Get noticed on a budget: Key marketing strategies for fintech start-ups
The financial technology (“fintech”) industry has been growing at a breakneck pace. In such a competitive space, getting noticed as a start-up can be tricky. Here are three key ways to help you stand out from the crowd.
1. Define your value proposition
Think about it, write it down, revise it. Repeat. You understand what your company does and how it makes your clients’ lives easier, but can you distill all that down into a single, easy-to-understand sentence?
Putting the value proposition right into your tagline can help potential clients understand what you do immediately. For example, Wealthsimple uses, “Do money right: Powerful financial tools to help you grow and manage your money.” Shopify uses, “The platform commerce is built on.”
A strong pitch serves as the entrée for a longer, more detailed conversation about the benefits of your products and services. It ensures that when potential customers think of your company, they will have a clear idea of the often-complex nature of your work.
Another benefit? Your employees will better understand the vision and focus of the company, which will help them conduct business activities from sales to recruitment to investor relations.
2. Identify your key audiences
Fintech is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Customers will have different goals and present distinct challenges to achieving those goals. This can be a benefit to you as a marketer. It allows you to zero in on those individuals or companies with problems that your products are well positioned to solve.
Identifying your key audiences should be an ongoing process. You can take advantage of digital tools to find out who has been visiting your website, reading your LinkedIn posts and leaving comments.
Once those key audiences are identified, you need to determine the best ways to reach them, be it through owned media (your website, blog, social media posts), earned media (where you inspire others to share your posts) or bought media (purchased ad space or advertorial content). Each channel has unique benefits and costs, but all can be useful in getting your message out to the right people.
3. Leverage social media
Maintain a strong website and social media presence, and create blog posts to share your current thinking or research. Leverage your technology advantage. Industry-specific and tech-savvy mainstream media are hungry for stories about technology. By making them aware of what you’re doing, your offering may become a future headline.
With the growing importance of social media (such as LinkedIn) and community-specific forums (such as Reddit), the concept of engagement has evolved. While generating sales is still your goal, it’s also important to engage customers by building a community around your industry, your products and the people who use them.
Sharing great ideas or expertise via social media is a cost-effective way to introduce your company to new customers and maintain relationships with existing customers. Your posts will more likely be shared if they are thoughtful, timely and relevant to issues your potential clients are facing.
Also, the more you engage with prospects and customers, the more you will learn about them and the better you will be positioned to serve their fintech needs. Looking for marketing support in launching your fintech company?