Fintechs Are Coming For Your Customers, Financial Services Firms. Are You Ready?

It can be difficult to market traditional financial services and products and we understand that. Tight regulations, fierce competition, and saturated markets can make it a challenge to stand out from the crowd, but here at Growth Gorilla, we believe all businesses have something unique and exciting to shout about. 

Wealth managers, mortgage brokers, and even insurance specialists; there are loads of marketing tricks at your fingertips to boost business and pull the right customers through your doors. So, what are you waiting for? Quit monkeying around and get your hands dirty with our juicy marketing tips to maximise business growth.

Challenges in Marketing of Financial Services

If it ain't broke, don't fix it…right? If your business has done things a certain way for a long time, it can be daunting to break with tradition. Why rock the boat if the ship is sailing smoothly? Well, the simple answer is that the financial services sector is changing and those changes are happening fast. 

Competition from aggressive fintech firms is making it harder than ever to stay ahead of the fleet. In fact, 88% of financial institutions believe part of their business will be lost to independent fintech companies in the next five years. 

We believe businesses should never settle for mediocre results. There are always clever innovative ways to push your business to the top of the canopy. Revitalising your fintechs marketing won't come without its challenges, but it’ll be worth the effort. Here are some of the roadblocks you might find when promoting a financial services company and our tips to come out on top.

Building Trust With Customers

Fintech is serious stuff —. When it comes to personal finances customers want to know they're in good hands. With 87% of organisations saying customer loyalty correlates directly with professionalism and commercial success, it’s important to give off the right signals. 

Many businesses worry that scaling up and expanding their customer reach could jeopardise existing customer/brand relations and reduce the level of trust associated with their brand. If you’ve spent years building trusted customer relations, the last thing you want to do is destabilise that trust with marketing messages that don’t fit with their established perception of your brand, or worse, create expectations you are unable to fulfil.

Here are some top tips on how to build customer trust and loyalty with clever marketing:

• Start with a clear value proposition. Be transparent with what your business can offer and keep it simple. That way, customers know what they’re getting themselves into.
• Authenticity is king. There’s nowhere to hide for brands in an era of Facebook, Google Reviews, Glassdoor, and the like. Keep your marketing true to your business's core values, and customers won’t catch you off guard. It’s important to stay true to your principles to avoid alienating your valued customers.
• Shout about the good stuff. Positive testimonials and customer reviews are a great way to build trust and let your results do the talking.
• Over Deliver on promises. Don’t offer customers the bare minimum. Give them incentives to review your business positively by going above and beyond to deliver a fast and effective service.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you’re looking to win new customers, your marketing approach needs to strike a subtle balance between work and play. It’s important to be approachable and plain-speaking in today’s market, but you also need to maintain a consistent level of professionalism.  

Learning how to improve the marketing of your business and building a brand that people trust is the first rule of thumb for fintech success. Whether it’s content marketing, online reviews, or video testimonials, there are tons of ways to build trust with potential customers.

Targeting the Right Audience

The challenge when marketing your fintech company is reaching the right people. With every customer having a unique buyer position, it used to take a lot of work to target specific groups using generalised marketing messages. 

 The rise of social media has opened the door to a whole new era of marketing, where businesses have access to tons of customer data to broadcast hard-hitting messages to the targeted audience. Nowadays, the modern marketer can filter potential customers not only by age, location, interests and income, but by job title, and even where they sit in the buying cycle, based on their searches. And, of course, marketers can use existing customer data to improve client retention by identifying their best customers and keeping them sweet.

Aim & Fire

Break your targeted marketing into two parts:

• Identify your customers. Review your existing client base and identify what groups of customers you have. Create segments based on age, location, income and job title, see what products they have purchased, and you’ll quickly understand who is interested in what product. Use this data to identify where new opportunities lie to cross-sell other products.
• Tune your messaging to attract these audiences. Tailoring your marketing messages allows you to speak directly to your customer. In a world of digital noise, you need to create bespoke messaging that truly resonates with your audience. 

It’s estimated that 63% of worldwide consumers are frustrated by generic marketing messages which don’t suit their personal situations. Improve conversions and unlock the power of social media marketing to deliver a tailored service. For example; ABC Financing wants to target business owners with an annual revenue upwards of £1 million and looking for investment advice. At the click of a button, targeted marketing can put ABC Financing right under the noses of potential customers who fit these exact criteria. 

Unlock New Marketing Channels

Online marketing channels give you more access than ever to a goldmine of contacts and audiences. Here are the hottest marketing channels to put your business in front of the right people:

• If you specialise in wealth planning, discover LinkedIn Local to access high-net-worth individuals in your local area.
  
  
• Try Google ads and search engine optimisation (SEO) to push your business to the top of user searches. This provides an opportunity to offer simple solutions to people’s problems. If someone searches “financial advisers near me”,  you want to be their first port of call.
  
  
• Don’t ignore Facebook advertising. Use it to promote specific services based on people’s online activity. For example, someone recently engaged to their partner may be looking for their first mortgage. Seize this opportunity and send tailored mortgage ads their way.

Complex Messages

Too many fintechs use jargon to confuse their marketing messages. If you use complex language and technical lingo to communicate your services, customers will quickly lose interest.

Roughly 15% of adults in the UK have a literacy level of a 9 year old (yes, you heard it right), and complex jargon can leave many people confused and frustrated. Keep your message simple, whether it’s “encrypted payment systems” or “automated accounting technology”, companies often assume their target audience is as educated as they are. Focus on delivering a clear message that your customers will understand. Avoid too many buzzwords, and keep things simple when providing practical solutions to customer problems.

Explainer videos are an excellent way to capture the essence of what you do. And don’t rely on your old content, be creative with how you present your business to new and existing audiences

Innovation in a Crowded Marketplace

It can be difficult for fintechs to find a competitive edge and stand out in such an overcrowded market.

If you want to achieve business growth, you need to do everything you can to pinch customers from the competition. In the words of the late Steve Jobs, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Innovation is key to getting ahead in today’s market. 

Think beyond the outside of the box and take daring leaps to try the things your competitors won’t. Winning customer loyalty is extremely difficult, but it's well worth the effort. In fact, it is 16 times more expensive to build long-term relationships with new customers than to maintain loyalty with existing customers. So don’t hide in the shadows! Shout from the rooftops and tell the world why your business is different.

Learn from the Best

Looking for marketing inspiration? Well, look…as they say… no further.

• Take a look at First Mortgage who have plenty to shout about with over 6000 reviews to verify their expertise and help win the custom of hesitant clients sitting on the fence.
  
  
• Maven Advisor is taking innovation seriously with their own personal finance podcast. The plucky bunch of wealth advisors claim they’re here to “help you answer expensive questions, which solve tomorrow’s problems today.” The podcast discusses the latest innovations in the finance world and puts its brand at the centre of the action to communicate their commitment to those innovations.
  
  
• The Private Office has set the bar high, then leapt over it with the clear and simple messaging on their website. The financial planning experts pride themselves on their “truly independent and unbiased” approach. These guys ooze authenticity and reliability with their black and white tone of voice and confident delivery.

What Can We Learn From Fintech Marketing Strategies?

This rise of challenger fintechs has turned the world of finance on its head. Whether it’s personal finance apps like Monzo, or mobile investment providers like Stash, tech-focused ‘disruptors’ are tearing up the financial marketing rulebook. 

With this fintech revolution comes changing customer journeys, shifting loyalties and evolving consumer habits. With the worldwide fintech industry being valued at a staggering $4.7 trillion, fintechs can’t be ignored. There’s loads to be learned from fintech marketing strategies to help elevate established fintechs into the 21st century. Here's how you can get started.

Adopt a Lean Marketing Mindset

Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup explains how small businesses can build better products by adopting a lean growth model. Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are sold to customers, and usage data is collected to identify how the next version of the product could be improved. This continual process of testing, analysing, and improving gives businesses the agility they need to satisfy developing customer demand. 

Similarly, many fintechs are adopting agile marketing strategies. Instead of investing huge amounts of time and money into ambitious marketing initiatives, they’re testing the water with nimble campaigns; if the campaign is successful, great, if it sucks, reevaluate and find ways to improve.

Be the Best at One Thing

Many fintechs have found success by focusing their energy towards solving specific problems. Whether it’s taking the pain out of mortgages with Molo, Wonga offering speedy loans, or streamlined invoicing with QuickBook, fintechs are delivering bespoke solutions to make lives easier. Concentrating on their expertise and experience, fintechs are striving to be the best at one thing.

The New Customer Journey

Gone are the days of rigid customer journeys that map the movement of customers. Nowadays, building customer loyalty is all about offering positive user experiences and giving the customer the power to steer their own path. 

Nick Worth and David Frankland’s Marketing to the Entitled Consumer explains how “the problem with journeys is they assume the consumer will follow a defined path.” Whether it’s onboarding programmes, retention campaigns, or win-back initiatives, traditional customer journeys assume the business is in control of their journey.

The new customer journey requires a flexible and accommodating approach to customer relationship management (CRM) to recognise individual needs and offer bespoke solutions. Fintechs are now making it easier for customers to pave their own paths, giving them the flexibility and control they want with  speedy onboarding processes, intelligent customer support, and digital apps to replace branch visits. 

Create Engaging Online Content

Research shows that 87% of consumers think financial services firms' social presence is “annoying, boring, or unhelpful”. It doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is — if you fail to engage with your customers and provide stimulating content, you won’t see the results you need. 

 Now fintechs are embracing unique online personas which buck the trend and give customers something to get excited about. The mobile banking app, Revolut, has made a name for itself with its confrontational LinkedIn presence, and no-nonsense approach to kickstarting conversations on Facebook. Fintechs must learn from the likes of Revolut, creating engaging online campaigns and finding a voice which can be heard above the noise of social media. 

Creating a brand ambassador who truly believes in a product or service is a powerful way to build trust and communicate company values. Director of Marketing and Communications at Revolut, Chad West, is a champion of brand endorsement and is passionate about solving problems within the banking worldposting engaging (and sometimes controversial) content to generate interest in his social channels.

Top Tips to Compete with Fintechs

Challenger bank and fintech disruptors are the new kids on the block when it comes to marketing strategies, and traditional financial services are looking to them for inspiration.
Here are some simple ways traditional financial services brands can mix things up to compete with emerging fintechs:

• Focus on a single product or service. Keep things simple and focus on doing a few things really well, you don’t have to be a one-stop shop for your customers, you need to provide value and expertise to them.
• Solve customer problems. And fast! Fintechs evolved to solve specific problems associated with traditional financial services.  Identify these problems and find solutions quickly. (or…success is identifying these problems and finding solutions quickly.
• Invest in technology. Fintechs streamline processes and simplify complex tasks with innovative tech: Fin Servs don’t. Invest in tech to get an edge over the competition. Simple tech solutions such as chatbots, digitalising paperwork, and automating repetitive tasks can lift businesses into the 21st century with minimal investment.

Ready To Go Apeshit?

At Growth Gorilla, we only do fintech. We create and execute strategies to help well-funded fintechs go to market, grow, and master market entry. Our team of experts has already grown over 30 fintechs. When you come with us, there’s no confusion and no wasted time. You stay flexible, slash acquisition costs, and stop worrying about what the hell to do next.Contact us for a FREE consultation today.

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