Rethinking the role of insight in FS and payments marketing.

By Ane Unamuno (Engagement Manager) 

Marketers in FS and payments regularly use customer and market insight as a reliable campaign input to help shape creative, sharpen messaging, and improve marketing effectiveness. Typically, this kind of research is commissioned once a quarter (or year) to fuel a big launch or pitch and when used in this way, insight can be hugely valuable. 

But when insights are only tapped into at campaign moments, their true potential gets somewhat cut short. It’s not that they lose value, but without being part of your day-to-day, you risk missing subtle market shifts, leaving important gaps in understanding, and slowing your ability to adapt. 

If your team only uses insights on an ad-hoc or campaign-by-campaign basis, these challenges might look familiar: 

• Outdated relevance - campaigns risk being based on stale or lagging customer needs, meaning they don’t land as strongly with today’s audience.
  

• Missed signals - without continuous feedback, it’s easy to overlook subtle shifts in customer behaviour, competitor positioning, or market sentiment.
  

• Weaker decision-making - marketers have less evidence to guide micro-decisions (e.g. content formats, timing, channel allocation), leading to reliance on gut feel or imitation. 
  

• Lower influence internally - when insights are only surfaced for big launches, stakeholders don’t see their everyday value, reducing trust and buy-in. 

• Reduced adaptability - campaigns can become ‘set in stone’, even if market conditions change between planning and execution. 
  

To unlock the full value of insights, FS and payments marketers need a mindset shift. They should move from treating them as isolated campaign fuel, to embedding them as a ‘live feed’ of customer and market intelligence that informs every decision in your strategy, and your daily delivery. 

In our experience, organisations that treat insights as a day-to-day input see the following benefits:  

• Sharper positioning – campaigns and content are consistently aligned with what customers care about today, not last year. 
  

• Faster optimisation - always-on feedback helps you tweak and improve creative, messaging, and spend in real time. 
  

• Greater agility - marketing teams can pivot more quickly to respond to new opportunities, risks, or competitor moves. 
  

• Stronger storytelling - voice-of-customer language and fresh examples make content more authentic and compelling. 
  

• Informed prioritisation - insight guides which markets, products, or segments to focus on, not just which messages to push. 
  

• Deeper credibility - regular exposure to insights builds stakeholder trust, making marketing a more influential voice in strategic conversations. 
  

• Better ROI - resources are allocated based on what’s working in the market now, rather than assumptions or historic data. 

So, how do you actually make this shift from campaign-only to always-on? Here are some practical ways to get started: 

1️⃣ Make insight accessible 

The shift: Build a centralised, easy-to-use bank of insights that your team can actually act on, rather than dense research reports. 
 
How a partner can help: 

• Synthesise existing research into short, useable formats like personas, playbooks, and opportunity maps. 

• Build internal insight hubs or dashboards that summarise customer, market, and competitor data in marketing-friendly formats. 

• Create bite-sized ‘insight drop’ content (e.g. 2-slide decks or Slack updates) to keep teams informed weekly or monthly. 
   

2️⃣ Operationalise it 

The shift: Ensure insight is part of every stage of the marketing workflow, from planning to creative development to performance optimisation. 

How a partner can help: 

• Audit your current marketing process and identify where insights are (and aren’t) being used. 

• Develop insight-informed campaign briefing templates and decision frameworks. 
   

3️⃣ Embed it in the team

The shift: Make insight ownership part of marketing culture, not something that sits with strategy, product or research teams alone. 

How a partner can help: 

• Run ‘insight surgeries’ or training sessions to upskill marketing teams in how to apply insights practically. 

• Help marketing stakeholders influence internally (e.g. building the case for spend or shaping product narratives). 

4️⃣ Refresh Regularly

The shift: Stop relying on once-a-year research cycles and set up fast, flexible ways to keep insight flowing. 

How a partner can help: 

• Run continuous or ‘pulse’ programmes (e.g. monthly voice-of-customer interviews, rapid competitor scans, win/loss reviews). 

• Provide ‘always-on’ access to a team that can quickly investigate new questions or emerging trends. 

• Flag relevant changes in the market, even when you’re not actively looking, so your marketing stays ahead of the curve. 

In summary, when used to their full potential, insights can be a ‘competitive moat’ for your marketing strategy. Insight-rich marketers build stronger brands, make smarter bets, and move faster - not because they run more research, but because they live it daily, treating insights as their operating system.  

KAE work with FS and payments marketers to help build strategies rooted in data and evidence, rather than assumptions. If you’re looking to develop a sharper value proposition, differentiate your positioning, and craft messaging that connects, book an intro call with one of our experts.