Navigating fintech marketing as a startup can be overwhelming, particularly when you’re bootstrapping against the huge marketing spend of traditional banks. But as a fintech marketer, it’s important to understand that it’s not about what you spend, it’s how you spend it.

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Big budgets don't always guarantee growth. So no matter the size of your budget, here are some expert fintech marketing tips that will take your business growth to the next level.

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Fintech marketing versus traditional bank marketing:

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Fintech marketing strategies are not like marketing tactics used by traditional banks. Why? Because fintechs marketers usually have a higher risk appetite. A big traditional bank will want to maintain or improve its brand’s marketing position, but unestablished fintechs have to compete in a noisy market with incomparable marketing budgets.

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Without massive media spend, new fintech brands have to act and think differently by taking risks. However, new fintech brands have the advantage of being able to hit the ground running, building products and marketing strategies intuitively around the behaviours and needs of their audience.

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Monzo is a great example of fintechs doing things differently. Their tone of voice is friendly, authentic and human, this allows them to build trust with customers as the user feels more understood by their brand.

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5 ways to prioritise your fintech marketing budget.

1. Start with a very niche market and get specific about who you are trying to reach.

By knowing your customer to the nth degree and focusing on benefits not features, you’ll be able to target your audience effectively and create a great product launch plan.

2. Create SEO content.

Content and SEO are the backbone of marketing and don’t require huge budgets. Provide answers to the queries and problems of your audience as part of your content marketing strategy by offering useful and educational information.

3. Be continuously informed by testing.

This will help you gradually build up your understanding of your customer. Find out what type of content your audience engages with most, what they find most valuable.

4. Think about your customer journeys.

People go through many different touch points in their research journey before purchasing so think about the things they’ll see before reaching out. How can you provide useful information that asserts your brand into their journeys and makes them feel confident about your brand.

5. Transition from risk to a data-driven plan.

Once you know your customer and have the data and marketing analytics to prove it, you can be confident in working with larger marketing budgets. You’ll be able to implement marketing tactics that you know your audience will appreciate because you’ve communicated with them and understand their needs - not wants.

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KPIs (Key Performance Indicators.)

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Fintech marketers have access to great amounts of customer data. Use this data to add more context when mapping out your customer journeys to inform your KPIs.

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Map out your customer journeys and analyse core events such as, signing up to a newsletter, making an account, or purchasing a subscription to track lifecycle and behavioural segments.

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Not only will this help you find your power users, but it will also help you figure out what is the wow factor or particular feature that makes users convert during their customer journey. This crucial piece of data can help inform your KPIs and align your team’s marketing objectives.

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By tracking their customer journeys and lifecycle events, a community app was able to find their north star. They discovered that if someone signed up to go to an event within the first 2 days, they were 75% more likely to still be active a month later.

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Using free marketing tools such as Google analytics to track this, they were able to identify the behaviours that made users convert. This then informed their growth strategy and helped generate more leads.

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Influencer and celebrity marketing within financial services:

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This is not a new concept but it has to be done right. Using influencer or celebrity marketing needs to make sense for your audience and fit in with the concept of your brand.

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From a financial literacy perspective, you want to choose someone that can start the conversation about your product or service, rather than just boost awareness. You want to use this opportunity to build your brand’s reputation and provide social credibility.

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Trust is vital, particularly when it comes to personal finance. Ensure that you find an influencer or celebrity that has a trusting audience that feels deeply connected and related to them.

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Linkedin found that customers will only start speaking to suppliers 90% through their customer journey. Therefore, if you haven't already established a relationship with them prior to entering the buying window, then they're unlikely to choose your brand. So it's important that whatever collaboration you pursue is meaningful and will help boost your brand authority.

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Remember, there's a fine line between creating a buzz and safeguarding your customers.

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During the lockdown period, UK advertising authorities banned Klarna’s Instagram influencer campaigns for “irresponsibly” promoting “buy now, pay later” services to its users over the pandemic. Influencers posted skincare and apparel, encouraging users to splurge on non-essential items to ‘treat themselves’ during the Covid-19 lockdown period.

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So it’s important to always keep your core values and the long-term financial health of your customers at the heart of your brand marketing strategy, as it can impact your brand’s reputation, especially as it grows.

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Working with stakeholders:

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Fintech marketing has a lot of moving parts so it's important to stay focused on your marketing mission. You need to be strong about what your agenda is.

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Be clear and communicative with your stakeholders, your team and others in your organisation about what your needs are to achieve your goals. Try talking them through your strategy, aims and objectives, opening up and educating them on how to plan to hit your targets.

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Be sure to create clear avenues of communication so that support is there when you need it and you are can understand each other and work well together.

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If you want to learn more about how to find the right marketing approach for your growth strategy, then be sure to check out this podcast I featured on with Scale of One Tech: How to build a marketing strategy that works for you.

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