November 3, 2022
Whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur or a fledgling founder, you can always count on the constantly evolving fintech landscape to throw a few obstacles your way—especially when you need to come up with a successful marketing strategy. Avoid pitfalls and sidestep roadblocks with our solution-focused guide to some of the trickiest issues that fintechs face.
Traditional financial institutions have a huge head start in brand recognition, which might be why so many fintechs arrive on the scene with something big, bold and attention-grabbing—like Monzo’s coral debit card and conversational way of talking to customers. Brand awareness establishes you as a trusted brand in your space—the more you promote your brand, the more familiar people are with you, which increases the chance of gaining them as customers. Shine bright with our guide to establishing your brand awareness strategy.
There are plenty of opportunities for fintechs to differentiate themselves from traditional banks and legacy financial institutions, but what about other challenger or disruptor companies? All the brand awareness in the world won’t help if you don’t know your target audience and how your products and services can help them. Make sure you develop a clear understanding of your target customer, their pain points, and your market positioning.
Sometimes, the same companies we think we’re up against can provide a source of connection and collaboration—and have the capacity to put you in front of thousands of new customers. Legacy banks have brand authority, while fintechs have digital know-how, and together they can build their credibility. Like when American Express teamed up with Ripple to provide blockchain-enabled cross-border B2B payments. The good news is there’s demand, with PwC’s Global Fintech Report finding 47% of financial services companies worldwide were likely to collaborate with a fintech firm to achieve growth.
Two words here: educate and entertain. Share useful, informative and relevant content to show your audience you represent financial expertise and understand what makes them tick. For example, Mint uses its finance blog—MintLife—to engage and inform young, digitally-savvy professionals and gently nudge them towards their app when they feel ready to take advantage of the fintech’s products and services.
You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who your audience is, and once you start getting sign-ups, you can begin to collect data to test assumptions and create relevant messaging. As your fintech grows, you’ll need a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy to strengthen communications, build customer relationships and be more efficient. Without it, you won't be able to activate, retain, reactivate and refer your users effectively. So, where do you start? Thankfully, we’ve got a guide for that—download it here.
Having a mobile-first approach to UX is non-negotiable—Google says 61% users are less likely to return to a website they had trouble accessing or navigating, and 40% turn to competitor sites instead. You need to do everything you can to help users sign-up easily and perform tasks via your app or platform in a pain-free way. For example, the registration form on a fintech mobile site is often one of the final steps in the journey, so this must work to improve conversion rates.
Instead of establishing your social media presence everywhere, it’s best to decide on a curated collection of channels to connect with your audience. Learn what social media platforms your audience uses the most and create personalised content tailored to them and the platform they’re using. You already know how you communicate on LinkedIn should be different from how you communicate on TikTok.
While your audience might be online, they do go to other places, too. Monzo recently included its first major TV ad campaign that resulted in spikes in both brand awareness (increased 13 points from 35% to 48%) and app downloads. The takeaway? So-called ‘traditional’ advertising can pay off for the fintech challenger, so seek to diversify your customer acquisition channels. Look to employ email marketing, text message marketing, paid search, billboards and print ads to reach your growth ambitions.
You don’t have to spend fortunes to create buzz around your brand. Research shows 88% of people are more likely to trust a company if a friend or family member has talked about it. Word-of-mouth marketing covers strategies such as referral marketing, where you incentivise users with cash rewards and other perks when they refer your company to their network. The other one is affiliate marketing involves working closely with influencers and industry bloggers to reach new, larger audiences. We’ve seen industry examples, such as crypto giant Coinbase giving referrers and referees $75 in their wallets upon successful onboarding and transaction. Mobile bank Varo invited users to enter a giveaway by sharing their money goals in a short social video, creating great user-generated content.
Have you experienced any of these challenges with you company? Any advice for us? Let us know in the comments!
At Growth Gorilla, we can help you determine the right market positioning for your white-label solution, create a powerful marketing strategy and build the infrastructure to drive a successful partnership and support your growth.
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