There’s a new marketing agency making its way into the private lending space — and it was built by someone this industry already knows. Parallel Marketing LLC was originally founded to serve the aviation industry, but its CEO brought nearly a decade of private lending marketing experience through the door with her. Lesley and I have been colleagues and friends for years, and together we’ve seen this marketplace from just about every angle. I sat down with Parallel Marketing Co-Founder and CEO Lesley Boyd to talk about what the agency offers, how it works, and what lenders should know.
Q1: Lesley, Parallel Marketing is new, but you’re not new to the private lending space. How did this company come to be?
Parallel Marketing was built on about eight years of industry-specific marketing work, most of it inside private lending. I started at Geraci in 2018 in a junior marketing role and, within a few weeks, moved into a director position. From there, I became department head and eventually CMO. That time gave me a rare view into what lenders need from a marketing partner: speed, regulatory awareness, deal-cycle fluency, and the ability to speak to a sophisticated borrower audience. I was already serving as CMO of a private lender in the aviation finance space at the time, which broadened my perspective on marketing financial products to high-trust, niche audiences. Launching a standalone agency had been the long-term goal for years, and the right moment finally came. Anthony is a co-founder and sits on our board, so this isn’t a pivot or a side project. It’s something we’ve been deliberate about.
Q2: You’re running four conferences and working across two industries. What does capacity actually look like for a new lending client coming in?
It’s a fair question and one worth answering directly. Parallel Marketing is not a solo operation. We have a full team of account managers, coordinators, designers, copywriters, and event staff. Client work is staffed and managed, not funneled through one person. What you get from me is strategic leadership, industry fluency, and direct involvement on work that requires it. What you get from the team is execution that doesn’t drop when things get busy. We built the infrastructure before we opened the doors because we knew the workload we were stepping into.
Q3: You came up in the private lending space. What does that background translate to for a lender thinking about hiring you?
It means I don’t need a six-week onboarding to understand your product. I know the difference between a bridge loan and a DSCR product and why those borrowers require completely different messaging strategies. I know how to talk about prepayment structures, loan-to-value positioning, and the nuances of marketing a non-QM product to a broker network versus going direct to a real estate investor. I know what securitization means to a lender’s growth story and how to translate that into brand credibility without losing the audience. Most outside agencies would need months just to get up to speed on the vocabulary. We already speak the language.
Q4: Geraci’s events, Activate and Elevate, are part of your production portfolio. How does that relationship work?
Geraci trusted Parallel Marketing to handle full event production for both Activate and Elevate from launch. We debuted both in February 2026 and the next iteration runs September 28 through September 30 at the Marriott Marquis in Miami. Geraci’s in-house team retains ownership of marketing for those events and we handle production. That division of responsibility works cleanly because both sides understand where the lanes are. The fact that Anthony co-founded this company with me means the relationship has structural integrity. This wasn’t a vendor arrangement bolted together after the fact.
Q5: What marketing problems do private lenders struggle with most, in your experience?
Three things come up consistently. First, brand differentiation. Most lenders say roughly the same things: fast closes, flexible terms, experienced team. The firms that win on brand are the ones that have built a clear point of view and a voice the market recognizes. Second, lead quality versus lead volume. Many lenders are spending on paid channels and attracting borrowers who don’t fit their credit box. We focus on funnel architecture, meaning who is the right borrower, what they care about, and what the conversion path truly looks like. Third, content that holds up to a sophisticated audience. Private lending borrowers and brokers are not a mass market. They respond to expertise and specificity, not generic financial copy.
Q6: How should a lender think about the decision between hiring an agency versus building an in-house marketing team?
In-house makes sense when you have enough volume to justify full-time headcount, a clear internal culture around marketing, and the bandwidth to recruit, manage, and retain good people. That’s a real commitment, and for some lenders, at a certain stage, it’s the right call. Where we tend to come in is when a lender needs senior strategic leadership and full execution capability without the overhead and timeline of building that from scratch. A strong in-house hire at the director or VP level takes months to find and onboard. With Parallel Marketing, you get a team that already knows the industry, is already operational, and can move quickly. A lot of our clients treat us as the bridge, either while they’re scaling toward an in-house build or because they’ve decided the agency model offers more flexibility for their needs.
Q7: What does the engagement model look like?
It depends on what the client needs. For some lenders, it’s a retained fractional CMO arrangement where I come in as the senior marketing leader without the full-time overhead. For others, it’s project-based: a campaign, a website, a conference. For clients who are scaling, particularly lenders building out a direct channel or launching a new product line, we can embed more deeply and build the infrastructure from the ground up. We’re not a one-size model.
Q8: Parallel Marketing is new. Why should a lender trust a new agency with work that’s this high-stakes?
The agency is new. The body of work is not. I spent years as the marketing leader for one of the most recognized law firms in private lending, building brand awareness at an industry level and helping grow a conference line that became a calendar staple for serious players in the space. From there, I moved into the lending side as CMO of a private lender in the aviation space, which gave me a different but complementary lens on what it takes to market financial products to a niche, high-trust audience. Most people reading this have watched some version of that work happen in real time. Parallel Marketing is the next step, not the first one.
Q9: Where do you see private lending marketing heading over the next few years?
Two things are converging. First, generative AI is changing how borrowers and brokers find lenders. Search behavior is shifting fast, and firms that are not optimizing for how AI-driven search surfaces results are going to lose the visibility they don’t even realize they’re losing. We’re already building GEO strategy, Generative Engine Optimization, into client engagements as a current priority, not a future one. Second, lenders who have historically relied on broker relationships are beginning to build direct-to-borrower marketing infrastructure. That’s a significant strategic shift, and most don’t have the in-house capability to execute it well. That’s exactly the kind of build we’re designed for.
Q10: Do lenders need to be Geraci clients to work with Parallel Marketing?
Not at all. Parallel Marketing is an independent agency. We produce Geraci’s Activate and Elevate conferences, but that is an event production relationship, not a marketing one. Geraci’s in-house marketing team handles its own brand and event marketing. Our work together is operational, not strategic overlap. We work with lenders regardless of whether they have any relationship with Geraci, and we keep client work confidential as a matter of professional standard. The private lending world is small, and we understand what it means to be trusted with someone’s brand and growth strategy inside a community where everyone knows everyone.
Parallel Marketing LLC Lesley Boyd, CEO and Co-Founder
