Fintech is one of the hottest industries currently, and competition is fierce. Whether you're a startup or an enterprise, business conditions are quickly changing, and your marketing has to keep pace with them.
If your fintech marketing strategy is struggling to capture leads and generate sales, you're in the right place. In this guide, you'll learn the following:
What is fintech marketing?
Fintech marketing is the sum of all the processes you execute to capture leads for your business. Fintech marketing's primary objective is to provide sales teams with high-quality leads and boost revenue.
If your marketing is not giving you the sales figures you expect, you must fix it.
How should you promote your B2B fintech product?
B2B fintech product promotion is a combination of installing a sound marketing framework and executing creative content marketing strategies. The framework broadly defines your vision, while individual strategies help you achieve those goals.
Hubspot's 2021 State of Marketing Report revealed that 61% of marketers find lead generation challenging. Companies and their marketing teams often dive into strategies without housing them in a broad framework. The result is an unfocused strategy that does not deliver leads or delivers low-quality leads.
Many B2B fintechs resort to paid ads to promote their products. However, this is ineffective in the long run. If customer acquisition costs form the majority of your marketing budget, you cannot scale sustainably. So what's the solution?
In one word: Inbound.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a philosophy that attracts customers to you instead of you having to grab their attention and pull them towards you. Think of it this way: Would you force your dog into the bath or entice it towards a bath using treats and rewards?
I realize that I just compared your customers to dogs, but you get the idea. Offer help to your prospects proactively, demonstrate ability and a willingness to solve their pressing issues, and they will automatically choose you.
Compare this to the old sales technique of shoving a product under your customer's nose all the time, and you'll see the difference. Offer help, let them know you're always there, and they'll come to you in their time of need.
The do's and don'ts of inbound marketing
B2B inbound marketing can get complicated if you begin diving into the jargon. I'll simplify it by giving you a simple list of do's and don'ts. This list will help you quickly figure out whether you're on the inbound track or an ineffective marketing route:
DO base your marketing and sales strategy around offering help
DO provide the best solution to your prospect, even if it isn't your product
DO define your ideal customer and get to know their issues intimately
DON'T push your product at all times
DON'T begin marketing until you understand how your prospects make decisions
DO understand which buying stage your prospect is in. Only then push your product
DO understand the difference between someone browsing versus seeking a solution
DO be patient. Inbound takes time. Roughly 6 months to a year depending on the complexity of your product
How to create a successful B2B fintech marketing strategy - A step by step guide
Guides like these promise to simplify everything into a nutshell-flavored piece of cake. Unfortunately, not every part of the process is easy to reduce. You must execute a few steps when installing a successful fintech marketing strategy.
Once you understand these steps, they're simple to execute. Remember to take your time with the steps and not rush ahead to the next one.
Step 1 - Set your budget
The first step is to define your inbound marketing budget and define what you would like to see from your campaigns. Inbound marketing revolves around content creation. Content comes in various forms (blogs, videos, etc) and needs resources to create.
Here are a few pointers that can help you estimate how much you must spend:
Aaron Agius, Co-Founder of the marketing agency Louder.Online estimates that his clients allocate 25-30% of their marketing budget to content marketing. If your overall budget is $200,000, $50,000 is dedicated to content marketing. Stick to the lower end of that range at first.
The ROI on content marketing is significant. Research shows content marketing generates 3X the leads of outbound/paid marketing and costs 60% less. These numbers refer to perfectly executed campaigns so don't expect such results immediately. However, the potential is immense.
Content creation costs money. Blog posts are usually the cheapest. Case studies and website copy are expensive. Video production can vary depending on the style you choose. For instance, whiteboard explainer videos are inexpensive.
You will need the following employees or freelancers at the very least:
One content manager - This person defines your strategy and creates content, whether written or video. The average salary for a full-time content manager is $80,000 annually. A freelance/fractional content strategist will cost you $60,000 annually at least and include writing and editing services.
One content writer - Writers are essential since text is the easiest way to get found and build authority. Good writers can cost you anywhere from $50,000 to $120,000 annually.
You will see ROI in six months. Here's the tricky bit: The ROI is not quantifiable. You'll see an increase in sales and people talking about you on social media. Unlike paid ads, you cannot quantify the monetary impact a single piece of content has
Bottom line: When starting, hire a freelance content strategist who bundles services for a monthly price. This person can install a framework and define strategies that will have your content machine humming for a long time.
Step 2 - Set your goals
Goal-setting is important, as every self-help guru will tell you. Your primary goal must be increasing revenue. Work backward from that goal to define your content marketing goals.
Here's what it looks like in practice. To generate sales, you need strong sales leads. To generate strong leads, you need high converting content. To generate high converting content, you need a framework that guides prospects along a path that measures their interest at each stage. To bring prospects onto your path, you need content that attracts them.
This process gives us the following content marketing goals and metrics that measure your progress towards them:
Generate high-quality, sales-ready leads - Delivered leads to closed deals ratio (sales conversion ratio,) number of leads delivered per month
Produce high-quality content - Click to action ratios (conversion ratios,) engagement ratios, overall traffic, unique prospect counts, prospect count per customer segment/geography/demographic
Install a content path that delights prospects at every step - Content engagement ratios at every step, conversion ratios/pass-through rate from one step to the next, number of prospects per step
Step 3 - Get to know your prospect
Buyer persona creation is one of the most enjoyable parts of the financial content strategy process. You'll understand what moves your prospects and which issues are the most important. Do not get bogged down trying to figure out what their favorite color is. Focus on the important stuff.
Here are the best ways of gathering information about your prospects:
Analyze keyword searches related to your product
Interview existing customers
Reach out to prospects and request an interview
Send forms and surveys that your prospects can fill out
Gather information from industry conferences
Browse sites like Quora and Reddit to monitor conversations if this applies to your industry and product
Monitor forums and social media to pick up on conversations and pressing needs
It is best to use all these methods. Once the data is in, it's time to create your personas. Here is the data you must have on your personas, at a minimum:
Prospect role in the buyer journey - Is this person a product user, an indirect beneficiary, a budget owner, or the final approver. Note that these roles can overlap.
Company size and revenues
Job position/role
Average experience
Who they report to
Personality qualities - For example, "risk-taker," "conservative," "analytical" etc.
Key metrics in their job role
Challenges
Goals
What they do at a broad level
Common objections
Price to value impression (assuming they control budgets) - How much is too much for your product? What is their ideal price range? How much is too less or too much of a bargain?
Their role in the buying decision
Organize this information in a document. In B2B, you'll almost always have more than one persona to target.
Define the above data points scrupulously and develop counter-points to their common objections.
Step 4 - Define buyer journeys
B2B purchases are more complex than B2C. Prospects have multiple approval stages. You will have this data from the previous step, so creating a flowchart of the approval process should be simple.
Store this document in an easily accessible place so that everyone on your sales and marketing team has access to it.
Step 5 - Optimize your website
Step 5 is where marketing teams go wrong and start defining content topics and pieces. Before you even think about the content you want to publish, you must take care of your biggest sales resource: Your website.
A prospect who reads your content will head to your website to check you out. Imagine producing great content but a clunky website. You'll lose the sale, and they'll likely never return. Website design is an intricate process, but as long as you stick to a few basics, you'll be fine.
Here are some do's and don'ts for website design:
DO have a product page listed separately from your home page
DO insert relevant keywords on your product page
DON'T have a single page website
DON'T adopt a white on black color scheme. Stick to black on white.
DO have a blog or resource centre link displayed prominently on your main menu
DO showcase testimonials
DO quantify benefits in ROI terms. For example, "Our product saves 50%..." etc.
DO keep jargon as minimum a level as appropriate. Save highly technical jargon for specialized resources.
DO link to your product page from your blog posts and every other page on your website
DO have a "Contact Us" form prominently displayed in your menu
DO have a sales-oriented CTA displayed in your main menu. For example, "book a demo," "open a free account," etc.
DO showcase numbers on your pages to prove effectiveness
DON'T fake testimonials
That's all there is to a sales-ready B2B fintech website. You don't need fancy graphics or anything else. Keep it simple. If you have the budget to hire a great web designer and copywriter, do so. You'll realize an ROI of at least 200% from those investments.
What if you can afford just one? Hire a great copywriter first. Words matter when selling online.
Step 6 - Define topic lists and create content
This is another step where B2B fintech companies go down the wrong path. They fire up an SEO research tool or hire an SEO agency to figure out what people are searching for on Google. Getting found on Google does not mean increased sales. SEO is a small part of content marketing. Do not confuse the two.
In B2B, you will not find sales-oriented keywords such as "best PSD2 compliance services provider." You'll always find generic, awareness-based searches. For instance, "what is PSD2" and so on. You can't build a content marketing strategy or a revenue stream by solely targeting such phrases.
Instead, you must turn to your sales team and persona data. What are their biggest issues? Combine that with SEO data, and you'll have a winning formula. Here are some do's and don'ts that will help you publish revenue-generating content:
DO create content that addresses your prospects' biggest issues and objections
DO create content relevant to upcoming industry events
DON'T push your product as a solution. Leave a link to your product page instead
DO create helpful content that addresses all issues related to a topic
DON'T focus on content length. Let it be as long or short as it needs to be
DO seek feedback from sales before publishing content
DO maintain a list of content you've published
DO link between content pieces and record these links in your content list
DON'T publish just about anything on your blog. Always focus on addressing primary prospect issues
That's all there is to it. Your content strategist will define content topics to be published and a calendar that fixes publication dates.
Step 7 - Define metrics
This step is easy since you've already laid the groundwork in Step two. Extrapolate those goals to your content, and you'll figure out what you must track. Engagement, traffic, and conversion metrics will help you figure out how much people like your content.
As always, here are some do's and don'ts when it comes to defining fintech metrics:
DO measure engagement metrics and traffic sources to your content
DON'T worry about Google search position. Most B2B revenue-oriented fintech content does not rank on Google
DO seek feedback from sales and prospects
DON'T measure metrics daily. Record trends and view them monthly or more
DO track conversion and revenue-oriented metrics. For instance, traffic is great, but how much of that traffic does what you want it to do? Measure the latter
Step 8 - Define content promotion strategy
You have a shiny new piece of content, but no one knows it exists yet. No one will know it exists unless you shout and scream about it. That's how marketing works these days. Don't fall for the "build it and they will come" trap.
Promotion is tough. You'll have a ton of competition, and when you're starting from the bottom, no one knows who you are and will likely not listen to you. However, consistency is the key. Don't expect miracles from individual content pieces. Over time, your results will compound, and that's where miracles happen.
The best way of gaining a prospect's attention and directing them to your content is to use content. What I mean is you must create what's called a lead magnet. You'll learn all about the lead magnet strategy in the next section. In short, a lead magnet is something that compels your prospect to click and explore your content.
Here are some ways of disseminating your lead magnet:
Social media - Publish your lead magnet to your social media networks. Get your employees to publish it on their feeds. Publish it in industry-relevant groups and forums. You get the idea.
Reach out - Let industry influencers know you've published something awesome and ask if they would like to link to it or publish it on their feeds.
Run ads - Paid ads can drive traffic to your content and get you conversions. Just make sure your content prominently links to your product page so you can track sales calls or demo requests.
Email - Do you have an email list? Great! Send your content to them.
Write for trade publications - Pick a topic closely related to your content, have a writer create an authoritative piece, and reach out to publication editors. You can then link to your content and drive traffic from the trade journal's website.
Content promotion is using all of these strategies and focusing on what works. For instance, if social media promotion isn't working for you, then drop it. No rule says you MUST use social media.
Step 9 - Measure
Once you've got your promotion rolling, it's time to sit back and measure results. Track all the metrics you defined in Step seven and keep executing your promotion strategy.
Step 10 - Tweak
Here's the thing about your fintech content strategies: The first pass will likely not work or miss the mark in some unexpected way. Instead of throwing your hands up in despair, tweak your campaign.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to refine your campaign:
Does my content address core issues credibly?
Is my lead magnet a magnet or a repellent?
Am I measuring the right metrics?
Are my expectations realistic?
Can I reformat this piece of content and experiment with it?
Can I create a follow-up piece that addresses issues better?
Am I promoting it via the wrong channels?
Is my website geared towards sales?
Content marketing is iterative. You'll run a campaign, see what comes, adjust, and run it again. It is not a one-and-done deal.
8 great B2B fintech marketing strategies
B2B fintech marketing strategies fit within a broader framework and help you towards your goals. The previous section gave you a framework. Now it's time to dive into individual strategies that you can use.
Strategy 1 - Design a tool
Tools are a wonderful way of gamifying your content and giving your prospects a memorable experience. After all, who doesn't love gaming? Tools are versatile since they can function as a lead magnet and standalone content.
Some examples of great tools are ROI calculators or savings estimators. SoFi's ROI calculators are a great way of quantifying the value their product offers.
Strategy 2 - Design a quiz
Quizzes are another example of gamifying lead generation. A quiz takes all the data your prospect provides you and offers them a solution. They're also a great method of segmenting your audience. For instance, you can differentiate between the problems a CEO faces versus those an operations lead encounters through a quiz.
You can host a quiz on your website or use it as a lead magnet. Repurpose the quiz in an infographic and turn it into a checklist to attract leads. Here's a great example of a checklist that can be repurposed as a quiz from financial course provider F1F9.
Strategy 3 - Align with conferences
Conferences and industry events are a great way of boosting sales. However, you must prepare beforehand. Create content aligned with a conference topic and arm your sales team with necessary material.
Make sure you've created a great journey for your prospects on your website. For instance, your sales team can distribute checklists that lead to your content that leads to your product page seamlessly.
Strategy 4 - Leverage an internal lead magnet
B2B fintech companies get lead magnets all wrong. Typically, they take months commissioning an eBook or whitepaper and then spend another month creating supporting content. Meanwhile, a financial quarter has passed, and their customers have no idea they exist.
The best lead magnets are cheap and simple to create. Leveraging internal tools is the best way of creating such material. For instance, does your dev team work in sprints to quickly ideate and release product enhancements?
Can your prospects use this templated process to ideate new product ideas of their own and implement them in record time? Of course they can! Lead magnets like these are extremely simple to create and offer immense value.
Strategy 5 - Laser-target your ideal customer
Most B2B fintech marketing campaigns cast a broad net. However, reducing the size of your prospect list and targeting just your ideal customers pays more dividends. This approach, also called Account-Based Marketing (ABM), flips the traditional marketing funnel on its head.
Here's how you can implement an ABM campaign:
Research your market and locate customers that are a perfect fit for your product. These prospects must be ready to purchase and have a pressing need.
Create highly-customized content targeting their needs. Be as specific as possible.
Create a follow-up sequence that has you checking in with them regularly.
Measure engagement metrics at every step. Ideally, you should not have more than two or three, depending on your product's complexity.
When executed correctly, ABM brings revenues almost instantly. However, you must invest time and resources in the research stage. Research goes beyond understanding customer personas. You must locate people that have an urgent need.
Unlike traditional marketing campaign strategies, ABM does not prioritize lead nurturing. Hence, spend a lot of time understanding customers who can purchase your product immediately. Here are some examples of successful ABM campaigns.
Strategy 6 - Build a community
Where do the most valuable conversations about a topic occur? In forums or communities, of course! What if you could create a community of like-minded people who can interact with their peers and receive answers to pressing concerns?
Creating a community is a fantastic way of driving conversations and promoting your content. You have every relevant person in your niche on a single platform. Your content cannot help but get noticed. As the group's leader, you'll be viewed as an authority, and your product will automatically benefit from the exposure.
Strategy 7 - Consumer advocacy
Content collateral such as case studies and collaborative research are excellent ways of promoting a positive atmosphere regarding your product. Lace this content with video testimonials about your process, and you'll have no issues generating authority.
What if you don't have any customers willing to provide you testimonials? For starters, you ought to rethink your customer base. Meanwhile, brainstorm other ways of generating proof. Anonymous proofs and statistics are great ways of building trust that don't divulge identifying information.
Strategy 8 - Partner up
What's better than one great B2B fintech? A couple of B2B fintechs with complementary products! You can partner with almost anyone as long as your prospects receive increased value. A common method of raising awareness is to publish research reports with a major industry player or research institute.
Alternatively, you can partner with an influencer and leverage their audience to push traffic towards you. Note that an influencer can be an individual or another company. Here are some examples of how fintechs are leveraging partnerships in unique ways to build r and drive sales.
8 B2B fintech digital marketing best practices
Here are some best practices that will help you maintain your marketing strategy and have you producing great content all the time.
Keep it nimble
Instead of keeping it simple, keep it nimble. Nimbleness allows you to publish content quickly, test it for effectiveness, and double down on what's working. That's how you realize ROI quickly.
For example, don't waste time producing lengthy whitepapers without testing your audience's appetite for them. Produce an infographic, speak to your sales team, test a landing page, and only then publish such content.
If something doesn't work, move on and test something else.
Be data-driven
Marketing used to be a Don Draper-like activity where clients gathered around a few placards and listened to the creative director's bullshit. Intuition and "feel" don't move the needle anymore. Data helps you figure out what's going on at every step.
Use it and make sure all of your decisions have data backing them. You should rely on intuition before making decisions, but use them to augment what your data says. For instance, does your intuition tell you to dig deeper into a data set?
Always give value
Always remember the inbound ethos, which is to give value to your prospect. Help them and expect nothing in return. It sounds cliched, but it's a much easier way of increasing sales.
Your content must allow your audience to choose their path. Show them the way, but never compel or force them to act a certain way.
Don't forget paid promotion
Despite inbound being highly effective, you must not forget paid promotion tactics. Paid promotion gives you a boost when your content is gathering pace. Don't rely on it at all times since your customer acquisition costs will be too high.
Focus on the best channels
Not every marketing channel will work for you. Focus on what's working best by measuring the right metrics, and double down on that. For example, if video content is working best for you, create videos more often. Stop prioritizing written content in this case.
Many B2B fintechs think they must be present everywhere. This isn't true. As long as your goal metrics are met, and your customers know who you are, who cares how popular you are?
Sales first, awareness later
Many B2B fintech marketing campaigns inadvertently prioritize awareness instead of sales. This situation occurs because the company confuses SEO with content marketing. As you've learned, they're not the same. SEO searches in B2B fintech will have you creating awareness-related material.
To close sales, you need the different pillars of inbound marketing (your website, blog, other content) to work together and qualify your leads. Getting found on Google and making sales are not equivalent in B2B.
Create a flow
Your prospect must experience a flow when they visit your website. Here's an example of such a content journey:
The user visits a blog post and clicks on a link to an authoritative study, and offers their email
The study links to a product use case page. The user clicks the link
The use case page links to the product sales page. The user visits the product page and clicks away
You send them helpful information via a newsletter and qualify them through a quiz or poll
You send them a link to your product page or case study to demonstrate competence. They click the link
The user once again visits the product page and requests a call from your sales team
As you can see, there are many permutations in the process above. However, this sequence prompts user actions based on their previous actions. Everything is linked. This is how a lead generation campaign works.
Retarget
Retargeting or remarketing is a great way to boost your fintech content marketing campaign. Let's say a prospect reads your content and clicks away. Over time, you notice they keep revisiting you. Wouldn't it be great to keep engaging with them and attract them back to your sales page?
This is what retargeting does. It is a form of paid advertising that displays your ads to your prospect across different platforms. Google display ads and Facebook ads are the main retargeting ad platforms. You can create campaigns there and measure their effectiveness.
Here's a great article from Leadfeeder about B2B retargeting and how you can create an effective campaign.
Final thoughts
Designing a revenue-generating B2B fintech marketing strategy is a multi-step process. There isn't "one thing" you can do to unlock more sales. However, you can leverage data, experiment, and follow the steps outlined in this guide to make an impact.
FAQs
What is the best way of promoting a B2B fintech product?
There is no single "best" way. You should install the right inbound marketing framework and execute sound marketing strategies. Here are the steps that will generate revenue:
Set your budget
Set your goals
Get to know your prospect
Define user journeys
Optimize your website
Define topic lists and create content
Define metrics
Define a promotion strategy
Measure
Tweak and adjust your campaigns
What are some great B2B fintech marketing strategies?
Here are some great B2B fintech marketing strategies that will boost sales when aligned with a great framework:
Design a tool
Design a quiz
Align content with industry conferences
Leverage an internal lead magnet
Laser-target ideal customers
Build a community
Use customer advocacy
Partner up
When can I expect ROI from B2B content marketing?
ROI is tough to quantify in content marketing. Research shows content marketing generates 3X the leads of outbound/paid marketing and costs 60% less than paid efforts.
Companies typically allocate 25-30% of their marketing budget to content marketing. You can expect to see results within six months to a year.
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