In this guide we walk though what makes Fintech marketing unique, the key things you need to consider to stand out in a crowded market and strategies for creating content that engages your audience and builds communities.
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What Is Different About FinTech Marketing?
We should start by saying that Fintech marketing, especially B2B Fintech marketing, is not fundamentally different to SaaS marketing or professional/financial services more broadly. They mostly use same channels, and a lot of the approaches and considerations are the similar.
However, while trust is important for every brand, it is essential for fintechs. Unlike banks and other traditional institutions, fintechs can't rely on strong established brands to gain consumer's trust. A solid marketing strategy is key to driving demand, building customer loyalty and generating business growth. This involves two pillars - education and trust, more on those later
The job of the fintech marketer is made even more difficult by fierce competition and stringent regulation. For B2B fintechs, there is the added challenge of connecting with niche groups of customers. This strength of this competition means that performance marketing costs have sky-rocketed, meaning that fintech marketers need to increasingly think outside the box to drive customer acquisition and growth.
Incumbent financial institutions are not going to give up the baton without a fight. They are actively investing in acquiring and integrating new technologies, with the huge advantage of having existing customer relationships and well-established brands
That said, fintechs have some big advantages up there sleeve. Their technology is unencumbered by the legacy systems that slow down innovation. They can create truly gratifying customer experiences, providing quicker, cheaper, more accessible access to financial services. By removing fictions in the customer journey they can quickly build loyal customers who become vocal advocates for their brand.
FinTech Branding and Building a Brand Identity
In a crowded fintech market, building a brand identity that stands out and connects with customers on an emotional level is essential. In this section, we will discuss how fintech firms can build a compelling brand story and identity that makes their products unique and memorable.
The Power of Storytelling
To stand out in a crowded market, a fintech firm needs a compelling, endearing story. What makes your product unique, and your story memorable? Why did you build this product? What motivates you, and for whom? These are all questions that fintech firms need to answer to create a brand identity that resonates with customers.
Building a Brand Identity
Building a brand identity takes time and involves repeat exposure. Every company is putting money into digital marketing, and businesses and consumers are seeing more fintech ads than ever before. Upping the ad buy will only give a marginal gain. What fintech firms need is to stand out from the crowd, and branding is the key to achieving this.
Fintech firms need to differentiate themselves from their competitors and connect with customers on an emotional level. This involves identifying what makes their products unique and how they can communicate this in a way that resonates with their target audience - audience and empathy mapping are key tools to achieve this.
A brand identity should reflect your values, mission, and purpose, and tell a compelling story that customers can relate to. You then want to weave these messages through out your marketing plan. Many Fintech companies with strong brand identities make celebrating their people and telling the story of their brand a key pillar of their marketing strategy. The best integrate these narratives into everything they do. For example, emphasizing the experience and talent of the team behind a piece of thought leadership when promoting a report.
Consistency and Coherence
Consistency and coherence are essential to building a successful brand identity. Fintech marketers should should ensure that their brand messaging is consistent across all touchpoints, from their website and social media channels to their email communications and marketing materials. This consistency helps to build trust with customers and reinforces the brand identity over time.
Many Fintech companies with strong brand identities make celebrating their people and telling the story of their brand a key pillar of their marketing strategy. The best integrate these narratives into everything they do. For example, emphasizing the experience and talent of the team behind a piece of thought leadership when promoting a report.
From Stone Buildings to Digital Trust: Building Trust through FinTech Marketing
Money is a deeply emotional topic. It it is tied to ideas of aspiration, status, fear, and desire. As such, trust is essential when it comes to financial services. In the past, bank branches were built of stone in the middle of the town square, which signaled their permanence and solidity. However, fintechs can’t build such physical structures. Instead, they need to show that they are real, credible people who communicate transparently and provide effective, authentic perspectives to their audience. In this section, we will discuss how fintechs can build trust with their customers by demonstrating their expertise, transparency, and emotional intelligence.
Demonstrate Your Expertise
Knowledge and information give your customers control and the confidence to feel like they are making an informed and smart choice. Fintechs can use this to their advantage by demonstrating their expertise in their respective fields.
For example, if your product is tokenized bonds aimed at retail investors, a basic educational campaign could include explaining what bonds are, how the bond market works, what the risks associated with bonds are, how bonds compare to equities, how tokenization of bonds works in practice and how the new tokenized bond product compares to other financial instruments. If the audience were professional investors then you may want to focus on the more technical aspects of bond tokenization and its risk profile as an new asset class.
Comprehensive educational content tailored to your customers needs demonstrates your deep product and market knowledge.
Transparency
Customers today demand brands be honest and consistent with their messaging, goals, and mission. Transparency in your communications makes trust possible. What does this mean in practice? One approach is to show their customers the human side of their organization, for example by highlighting your employees on social media and by promoting the personal brands of your executive team. It also means being upfront and honest about their fees, how their products work, the risks involved and their business practices.
Emotional Intelligence
Your audience, whether they are consumers, SMEs, investors, or corporates, are people. They want to win, but they fear losing. Most people fear loss twice as much as they desire an equivalent gain. Fintechs need to be aware of this emotional intelligence and cater to their customers’ emotional needs. A good example of this is robo-advisors that offer personalized investment advice based on individual risk profiles. A marketing strategy may want to focus on how the makes portfolio optimization decisions based on the information the customer provides, thus alleviating some of their fears.
Building trust is essential for fintechs to succeed in the market. By demonstrating their expertise, transparency, and emotional intelligence, fintechs can build a solid foundation for long-lasting customer relationships.
The Power of Community: Strategies for Building Connections with Fintech Customers
Building a community around your fintech brand can be an effective way to build long-lasting relationships with your customers. In this section, we will discuss how fintechs can form communities with their customers by building awareness and trust, forming connections, and ultimately forming long-lasting relationships.
What is a Community?
Creating a community can mean a lot of different things, and in some cases, nothing at all. There goal behind forming a community is to provide a space in which you customers can engage with your brand, learn from each other and hopefully become vocal advocates for your products and services.
There are several approaches that fintechs can take to form a community around their brand:
Active-participant approach
An active-participant approach involves being a leading player in the industry. This can involve sponsoring and participating in events, partnering with complementary firms, and showcasing clients wherever possible. This approach is great for raising the company’s profile within the sector and building brand awareness. It will also often go hand-in-hand with building the personal brand and reputation of the people within the company. This strategy can be used in conjunction with acting as a brand-publisher, creating high-value thought leadership. This is the approach adopted by many legal and professional services firms.
B2B customer-centric communities
B2B customer-centric communities place the sponsor to one side and focus on creating a professional business network, events, and content libraries that are valuable to the community. These are often highly targeted, such as ‘corporate HR managers and executives’ or ‘logistics and supply chain managers’, but when successful, they can be extremely valuable resources. Salsify's Digital Shelf Institute is a good example of this approach.
Web3/blockchain communities
Web3/blockchain communities offer valuable lessons in community building. These communities are extremely engaged, interacting directly with the development teams, co-creating community features. In these communities, the individual personas of investors, employees/contributors, and users start to blur. They fund the project, influence its direction, and use its output. More engagement leads to higher potential lifetime value. While this would require a big mindset shift for most companies, there is a lot that can be learned about community building by looking at these strategies.
Strategies for creating Fintech communities
Awareness and Trust
B2B marketers must demonstrate that they truly understand and empathize with the challenges that their target audience is trying to solve. By doing so, they can earn their respect, trust, and engagement. Fintechs can build trust by offering transparent information about their products and services, as well as by providing educational resources that help their customers make informed decisions.
Forming Connections
Fintechs need to create paths that lead from awareness to tangible connections – a sign-up to a mailing list, an app download, or a free trial. The same principles apply to fintech as they do in other aspects of e-commerce: customers are willing to share their personal information if there is a fair value exchange. By providing useful and relevant content, fintechs can encourage their customers to form a deeper connection with their brand. Deeper connections can be formed by creating interactive content and events. Examples could include webinars, or attending industry events.
Building a Relationship
Account-based marketing turns this connection into a relationship and ultimately, into revenue-generating customers through hyper-personalized, useful content. By understanding their customers’ needs and providing personalized content that meets those needs, fintechs can build a relationship with their customers that goes beyond a simple transactional exchange. Fintechs need to determine the right platform for their community - a number of companies are now experimenting with platforms such as Discord to provide more direct connection between brands and their customers.
Forming a community can be an effective way for fintechs to build long-lasting relationships with their customers. There are a variety of approaches that Fintechs can adopt to create engaged, loyal, and valuable communities. The right strategy will depend on your brands and the products and services you offer. However, to create any sort of engaged community requires significant long-term investment in creating content, spaces and events that your customers truly value.
Why Educational Content Is Vital For FinTech firms
In the world of fintech marketing, educational content is key to building trust, establishing authority, and driving growth. In this section, we discuss why educational content should be a key strategy for fintech marketers, and how they can differentiate their approach for different customer groups.
Educate, Don’t Sell
When it comes to educational content, the focus should be on educating, not selling. Customers want to learn about the products and services that fintech firms offer, but they don’t want to feel like they are being sold to. By providing high-quality, informative content, fintech firms can establish themselves as experts in their field and build trust with their customers.
Differentiate Your Educational Approach
Different customer groups have different needs, preferences and interests. Fintech firms need to differentiate their approach to meet these. Content for SMEs will look very different from the content produced for institutional investors. SME personas often look more like retail consumers than professionals. In all cases the content needs to be personalized and relevant to each group, providing them with actionable insights that are tailored to their specific needs and knowledge level.
Distill the Signal from the Noise
The fintech space is filled with hype and noise. Successful fintech marketing strategies recognize one essential truth - customers can detect b******t, Potential customers will disregard anything that seems like marketing hype. Fintechs should be honest about the challenges, limitations and risks associated with their product or services. Customers are looking for unbiased, thoughtful, and transparent information that allows them make informed decisions.
Quality Over Quantity
When it comes to educational content, quality is more important than quantity. Content needs to be systematically optimized for relevance, reach, shelf life, and long-term value. Fintech firms should focus on co-creating great personalized content in collaboration with thought leaders and other institutions offering ancillary services. This content than needs to be delivered to the right audience, at the right time, on the right channels, with a simple, actionable CTA.
B2B vs. B2C Approach
When it comes to educational content, fintech firms need to take different approaches for B2B and B2C customers. B2B customers have specific problems that they need solving, and fintech firms need to show that they understand these problems and are experts in the market. B2C customers, on the other hand, are receptive to education and thought leadership, but fintech firms need to find ways to authentically communicate and talk about things that their audience cares about.
Why Is Education Important?
Education in fintech marketing is essential because it helps customers understand the products and services being offered. By providing education and thought leadership, fintech firms can make their products more approachable, which makes it easier for users to adopt the product and incorporate it into their lives. Education and thought leadership need to be embedded into everything from webinars and e-books to networking events, customer success stories, and creative campaigns.
In conclusion, educational content is vital for fintech firms. By educating, not selling, differentiating their approach for different customer groups, distilling the signal from the noise, prioritizing quality over quantity, and taking different approaches for B2B and B2C customers, fintech firms can establish themselves as experts in their field and build trust with their customers.
Conclusion
Fintech marketers have a difficult job! Ultimately the biggest challenge is building trust. For people to trust a firm with their money then need to believe in the brand, understand the technology and have faith in the people running it.
Trust has to be at the heart of Fintech marketing strategies. However, there are multiple ways trust can be achieved - from educational content, to transparent communications. This takes effort, but is not impossible.
But, fintechs have one major advantage over traditional financial institutions. The efficiency of their products and services means that once trust has been established - they can quickly develop a group of loyal, vocal advocates for their brand.
About Interpretive Economics
At Interpretive Economics, we help FinTech firms create high-value content that resonate with their target audiences. With our unique methodology that draws on the field of economics and the tools used by economists to understand the world, we can help create market-leading content and thought leadership on the technological, financial and business trends impacting your customers. We are experts at creating educational content, explainers, white papers and more that combine data with thoughtful insights . We've worked with a number of global Fintech leaders. Check our our case studies here. To find out more about how we can help solve your most complex content challenges - get in touch today.
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