Deana Lewis and Maria Bethel are both finalists for CMO of the Year at this year's Wealth Management Industry Awards, and neither is short on proof of why. Lewis turned a client appreciation series into one of The Mather Group's most reliable retention tools. Bethel sent a box of Bose earbuds to advisors who had gone quiet mid-sales-cycle and watched them reenter Axtella’s recruiting pipeline. Both credit public relations, treated now as infrastructure for AI search rather than a nice-to-have, with helping their firms control their own story before someone else tells it wrong.
They joined Marketing Matchup to talk about how they built their teams, earned bigger budgets, and got noticed for it.
Bethel asks for more than she expects to get. "I'm gonna come and ask for the sun, moon, and stars," she said, "full well knowing you're only going to give me the stars. But then I'm gonna prove something else. So then you then give me the moon." Lewis takes a similar view on measurement, running test-and-learn campaigns in specific markets before scaling whatever works. She also keeps a small reserve set aside for experiments that fall outside the annual plan, so the team can chase something timely without blowing up the budget to try it.
Some of those experiments bloomed into success beyond anyone’s expectation. Bethel described a direct mail campaign built for advisors who had gone quiet mid-sales-cycle. Her team sent a video mailer themed around listening, complete with a pair of earbuds and a message customized to each recipient. The campaign brought lapsed prospects back into the pipeline, and one advisor called to say it was the best marketing they had ever received from any firm. Lewis pointed to Health is Wealth, a client appreciation series that pairs live music and a nice meal with a short talk from a doctor who focuses on overall wellness. The first event drew more than 25 households and enough word of mouth that the firm has since replicated it across its offices.
Earned media and AI search have become the same fight
Both CMOs now treat public relations as core infrastructure, largely because of how it feeds AI search. "It is our job as marketers,” Lewis said. “We need to connect with the right agencies to help tell our story, because if we cannot tell our story, somebody else will tell it for us, and they're probably gonna get it wrong." She pointed to a recent Wall Street Journal ranking that named The Mather Group one of the top RIA firms for comprehensive planning, a placement she says came from organic reporting rather than a pitch, built on content and messaging the firm had already put in place.
That groundwork extends into how each firm builds its website and content for AI-driven search rather than traditional search alone. Lewis said her team writes content designed to answer specific questions, keeps schema and backlinks in order, and is already tracking leads that arrive with ChatGPT listed as the referral source.
Neither firm treats AI search as separate from the rest of the marketing plan. Lewis's team runs its prospecting through a tool called Wealthfeed, layered with a platform called VisitIQ to track search intent, alongside Cognicore for advisor meeting prep. Bethel's advisors lean on services aimed at cutting down the time advisors spend on meeting notes and prep, which her own survey found were the reasons advisors wanted AI tools in the first place.
What good marketing leadership looks like
Asked what she thinks landed her on the CMO of the Year shortlist, Lewis pointed to turning a function that barely existed into what she calls a connected growth system. Bethel described a similar transformation at Axtella, where marketing has gone from a cost center to a source of paid revenue for the first time in the company's 43-year history, through a financial professional marketing program advisors can subscribe to directly.
Stories like theirs will only become more prevalent in the coming months and years, as more marketing leaders find their voices in the financial services industry and connect their work directly to real business growth.
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