By: Targe Media

In financial services, pipeline is not a growth metric. It is survival.

A business lending broker without daily inbound inquiries is just waiting on renewals. A mortgage professional without pre-qualified buyers is entirely dependent on referrals. A debt settlement company without consistent enrollments cannot scale. An insurance advisor without booked appointments is stuck prospecting instead of closing.

And yet, for years, the advice handed to every one of these professionals was the same. Spend more on ads. Boost more posts. Increase impressions. The agencies collected their retainers, the dashboards filled with numbers that looked impressive, and the phones stayed quiet.

That is the exact problem Avi Grondin built Variance Marketing to solve.

The Real Problem Nobody Was Talking About

Business lending, mortgage, debt settlement, and insurance are some of the most complex verticals in all of marketing. Compliance matters. Lead intent matters. Qualification matters. Speed-to-contact matters. Follow-up systems matter.

Generic agencies treated financial services like e-commerce. They drove traffic, handed over a spreadsheet of names, and called it a campaign. But a merchant cash advance broker does not need traffic. A mortgage officer does not need impressions. A debt settlement company does not need five dollar leads that never answer the phone. An insurance agency does not need form fills from people who are just looking.

They need qualified applicants who are ready to move forward.

Grondin understood that distinction before most people in the industry were even asking the right questions. And rather than building a generalist agency that dabbled across every vertical, he made a decision that would define Variance Marketing entirely. He went all-in on financial services.

“We don’t optimize for cost per lead. We optimize for cost per closed deal.” That single shift in philosophy separates Variance from virtually every other agency competing for the same clients.

Why Financial Services, and Why It Works

Variance Marketing did not become a financial services powerhouse by accident. Over time, a clear pattern emerged. The businesses with the most measurable return on investment, the most urgent need for predictable acquisition, and the greatest upside from a properly optimized marketing system were consistently the same types of companies. Business lending firms. Mortgage brokerages. Debt settlement companies. Insurance agencies.

These industries live and die by pipeline consistency. One dry month is not an inconvenience. It is a crisis. And that urgency, that high-stakes relationship with lead generation, is exactly what Grondin built Variance around.

Today the agency operates with a dedicated team focused specifically on business lending lead acquisition across merchant cash advance, SBA, term loans, and equipment financing. Mortgage purchase and refinance funnels. Debt settlement enrollments. Insurance appointment generation. The systems, the scripts, the qualification flows, the automations — all of it is designed specifically for how financial products are sold, not borrowed from a playbook built for a clothing brand or a software company.

The Dealflow System: Engineered for Financial Services

At the center of everything Variance does is its proprietary Dealflow program. And it is worth understanding what Dealflow actually is, because it is not what most people think of when they hear the word advertising.

Dealflow is a fully integrated acquisition system built around three things: high-intent lead generation, qualification filtering, and automated follow-up that drives booked appointments. The difference is in what happens between someone seeing an ad and someone showing up on a calendar ready to talk.

For business lending clients, the system filters for revenue thresholds, time in business, existing debt position, and funding urgency. For mortgage clients, it qualifies for purchase versus refinance intent, pre-approval readiness, credit profile, and timeline to buy. For debt settlement companies, leads are screened for minimum unsecured debt thresholds, hardship qualification, and state eligibility. For insurance, the system qualifies for policy type intent, renewal timing, and household qualification.

Campaigns run across Meta, Google, and other platforms, but the traffic is only one piece of the equation. The real differentiator lives in the backend. Funnel logic. Lead scoring. Automated SMS and email follow-up. Appointment setting sequences. CRM optimization. Speed-to-contact systems that make sure the right person gets contacted at the right moment before the window closes.

The goal is to put 15 to 30 qualified, ready-to-talk appointments per week on a financial professional’s calendar, without that professional having to become a part-time marketer to make it happen.

What Clients Are Actually Experiencing

The testimonials across Variance Marketing’s client base tell a story that is remarkably consistent. Hakan Mounir, a mortgage broker, went from receiving no calls and no leads to generating 50 qualified leads within six to seven weeks. He went on to close over 20 deals. Jeff Sosnicki, a mortgage loan officer, credits Grondin directly with driving $500,000 in closed business for a brand new agent inside 90 days.

Chris Allinson of Nest Capital Mortgage Investment Corp was direct about it: “Avi is single-handedly responsible for driving a $380,000 increase in our revenue in 60 days. Start the program. You’ll see what I saw. You’ll book 30 calls easily.”

John L. of Streamline Advance ran one email campaign through the Dealflow system. It generated 253 leads at $11 per lead. Six converted into clients. Three of those deals were valued at over $200,000 each, with one funding immediately. Jacob Snitman, a mortgage agent at Burke Financial, generated 40 leads and booked 15 qualified appointments in the first seven days alone.

Rahul Saggu, a mortgage agent at Vine Group, described it this way: “The Dealflow program is quite literally filling up my calendar every single day.”

On the real estate side, Daniel K. from Royal LePage produced $80,000 in commissions in just 11 days. Jodh Toor from Century 21 generated 256 leads in 30 days at 40 to 50 cents per lead and had to turn his phone off at night because the notifications would not stop.

Over 1,352 clients have now worked with Variance Marketing. Over 150 of them have recorded public video testimonials. The results are documented, named, and verifiable. The difference is not luck. It is system design.

Built by Someone Who Actually Understands the Industry

What separates Avi Grondin from the typical agency founder is not just experience in marketing. It is experience in understanding what makes financial services deals actually close.

He understands what makes a business lending lead fundable. He understands what makes a mortgage file close. He understands what makes a debt settlement client enroll and what makes an insurance prospect convert. That context shapes every ad angle, every qualification question built into the funnel, every automation sequence, and every metric the agency tracks and reports back to clients.

Most agencies measure cost per lead. Variance measures cost per funded deal, cost per enrolled client, cost per issued policy, cost per closed mortgage. That difference changes everything about how a campaign is built, how it is optimized, and what success actually looks like at the end of the month.

Duane Buziak of Coast 2 Coast Mortgage LLC put the contrast clearly: “From the leads, I have not seen anyone that is broke, no one with bad credit. They are all amazing leads. From the ads I’ve seen in the past versus what you’re doing, this is night and day.”

A Model Built on Accountability

Variance does not take on financial services clients casually. Every engagement starts with clear revenue targets, defined qualification criteria, an allocated acquisition budget, and measurable return on investment goals set before any campaign goes live.

From there, campaigns are continuously split-tested and optimized until performance peaks. Real-time reporting keeps every dollar accountable. And the agency’s commitment to transparency means clients always know exactly what their money is doing and what it is producing.

“We will never take on a client unless we are 100% sure we can help,” Grondin says. “We do not take on projects unless we are 100% sure we can execute and deliver.”

In a space full of agencies that will take anyone’s money and optimize for the metrics that make them look good, that level of selectivity is its own kind of statement.

The Bottom Line

Financial services is one of the most competitive and most misunderstood advertising categories in the market. Most agencies enter it with a generalist approach and exit with a frustrated client who has learned another expensive lesson about the gap between impressions and income.

Variance built something different. Specialization. Systems. Accountability tied directly to revenue.

The leads are qualified. The systems are automated. The reporting is tied to closed deals, not click-through rates. And the results are documented across more than 1,352 clients who trusted Grondin with their pipeline and watched it transform.

For business lending firms, mortgage brokerages, debt settlement companies, and insurance agencies who are tired of paying for noise and ready to invest in a system that produces real pipeline, the infrastructure already exists.

All that is left is to use it.

Ready to scale your financial services operation with qualified inbound appointments? Visit variancemarketing.com to book your Scale-Up Session.

The post How Variance Marketing Is Crushing the Financial Services Lead Generation Space appeared first on Miami Wire.