For fintechs, the first and most important question is – how are you different? And the second is – why should I care? These are the cornerstones of any elevator pitch, that Silicon Valley ritual where someone has only the length of travel between a couple of floors to attract investment.
Newness sells. So does novelty.
This means it’s hardly surprising that when these same companies turn their focus from product development to actual marketing, they don’t want to follow an old book. We frequently meet with young founders and they consistently say – ”We want to shake the market. We want to do something different.”
It’s our job as digital marketing strategists to find a way to channel that energy and passion into a marketing engine that is scalable, cost-effective and actually attracts customers. We believe that using the right mix of tactics is what sets up the exponential growth that venture-backed companies require.
Some of these tactics are brand new. Others have been used for decades. The important thing is that they play their part in building and maintaining this marketing machine.
1. Content marketing
What is the role of content in the age of generative artificial intelligence? There’s a worry that companies will create endless machine driven slop, which will in turn be summarised ad nauseum by people on the receiving end. Data expanded and then shrunk time after time, like a putty devoid of any centre. I even had to delete an earlier version of this post as it contained too much robotic language.
Our advice is to beware of any strategy that seeks to overwhelm the market with sheer quantity. People don’t need 30 white papers or 75 articles in order to be a product. Instead, they need a single, well-reasoned argument that speaks to their actual use. There’s a reason the people who control the purse strings like one-minute pitches and eight-slide investor decks: they know that the process of editing and removal lets people get to the point.
For fintechs, use the voice of your founder to amplify the message. Write something and see how people respond. And then just it to make the next version 10 or 20 percent more effective and impactful. Resist bloat. Show this to your early customers or investors, always with the question, does this make you care about what we do?
2. Community Building
Another digital marketing strategy fintechs should use to drive sales growth is through building a community. This can be a by-product of good content marketing on social media, but fintechs should look to go further and consider where they can add value for their customer. For instance, Monzo has a community forum where users can interact with one another and connect contacts in the app so that users can easily send money to family and friends.
3. Paid Social
Many people believe themselves to be immune to advertising. “I don’t use it to make decisions,” they will say. But they’re wrong. While for buying digital products, the sales cycle is seldom as easy as seeing an ad and clicking on it, paid media plays a huge role in how people even find brands to evaluate. Name recognition and understanding of the overall product offering pushes prospective buyers into the sales funnel. Fintechs should ensure their paid social strategy is rooted in data, and that their targeting is refined and will drive sales growth.
4. SEO Optimisation
The first two digital marketing strategies mentioned here are quite consumer centric, and SEO optimisation is a digital marketing tactic that is well suited to both B2C and B2B fintechs. In short, SEO optimisation is where a business can rank their website higher on a search engine results page to boost traffic, and an easy way this can be done is through having the correct key words on their site.
Many of the problems that fintechs solve are difficult to understand. Both consumers and businesses looking to invest in a fintech solution will no doubt research the problem they are currently facing – whether it’s payments, compliance, or investing. Fintechs should ensure they push out content that hits keywords that will boost their website’s SEO optimisation. This will kill two birds with one stone – fintechs can position themselves as expert thought leaders through producing informative blogs for example, whilst increasing their website traffic. It’s a great way for fintechs to drive sales growth.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective way for fintechs to build trust with consumers and push out personalised messaging. Fintechs should focus on distributing clear, concise copy that is relevant to their target audience. Having a clear call to action button is also a crucial part of email marketing for fintechs – at the end of the day the goal is to convert readers into paying customers – and having a clear call to action button is an easy way to do so.
6. Partnerships and Affiliate Marketing
A final way that fintechs can drive sales growth through digital marketing is through leveraging brand partnerships to tap into new and existing audiences and expand their reach. A long-standing example of a fintech that does this effectively is American Express, who loudly partners with travel companies to reiterate the value of their reward credit cards.
Affiliate marketing can also be a great way to drive sales, and this is increasingly popular amongst digital banking apps. For instance, Revolut and Monzo both offer referral bonuses for users who invite friends to join the app, and this is a simple and effective way to expand their user base and also build that all-important user community.
