It’s All in How You Say It

Today, instead of talking about trends in FinTech I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart: FinTech Marketing. As some of you may know, I’m a marketer by trade. I grew up working in startup marketing you could say. I cut my teeth in the field as an early employee at Wave Accounting, followed by a few other notable FinTechs and finally landed in the VC world working within the platform role at a FinTech Fund. I’ve always loved marketing and think I always will.

One thing that has recently stood out to me though was how FinTech marketing is very different from other tech marketing, especially on the B2B side. Because I’m from this world, I never really noticed the difference until I recently had to teach it to one of my mentor companies. They had pulled together a fairly traditional marketing plan, and I quickly noted there were some things in there I just instinctively knew wouldn’t work well for B2B FinTech. You see, when marketing to an FI it’s key to highlight specific things such as how it will help their business, how it will drive cost savings and how it will help customers (hello customer centricity!). As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, when it comes to selling to banks, you’re on a long road of procurement, sales cycles and other hoops to jump through. I’m not saying this to discourage any potential FinTech marketers but to inform and hopefully teach. When I look back at some of my most successful FinTech marketing campaigns, they all have a few elements in common:

1. I told my target audience in a few simple words what we do, how we do it, and why we are successful. With FI’s while they care about the underlying tech, they want to hear about that in due diligence, not at first blush. Learn how to synthesize complex ideas and tech so that anyone can understand it.
2. Content Marketing works! I love content marketing in this field, it’s a great way to engage with partners and also show why your product works. Some great ways to engage with content marketing is to create infographics on your product and whitepapers that show use cases with partners.
3. Time, Money and Customers. When marketing to B2B FinTech these are three words to never forget. When building any marketing materials ensure to hit these three words. How do you save the FI’s time in their processes, how do you save them money and how do you drive new customers or make their current ones happy.
4. Be approachable. Okay, this might be similar to point number one but let me explain. If you’ve ever looked at any deep tech site and left after 5 minutes it’s probably because you’ve felt overwhelmed. This often happens in FinTech, especially in areas such as Blockchain, AI and Payments. It’s complex, and the people building this tech are often right on the bleeding edge. It’s important to remember to make your site approachable, be friendly all while remaining professional.

Marketing in this sector will never be easy. Various complexities need to be dealt with and also for specific products worrying about compliance issues, which yes, will touch marketing. While above isn’t necessarily the direct path to success, it will help guide your marketing. Remember to test everything and figure out what works for your team. Figure where you need to grow and how you need to pivot. FinTech is a great industry to learn in and I promise, even if you are learning the ropes right now, in a few months you’ll be a pro.