Fintech industry is a tough market. Startups have to put twice as much to achieve success in this sphere and push the envelope by doing so. All thanks to the market being saturated by traditional banks and lots of other wannabe fintech startups.
The customers are not that easy to please either! Fintech companies are hard to trust because they deal with our most sacred resource — money. Besides, the financial sphere is not just worrisome for its customers, but also incredibly boring in most cases: people don’t find it impressive to deal with complicated financial operations that seem rather risky (again, because the awareness is low). So the question is: how to come up with a working marketing plan for financial services?
No worries in that regard! We’ve got you covered! Here in this article, we exposed some of the most game-changing, fresh marketing trends in fintech, that will make your fintech startup stand out among all the other competitors, create a bond with the customer, and engage with outstanding results.
Trend #1
Free online tools, that make your clients’ life easier
Free tools don’t just sound all tempting and great, but also make a tone in favor of your brand. Aside from being an awesome lead magnet (a resource that makes random prospects into your leads, by asking for an email address), financial tools cultivate trust and love for your company. A great method for both customer acquisition and retention.
By providing actual productive value to your customers, you achieve much more than by giving money away. Just picture yourself two marketing strategies: the 1st one is a money giveaway and the second one is a really useful financial tool. Naturally, more people will hop on the money giveaway (hey, it’s free money after all), but who are these people? Everyone needs money these days, so you will be just giving it away to an inconsistent group of people, who are much more likely to just take what is offered and move on.
And it’s not like you can give these people a considerable amount of money. Usually, it’s just $5-$20, and even more likely in the form of a discount and not actual currency. So people will not trust you much after such a generous deed.
Meanwhile a tool based strategy is much more efficient. Take a look at this example of a great tool that represents real value and helps people during this terrific pandemic we are experiencing! Digital Align now offers two fintech tools for free: 1) Mortgage process automation, and 2) A white-label platform that includes both onboarding and online banking. Now think what would cultivate more trust: free $20 or real stress releasing fintech tool (or even two)? Providing free mini services like this is truly one of the hottest trends in fintech.
Trend #2
Referral system: word of mouth marketing is the king
Try conducing it!
Referrals have been around for quite a while, but their effectiveness remained the same. Referral systems make up for a great marketing plan for financial services, especially at the pre-launch or any other early stage.
Robinhood has achieved an admirable result with its referral strategy. Usually, referrals offer a free subscription for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it’s straightforward free money (what still works much better than just a giveaway because your offering is targeted to those, who are considered as interested in your product, by the existing clients of yours).
So what was so special about Robinhood’s referrals? Before launching their product, the Robinhood team decided to make a waiting list not to overwhelm their servers. But if you bring more people to the platform, you move up the list a notch. The more you bring, the more you move. Why did it work? Because people were excited about this new product and those who get to use it first don’t just receive access to something pristine, but also get a psychological experience of social value, being fortunate enough to be one of the first! It’s kind of like a game. And it really works.
Trend #3
Go mobile, if you haven’t already!
Mobile product optimization is not just one of the leading fintech industry trends, it’s more of a mandatory requirement to actually stay on the market! Nowadays everything is packed into these little plastic/metal/glass boxes we carry around all the time. Integrate your services into your clients’ phones, become a part of their life!
Mobile apps are all about personalization, speed, and convenience. Who would want to actually GO to the bank or any other financial establishment to make some changes to their account? Who would want to boot up a computer, open the browser and log in to the site of yours? Right! It’s those who don’t really use their phones much, a major minority. You should respect them and try providing help if you can, but focus more on mobile users.
By the way, any fintech marketing specialist will assure you that without a mobile-friendly website, your pages’ search engine optimization (SEO) will fall drastically. Phone browsers are one of the most actively used methods of research, so it’s likely that your customers’ first experience with your company will happen in their phone browser.
Moreover, mobile devices also have a tendency to gamify customers’ experience. Check out what the first Ukrainian digital bank – monobank – did with their app. This fintech company provided one of the most popular aspects of video games- achievements. To be frank, it’s not that innovative, but certainly drives some of its customers to use their services. Achieving enough points within the app gives its users a physical prize- an exclusive monobank t-shirt! Even though people don’t really need any extra shirts branded with a digital bank logo, the game creates special value to it and drives user activity.
Trend #4
Often neglected- event marketing
If you think that hosting events – both physical or online – is only for the big brands, you are terribly wrong! Hosting one is a great marketing plan for financial services and many other industries. By an event, we don’t mean a fintech version of Coachella. A fintech startup may host a small meetup or a digital conference.
Event marketing acts as a boost to your brand awareness, engagement with your clients, and a great lead cultivating method. Even during the pandemic, digital events make up for the physical gatherings of people, as 63% of organizations are moving towards online events.
Events are a great way to both claim value and authority to your brand and your products. Check our article on event marketing to read deeper into the art of pushing through the fintech industry trends with event marketing.
Trend #5
Last but not least, don’t be afraid to stand out with your branding.
Get creative
“Go bold with branding” may sound obvious and vague at the same time, but there’s no other way to get noticed among numerous other companies without a truly outstanding brand. There are neither rules or instructions on “bold branding” nor there is a formula of “pure cool” that will get you noticed.
There are just a few checks that you have to follow. First, consider the demographic you are targeting. As fintech is more innovative and tech-driven than other industries, you might consider focusing on the millennial generation. The other thing is making your brand identity relevant to your products.
For your inspiration, we may give you an example of a really bold branding move by WePay. As Hubspot states in its article, WePay achieved a 225% increase in signups and 300% of weekly traffic along with conversions. All it took was putting an ice block with a bunch of frozen money inside just in the hall of Paypal’s conference center. There was also text inside stating: Paypal freezes your account so switch to WePay to “unfreeze” your money. What a powerful move!
As hard as it can be, you may want to find a decent fintech marketing agency to get the job done properly. We would love to aid you and your brand with our experience. In case you need a working marketing plan for financial services, you know whom to call.
Congratulations, you’ve made your first stem to your success marketing wise!
Now you know how to differentiate from the faceless mass of fintech companies, how to earn the trust to operate customers’ funds and capital as well as how to make your services look cool and engaging. We wish your company the best of luck to achieve the ROI of your dreams.
Not everything is going to just lift off from the first try, though. Some things, especially branding related, require a decent amount of experience in marketing, so don’t be afraid of the trial and error method of learning. But if you are a fintech startup, your budget doesn’t allow any lasting marketing research or you just don’t feel like digging into marketing, we got you covered!
Having decent experience as a fintech marketing agency, we are more than happy to lift up your business. You may check out our Crypto Fintech case studies to reassure yourself of our proficiency. Still, we wish you the best of luck, but if something is not working out, we will be waiting for you to contact us.