Table of Contents
Authenticity is the cornerstone of effective fintech marketing. The reason is that one of the main goals of fintech marketing is building trust and credibility. If you want to acquire long-term customers, you have to help them believe that your service or product will help them solve a problem or achieve a goal.
Helping people believe requires an authentic approach to marketing — one that is less focused on jargon and technology and more focused on humans. People spend money on things they value and they buy from people they like and trust.
A report by BackBay Communications points out that nearly all (96%) of the largest fintechs produce thought leadership regularly, with 66% of those doing so on a monthly or weekly basis. As fintech content continues to flood the market, it’s imperative to find new and unique ways to connect with your audience, and authenticity should underscore all of them. Let’s look at some of the ways to build authentic fintech marketing campaigns.
Authentic Fintech Marketing Campaigns Tell Stories
Fintechs — especially B2B fintechs — face a compound problem. They are part of a complex and disruptive industry and they face substantial credibility, trust, and education challenges. Storytelling can help overcome these challenges by highlighting authenticity and connecting with your buyers’ humanity.
Memorable stories can capture an audience and keep them coming back for more. Using stories — by creating tension and drama — to depict market challenges and solutions can pull your audience in and get them engaged. There’s no better (or more interesting way) to address your audience’s most pressing problems. To tell a compelling story, you need to be sure you’re hitting the right notes.
Authentic Fintech Marketing Campaigns Are Honest
Want to rise above the noise? Tell the truth. Many marketing campaigns are centered around presenting a brand in the best light possible, highlighting features and benefits. While there is a place for these types of campaigns, they could be less compelling than presenting more honest, vulnerable positions.
Truth makes for the most compelling, effective stories. There’s a reason one of the most popular interview questions is “Describe a difficult situation and how you handled it.” There’s human interest in seeing how people behave in less-than-ideal circumstances or under pressure. If you have stories that can paint this type of picture about your brand, don’t shy away. Businesses are made up of humans, and humans make mistakes. What matters — and what is the most interesting to others — is how you handled those mistakes. Not only can these types of stories make your brand more relatable, but they also go a long way in building trust with your audience.
Also, when you embellish, you risk someone calling you out. This can turn into a whole PR crisis, which requires an entirely different set of storytelling skills.
Authentic Fintech Marketing Campaigns Use High-Quality Content
If you’re looking to ignite your fintech marketing campaigns, be sure you’re creating high-quality content. Why? Because part of authentic fintech marketing is showing you care about your audience’s needs and that you’re willing to serve them.
Creating content for the sake of creating content or simply to have recent posts on your blog can be perceived by others as apathetic or passive. Worse yet, if you have non-experts writing fintech-specific content, you could come off as disingenuous.
Content written (or ghostwritten) by executives is a great way to add a face and personality to your brand’s content while also informing your audience. This type of thought leadership can add value to their lives while also positioning actual people from your company as leaders in the industry.
Authentic Fintech Marketing Campaigns Tap Into Emotion
Google teamed up with CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council on a survey that reported interesting findings on the role of emotions in business. The findings said that most B2C brands have an emotional connection with somewhere between 10% and 40% of customers. On the B2B side? Seven out of nine of the B2B brands had emotional connections with more than 50% of their customers. Yet many fintechs underestimate the importance of this emotional connection when it comes to marketing.
Authentic fintech marketing campaigns that aim to tap into the emotions of an audience are highly likely to be effective. As we noted earlier, people buy from people they like and trust. It’s nearly impossible to foster trust and likeability without tapping into a person’s emotions. What’s more, B2B buyers have significant hurdles to overcome in addition to trust when it comes to making a purchase. Tens of thousands to millions of dollars that involve multiple parties with various potential outcomes are at stake. Tell me there’s no emotion in that.
The bottom line is that cutting through the fintech marketing noise requires marketers to dig deep and put an emphasis on authenticity. Without authenticity, there can be no true connection — and your audience is relying on that connection to push them over their own internal hurdles to making a purchase. Employing some of the tactics above can help you connect with your audience in a meaningful way and see positive results.
