Last Updated on April 20, 2021 by admin
B2B fintech products and services are some of the most challenging to market and sell. These solutions tend to be complex, excruciatingly technical, and, well, a tad bit dry to read or hear about. Since decision-makers that B2B fintechs try to reach are usually within banks, financial institutions, retailers, and other businesses, the content that they produce tends to err on the side of super serious. We’ve all seen the in-depth reports about the state of fintech for [insert current year here]. Yawn.
Here’s the thing: just because you’re addressing a business audience doesn’t mean you’re not talking to other people. People respond best to interesting, engaging, and interactive content, and there’s no reason that B2B fintechs can’t take a page from the B2C playbook on those tactics.
The challenge is that many B2B fintech marketers are afraid to get too “fresh” and risk offending their business audience. We counter that it’s much more offensive to bore them to death with desperately dry marketing materials that lack any real-world appeal. To combat this growing problem, we’ve outlined some B2B fintech marketing best practices to ensure that your marketing and content don’t…suck.
Have a Plan
The days of haphazard, piecemeal marketing programs are over. The digital landscape — where most people are consuming a majority of their information — is crowded. To compete, you must have a data-driven strategy that aims to meet your target audience where they are and address their most pressing problems.
Gather Data
- Conduct a competitive analysis: Take a look at your competitors’ websites to discover what topics their content covers, where they promote that content, and how they’re interacting on social media.
- Do keyword research: Tap into one of the leading tools (Moz, SEMrush, etc.) available to help you build a solid keyword strategy. Find your core keywords (those that best describe your product/service) and build out your long-tail keywords. Use Google Keyword Planner to discover how people are searching and what they’re searching for.
- Identify trending topics: Check out which related topics are trending in searches. Use Google Trends and Twitter trends to identify hot topics related to your industry.
Create a Messaging Matrix
B2B fintech marketing is complex, but the messaging shouldn’t be. Creating a messaging matrix can set the foundation for how you will build relationships with different segments of your audience via personalization. A messaging matrix is helpful for both marketing and sales departments and ensures that messaging and voice remain consistent across all use cases.
To create a messaging matrix, be sure to include:
- Audience personas
- High-level messaging that includes value prop and key benefits
- Competitive positioning and messaging
- Sales conversation messaging and guidelines for how to handle specific objections
Build a Content Calendar
Once you have all the data you need to inform your strategy, you can start to set it down on paper/Google Sheets. Use the content calendar as a framework for your strategy and determine which topics you cover, how frequently you’ll publish content, and where you’ll promote that content. By using a calendar format, you can plan specific campaigns around certain dates that may be important for your business or industry.
Mix Up Your Media
Once you have the beginnings of a plan in place, you can start to execute. Content marketing is not a “set it and forget it” thing, so you’ll always be iteratively improving on the plan based on metrics you track over time. One of the easiest ways to make some changes is to switch up the content formats you work within.
You may have started publishing simple blog posts. As your B2B fintech marketing program matures, you’ll want to experiment with different types of content. Your audience might be more inclined to look at an infographic than read through a blog post. Or perhaps your audience is looking for more in-depth information like a report or a white paper. Video is another great medium to convey messages in an interesting way. The point is, experiment with different content formats and find which works best for your audience.
Mix Up Your B2B Fintech Marketing Distribution
The same principle holds for how you distribute content and reach your audience. Maybe your initial strategy revolved around posting to your company’s LinkedIn page. Again, as your B2B fintech marketing program becomes more sophisticated, you want to expand how you deliver messaging and content to your audience.
This should also be a data-driven endeavor. If you’re just starting, building audience personas should help you identify where your audience consumes information. You can also seek out data about the best days of the week to post content on certain social media channels. Once you have a few months under your belt, you can begin to identify how your specific audience responds to how and where you promote your content and adjust accordingly. You may find that retargeting/remarketing is a helpful distribution strategy for boosting awareness for your content while email marketing leads to higher engagement levels.
The bottom line is that your B2B fintech marketing should continue to evolve and mature over time, and this will require an ongoing level of evaluation and iterations to your marketing strategy. As you gather more data, your strategy will continue to grow and become more successful. More people than ever are turning to online channels to consume information to gather research to make purchasing decisions. Following these B2B fintech marketing best practices can position you to intersect with the buyers seeking products and services like yours.
