at $24.31 each with a 38% form completion rate—and appeared in the attribution path of 7 customers and 30 influenced opportunities. That’s thought leadership paying for itself many times over. Conference targeting campaigns tested four video variations against MGA and conference attendee lists layered with seniority filters. The winning variant converted at $18.09 per conversion and $0.39 cost per view—outperforming every other LinkedIn campaign type by cost efficiency. - **$8,675**Total LinkedIn spend - **234**Total conversions - **$37**Cost per conversion (benchmark: $75–150+) #### LinkedIn Pipeline Attribution (HubSpot) Because the CRM attribution system was built to track the full journey, we can show exactly where LinkedIn’s $8,675 in spend showed up in the pipeline: | Pipeline Stage | Count | Cost Per | | --- | --- | --- | | Leads | 89 | $97 | | MQLs | 27 | $321 | | SQLs | 36 | $241 | | Opportunities Influenced | 59 | $147 | | Customers (in attribution path) | 16 | $542 | LinkedIn’s own account strategist confirmed these results surpassed internal platform benchmarks. Creative was working at 2–4x above LinkedIn’s internal response rates. ### Content, PR & Thought Leadership The content strategy wasn’t a blog calendar. It was the fuel for every other channel. Blog posts drove organic traffic and became retargeting creative. The CEO’s thought leadership pieces were promoted to curated LinkedIn audiences. PR placements across four insurance industry publications were amplified through paid campaigns, turning earned media into controlled distribution. The organic LinkedIn program ran at nearly 3x the SaaS industry average click-through rate—without any paid amplification on organic posts. We used LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ad format to promote the CEO’s highest-performing personal content to targeted audiences of insurance decision-makers, creating a credibility loop: organic engagement validated the content, paid distribution expanded its reach, and retargeting captured the interest. The PR program earned coverage in four insurance industry publications, establishing FF as a named player in a category it was actively defining. That coverage was then promoted through paid channels, compounding its impact well beyond organic reach. ### Conference Campaign System Insurance industry conferences were a primary acquisition channel. We didn’t just support events—we built a repeatable system. Before each conference, brand awareness campaigns warmed target attendee lists on LinkedIn. During the event, meeting-focused campaigns drove booth traffic and demo requests. After, retargeting campaigns captured the engagement window. The system produced qualified opportunities at a fraction of cold outreach costs. The approach of warming audiences before running meeting-focused campaigns during the event became the standard playbook for every conference on FF’s calendar. ## What Doesn’t Show Up in the Numbers At peak complexity, Digital Star was managing the complete marketing budget across two ad platforms, overseeing five contractor relationships (video production, PR distribution, graphic design, LinkedIn strategy, business development outreach), owning ten distinct marketing channels simultaneously (Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, organic social, website/SEO, content/blog, email, PR, conferences, ABM/outbound, sales enablement), and leading weekly executive meetings with reporting to the CEO and board. This was not advisory work. Every campaign was built, launched, and optimized by Digital Star. Every piece of copy was written. Every contractor deliverable was reviewed. Every HubSpot workflow was configured. Every ad was created, targeted, and measured. The role functioned as a fully embedded senior marketing executive with direct operational responsibility for every channel and every dollar. ## The Before and After | Metric | Before | After | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly leads | ~1 | 31 | | Form submissions | 24 in 23 months | 93 in one quarter (Q2 2025 avg: 31/mo) | | Marketing channels active | 0 | 10 | | Google Ads ROAS | N/A | 677% (6.77x) | | LinkedIn cost per conversion | N/A | $37 (half benchmark) | | Pipeline visibility | None | Full-funnel attribution | | Brand positioning | Undefined | #1 AI Overview for category | | CRM infrastructure | Empty HubSpot | Full lifecycle + attribution | | Board reporting | TBD on every metric | Real-time dashboards | Not incremental improvement. Structural transformation from zero pipeline visibility to a multichannel demand engine producing measurable results across every stage of the funnel. ## Results - **30x**Lead velocity increase - **677%**Google Ads ROAS - **$168,900**Google Ads conversion value - **234**LinkedIn conversions from $8,675 - **59**LinkedIn influenced opportunities - **$37**LinkedIn cost/conversion - **275%**Website conversion increase (30 days) - **#1**Google AI Overview for Insurance FinOps - **~3x**Organic LinkedIn CTR vs SaaS average - **$20M**Series A raised during engagement - **12+**Strategic playbooks delivered - **17**Months, start to full handover Total combined paid media spend across both platforms: approximately $33,600. Every result above came from under $34K in ad spend, one senior marketer, and a coordinated contractor team. ## Added Value Beyond the campaign results, the engagement fundamentally changed how Functional Finance operates as a marketing organization. Every channel, system, and process was built with documentation and handover in mind—so when the company hired its first full-time marketer, they inherited a running operation, not a blank slate. The brand infrastructure, CRM architecture, and paid media playbooks Digital Star built will continue generating pipeline and shaping how the company goes to market long after the engagement ended. The operation didn’t stop when the engagement ended. It transferred. That’s the difference between a vendor and a fractional executive. Client Functional Finance Industry Insurance FinOps • B2B SaaS Stage Pre-Series A to Series A Starting Point No marketing function, no brand, no pipeline Digital Star Services [Fractional CMO](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/marketing-consultation?hsLang=en)[Brand Strategy](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/brand-design?hsLang=en)[Digital Advertising](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/advertising?hsLang=en)[Content Strategy](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/content-marketing-wilmington?hsLang=en)[HubSpot for Insurtech](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/hubspot-for-insurtech?hsLang=en)[Social Media](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/social-media-for-business-wilmington?hsLang=en)[Web Development](https://try.digitalstarmarketing.com/band-website-design?hsLang=en) Engagement April 2024 – September 2025 (17 months) Channels Managed 10 simultaneously Playbooks Delivered 12+ About A FinOps platform purpose-built for insurance carriers, wholesalers, and MGAs. ## See If This Applies to Your Company If you’re building a product for insurance, fintech, or financial services—and you need marketing that understands why this market is different—Digital Star has done this before. 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